It’s a somewhat well known statement of Saint Hildegard’s:
The body is in the soul, not the soul in the body.
The statement says many things. In the first place, it destroys any Platonic or Buddhist notion that we are “placed” in bodies or incarnated in a particular way, unspecific to the type of our soul. In philosophic terms, we may have to square with the notion that the soul is the form of the body; they are made for one another and go together; they are not added on superfluously; the body is not something lesser and unworthy to be escaped. In Christian terms, we happily recall that Jesus didn’t just “place” himself in a body; he actually took on human nature. When he was incarnated, when he was a boy, when he was a man, he wasn’t just placed somewhere. In fact, his body was in his soul. What a wonderful place to be! A body in a soul fully united into the Divinity in the person of the Word!
The body is in the soul. From the negative point of view, this saves us from many errors of looking down on the body or trying to separate the soul and body. We can’t denigrate the good creation.
The body is in the soul. From the positive point of view, this evokes many of the themes of Christian contemplation. In the first place it tells us that the body, which is like the periphery or exterior wall of Saint Teresa’s Interior Castle, is founded on what is deeper. And one can assume that the deeper one travels into the soul, up to the highest point and down to the most interior depth of the spirit where God sets up his abode, the more tightly the exterior wall of the body is pulled into the spirit. The body is in the soul. And the body can, in obedience to the Spirit and under its regime, be more and more in the soul, more and more in the Spirit who governs and inspires the soul. And the more tightly the body is pulled in, the more the interior peace and charity transform and transfigure the exterior wall which is the body.
The body is in the soul, not the soul in the body. If we thought it were the other way around, our anthropology of contemplation just wouldn’t do. There would be no interiority of contemplation and also no transfiguration of the flesh. But as things are, both of those truths are simultaneously real. Contemplation takes us deep inside. What is deep inside becomes visible outside.
Some related posts:
Contemplative in the Mud 