Like many others, I have had my share of physical and health concerns. And dealing with health issues is never fun.
In the past I’ve ignored aches and pains and then Googled and WebMD’d myself into far greater anxieties about those ailments. And wrestling with reaching a target weight is like some overdrawn contest with too many encores. I’ve alternated between swipes at monitored diets and relapses into breaking half the eating rules in the book. Sometimes I compartmentalized physical health care into segments of free-for-all enjoyment and concerns about upcoming or just completed doctor visits and lab tests.
As I was recently looking at metabolic panels, lipid panels, numbers, and a long line of green “normal” and red “too high” markings, I realized that just as we have a physical metabolism, we likewise have a parallel spiritual metabolism as well.
One might say metabolism is the continuous process by which a living system converts what it receives – nourishment, experience, energy – into what it becomes: growth, repair, waste, or decay. It is never static. Every organism is constantly taking something in, breaking it down, and either building itself up or breaking itself down as a result.
Nothing passes through our metabolisms untouched. Everything absorbed either strengthens or weakens the whole. Likewise, the human soul has its own metabolic nature. Every experience, thought, relationship, and choice we take in is “metabolized” – broken down and either converted into virtue, wisdom, and closeness to God (spiritual growth) or left to accumulate as resentment, vice, and distance from Him (a kind of spiritual toxicity).
Just as the body cannot simply consume without processing, the soul cannot simply encounter life passively. The soul actively metabolizes what it receives – through reflection, prayer, and honest self-examination – or risk the spiritual equivalent of poor digestion: things sitting undealt-with, quietly doing damage.
In both cases, health isn’t just about what enters the system so much as what the system the organism, or the soul, consistently does with it. Taken in that light, metabolism, both physical and spiritual, should be the ongoing process and verdict of how well something living is converting its inputs into life rather than decay and even death.
Constant Inputs at The Door
In both our physical and spiritual lives, there are loads of opportunities, temptations, habits, and societal pressures constantly knocking on our door and seeking entry. Whether they are allowed to enter and influence our physical or spiritual environment often depends on the relative health of that environment. Our perception of both that environment and its health is critically important as well.
The alcoholic who denies his or her addiction will be more likely to let new liquor in. Likewise, the porn addict who denies that he or she is literally being spiritually dragged away from God by this vice will be more likely to click on that image.
Given this, both our physical and spiritual metabolisms are in constant flux. They are subjected to and reacting to both where it is as well as where we think it is, real or imagined. And rationalizations overflow in both areas.
Moments of clarity are in a constant tug-of-war with instances of delusion, denial, excuses, and promises to do better. The worst thing is that how strong our filter (the door) is at any given time will often depend on just how well or not we have been developing routines and patterns toward what is good for us over what is toxic to us.
Monitors and Panels
We measure blood pressure, lipid, and blood panels in a never-ending effort to get a picture of how our bodies are working. But I have always been told that the numbers I see today are not what they were one month ago. They may also very well not be anything like the ones I will see next week or next month. Still, we do our best to get those numbers checked hoping to clear our concerns and catch things before they get worse.
Spiritually, chronic anxiety, resentments, and unconfessed sin raise our interior spiritual “pressure.” We may not feel any dramatic symptoms day to day but these things silently strain our relationships with each other and God until a crisis such as a breakdown or crisis of faith surfaces revealing the damage that was accumulating all along. Regular confession and a daily examination of conscience function like spiritual blood pressure or panel checks, catching what is elevated before something worse results.
Preemption and Reaction: Finding Direction
A lipid panel reveals what’s invisibly circulating in the bloodstream – cholesterol and glucose, markers you can’t feel but that predict future disease. An honest, regular examination of conscience (ideally with a confessor or spiritual director) does the same for the soul. It surfaces the attachments, resentments, and disordered desires quietly circulating beneath the surface, long before they manifest as visible sin or crisis.
How many times do we hear of people who avoid going to the doctor because they would rather pretend everything is doing fine? Then they discover a problem they could have avoided had they sought help earlier. Likewise, seeking regular confession and spiritual direction is an honest and humble admission that we need all the help we can get from those trained and called to help us. Ultimately, we cannot find direction unless we know what direction we should and want to go in.
Sugar, Fat, and Ultra-Processed Food: Physical and Spiritual
Excess sugar spikes the body with empty, fleeting energy that ultimately damages metabolic health. So, too, an excess appetite for worldly pleasure – entertainment, vanity, comfort, distraction – gives the soul a quick emotional “high” that leaves it weaker and more dependent over time.
Catholic tradition’s emphasis on temperance and mortification isn’t killjoy austerity; it’s the spiritual equivalent of a sensible diet. Both train the soul to find lasting nourishment rather than chasing sugar highs of instant gratification. All too often, we see happiness as a steady dose of sweetness, regardless of the long-term cost. We grow spiritual fat through relentless pleasure seeking and preoccupation with comfort over doing what is necessary to grow toward God.
How many ills are attributed to eating ultra-processed foods which taste great, are easy to consume, and provide false comfort? The answer to this question is many. This applies to our spiritual health as well. Spiritually, how often do we opt for or favor a sweet tasting view of our faith, of God, and of the consequences for our actions? Pretending that we can do what we please while engaging in an all-smiles, benign view of God where everyone goes to paradise regardless of their choices is a real form of spiritual ultra-processed junk food.
Whole Food vs. Ultra-Processed Junk
Whole foods require more effort to prepare but nourish more deeply. Conversely, ultra-processed foods are convenient and immediately satisfying but nutritionally hollow. The Mass, Scripture, the Rosary, silent mental prayer, and the sacraments are the “whole foods” of spiritual life. They take real time and effort but truly nourish.
Skimming an inspirational quote, passively attending Mass, or treating religion as background comfort rather than living encounter is the spiritual equivalent of a diet of processed snacks. These actions fill the time but leave the soul malnourished. Mass and prayer is not what one does between Pilates, facials, golf trips, or vacations. But all too often many of us treat our faith like a hat we wear when it is convenient. We take it off or put it to the side when we have more “important” or “fun” things to do!
Prayer and Active Virtue as Exercise
Muscle atrophies without use; so does faith.
Prayer, especially consistent daily prayer, is spiritual resistance training. It does not feel dramatic in any single session, but its cumulative effect builds the strength to resist temptation and endure hardship. Acts of charity function like cardio: they may be uncomfortable in the moment, but they build spiritual endurance and circulation of grace to others.
Just as I can read volumes about exercise and not lose a pound, so, too, talking about being close to God without having a relationship with Him through prayer is like discussing the virtues of body building and wondering why I have not gained an inch of muscle.
Exercise is engaging resistance, overcoming it, and using it constructively to grow muscle and muscle tone. That muscle and tone, in turn, help us to go out and take actions. Physical exercise allows us to engage resistance in the weights we lift, the energy we spend while lifting or running, and the effort we put in. Such resistance builds both muscle and bone which help us to stand firm as we engage the physical world on a daily basis.
Likewise, prayer is engaging the resistance of life’s trials, and our inability to resolve those trials on our own. It even overcomes the very resistance of praying in the first place. We engage all of this resistance because we desire to have a relationship with God.
Such a relationship helps us grow in awareness of His presence in our lives. We recognize how much we need His presence and how little we can actually do without Him. We also come to realize how much we owe to Him, and how much He loves us and we should love Him in return.
Spiritual effort and resistance builds our spiritual muscle and bone. This helps us to stand morally and spiritually firm as we engage both the physical and the spiritual world we face on a daily basis.
While there are certain proper forms of physical exercise and prayer, in both cases the benefit ultimately comes from the sincere, dedicated, consistent, committed, and relentless routine and pattern of regular exercise. We should note that in both physical and spiritual exercise, we often reach the point where we feel something is missing the day we do not do the exercise!
Just as lifting all the weights in the world and then spending the rest of the time like a couch potato is a waste of exercise, so too praying 50 novenas and 10 rosaries and then mistreating or ignoring the welfare of others is a contradiction of why we pray.
A Sedentary Life is Like Spiritual Sloth
We are often told that living a sedentary life without activity much less exercise leads to all kinds of physical harm. Without use, our physical body atrophies and we increasingly grow into ourselves. All too often, that deterioration feels like rest, but it does not nourish or enhance the body. It does just the opposite.
Likewise, spiritual sedentary living is a real thing. The Catholic tradition has a specific name for this: acedia, or spiritual sloth. It’s not laziness in the ordinary sense, but a weary indifference to the effort spiritual growth requires. Like physical inactivity, it doesn’t feel like a crisis; it feels like rest. But atrophy is atrophy, whether muscular or spiritual.
Physical and Spiritual Consistency: Protocols as Rules for Life
Physical health responds to consistency, not sporadic effort – one intense workout won’t undo months of neglect. Catholic spiritual tradition has long recognized this through the concept of a “rule of life:” a set daily/weekly rhythm of prayer, Mass attendance, examination of conscience, and sacramental practice. Sporadic, emotion-driven spiritual bursts (praying fervently only in crisis) are the spiritual equivalent of crash dieting – they may help momentarily but they don’t build lasting health.
I have realized that in both physical and spiritual Catholic health protocol, waking up early (early exercise, fast walking, saying The Angelus, etc.), fasting, and structure are very helpful ways of developing and ingraining a pattern or daily rule. Going to bed and waking up at the same time every day are good habits. So, too, is eating meals within certain eating windows.
Fitness experts say it’s a good idea do this or that exercise at a given consistent time of day and in a certain designated place. They also tell us it’s good to vary our exercise to allow parts of our body to rest. Similarly, developing a set time and place and protocol of prayer and meditation are excellent ways of growing our prayer protocol.
At the same time, however, it is a good thing to look for opportunities to exercise in unconventional ways whenever we have the chance to add variety. Likewise, many of our saints tell us that praying while doing chores or doing other activities is a wonderful way to stay connected with God.
We do not usually confine calling a friend to a strict day, time, or place. So, too, if we are to see God as our loving Father and friend, we should feel free and even desire to speak to Him in many ways at many different moments.
Relinquishing self-care to others / Outsourcing one’s salvation
Some people expect a doctor or pill to fix problems caused by their own daily choices. Similarly, some Christians expect the Church, a priest, or even God’s mercy alone to compensate for a spiritual life they never personally tend.
However, Catholic theology insists on cooperation with grace – God offers the medicine, but the patient must actually take it, examine his/her life, and participate. Passive religious identity without personal engagement is the spiritual equivalent of assuming a gym membership alone will produce fitness.
Treating symptoms rather than causes / Moralism without conversion
Masking the pain instead of curing the injury is treating the symptom rather than the cause. Spiritually, this is akin to addressing the outward behavior (stopping the specific bad habit) without addressing the underlying disordered attachment or wound driving it. Catholic tradition calls this insufficient contrition or a failure to pursue true “firm purpose of amendment.” Real healing requires finding the root, not just suppressing the symptom.
Waiting for illness instead of preventing it: Deathbed conversion mentality
Some people ignore preventive medicine because treatment supposedly exists for whatever eventually may go wrong. This is the same as presuming one can neglect spiritual health indefinitely and simply “convert later.”
Catholic teaching has always warned against presumption on God’s mercy. But this is not because His mercy isn’t real and abundant. Rather, it is because a habitually neglected soul, like a habitually neglected body, may not have the capacity to respond well in the crisis it gambled on surviving.
Watching The Ingredients of Our Metabolism: What We Are Converting Into?
As noted earlier, metabolism is taking things in and converting those things into growth or decline. In both our physical and spiritual lives, we make choices to allow or reject what goes into our body or soul. We also make choices, either consciously or not, regarding what we will allow those things to convert us into.
Nobody forces anyone to smoke, drink alcohol, eat processed junk food, not exercise, or avoid doctor visits. Yet, people do these things every day. Those who do so know, for the most part, that such habits will likely lead to negative consequences yet they ignore that reality or choose to enjoy the present while avoiding the future.
In both our physical and spiritual lives, we make daily choices to engage or not, to filter or not, to commit or not, one way or the other. We can choose health over neglect or abuse. We can choose God over sin and perdition. We can choose life over decline and death.
Obviously, there are things beyond our control. We can exercise, eat well, and still get cancer or some other illness. We can pray, help others, follow and practice our faith, and still have terrible things happen in our lives.
Ultimately, we do not exercise or eat well because doing so guarantees we will be perfectly healthy and live to the age of 120. We do so because by doing these things we will be doing our best to live the best life we can live from a physical standpoint.
With better health, we know we will be better able to be the kind of person we aspire to be and help others to do the same. We also assume that with better health we may be better able to focus on and serve others.
Exercise builds our consistency, dedication, determination, and ability to overcome resistance. It helps us to grow strength through adversity. Good food nourishes us toward a healthier body. Without exercise and good food we will decline and grow physically sick. These physical protocols build structure both in our lives and in our physical bodies to help us do what we need to do and get to where we want to go.
Similarly, with better spiritual health, we will be better able to become the kind of person we imagine God wants us to be. We will probably also be better able to help others to do the same to some degree.
The spiritual exercise of prayer and meditation builds spiritual consistency, dedication, and strength through consistency. Along with activating the virtues taught by our faith, these things help us to grow into the person God wishes us to become. Ultimately, we should not pray, meditate, help others, or practice our faith because doing so guarantees our salvation. Rather, we should do these things out of love for God and others and let God do the rest.
Whether we kneel to lift a weight or pray to God Almighty, we are ultimately making a choice toward a better life, physical or eternal.
