The Astonishing Human Body

The USS Gerald R. Ford is the largest aircraft carrier in the world. Its two nuclear engines turning four props can move the carrier at an incredible 40 miles per hour. The ship can carry 90 aircraft, 60 of which are on the flight deck. The ship has four launch catapults with which the 4,539-man crew can launch 160 sorties per day with a surge capacity of 240 sorties a day in deadly response to an enemy attack. The ship is also armed with Sea Sparrow missiles and Rolling airframe missiles. It has equipment to foil any enemy attempt to destroy the ship.

If the USS Gerald R. Ford ever went on the attack, its onboard bomber aircraft and missiles could pour more explosives onto the attacking country than fell on Europe during World War II. Its services to provide for the comfort and care of its enormous crew stagger the mind. How can one man, a captain, control such a huge and complicated machine?

Well, since humans built it, they know how to control it. That’s why there are 4,539 men working behind the scenes to carry out every task required to keep the ship functioning. Most people don’t realize it, but the human body is every bit as complicated as the aircraft carrier, but much smaller, and the parts of the human body are incredibly more precise and more complicated than even those of such a complex ship.

How the Body Works

Take maintaining balance, for example. There are hundreds of muscles, several trillion nerves, and 30 trillion cells in the human body. The nerves detect and correct trauma done to the body. If the middle ear perceives an oncoming loss of balance, it sends signals through the nervous system to flex and relax whatever muscles are involved in maintaining balance.

You don’t realize this until you get so old that your worn out nervous system can’t react fast enough and your flabby muscles are too weak to overcome the unexpected pull of gravity. Compare the old person’s body to that of young athletes who perform the most astonishing feats of balance when they display their skills in complex sports such as figure skating and acrobatics.

The captain of the aircraft carrier has many men at his disposal to perform whatever is needed to keep the aircraft carrier functioning. But who orchestrates all the similar functions in your body? You do. There is nobody other than you in control of your body.

Within the human body, however, most actions and responses are automatic. You don’t need to consciously initiate certain things. If you eat some food, for example, what is it that starts the flow of digestive fluids and muscular contractions of the digestive system? You do, automatically. If a wound opens into a bleeding sore, what force initiates the clotting mechanism and the release of white blood cells to combat infection? You do, automatically. If a beautiful girl smiles at you, what initiates the blushing reaction? You do, automatically. If you come under attack by a virus, what mechanism commands your body temperature to rise and kill the infection? You do, also automatically.

Most vital functions of the body are regulated this way. The digestion of incoming food is broken down into lipids, amino acids and simple carbohydrates transporting those minute particles into the blood stream where they are metabolized into the proteins and fats specific to the human body. The nutrients then go into the formation of the muscles and tissues needed to promote muscular growth and sound health.

Hundreds of important but minuscule tasks that your body needs to function properly and perhaps thousands more – like regulating body temperature, the transport of images caught on the retina to the brain so your mind can recognize what you are looking at, etc. – all occur automatically,

I contend that the human body needs even more complicated procedures necessary for its proper functioning than an aircraft carrier needs to function properly. But the generous Lord has given them to you freely and automatically. He takes care of all of it. You are not even aware of how it is happening.

Your Body Is Like the Aircraft Carrier

You are the captain of your ship. If your body were an aircraft carrier that could respond as quickly and effortlessly as your body does, you, my friend, could face down the whole world. Lucky for us that God did not create us to be warriors (although some are called to that service). Fundamentally, God created us to know God and love God and especially to obey God. And when this present world is over, God will present us with immortal bodies that cannot be harmed or injured. We are far more gifted than an aircraft carrier.

We should all thank God for the marvelous bodies He has given us, and we should serve Him through them to the utmost of our ability. This is a very clear teaching of St. Paul: “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1).

Our immortal bodies will never die, probably never be injured, and, if injured, will heal quickly and completely. We will never become sick with a virus or infection in the next life. If we did become compromised by a virus, our resurrected bodies would produce vaccines, not exactly like in this life where most of the vaccines are produced by living animals or insects. In our glorified state (1 Corinthians 15:42-53), our bodies themselves will produce the exact vaccines needed to restore our health.

In the next life, we will have a marvelous immortal body, but as perfect as it would be, it will be less than one half of what it takes to make us human. Each human has a soul animated by a spirit created directly by God, which spiritual identity makes us human. We humans possess both this spiritual sovereign person having free will residing within a physical body housing our spiritual soul. Both body and spirit make us truly human and differentiate us from both animals and angels.

We Have a Part to Play

Our physical nature is pretty near perfect in its self-regulation through our physical bodies, but in this mortal life we suffer in body and soul because sin is operating in the world too. In the next life when sin is no longer operating, our physical bodies will be perfect.

However, there are certain moral criteria we must conform to in order to be acceptable to God. Here is where God wants each one of us to live up to what it takes to be absolutely pleasing to Him. Our inclinations through our bodies are disordered. We crave to do what we are not permitted to do; we avoid what God expects each one us to do. We all are saddled in this life with concupiscence, the disorder in our wills concerning what we do through our bodies.

We are all commanded not to steal, not to kill, not to abuse our neighbor, but to love our neighbor as we love ourselves and to be sexually pure in regard to our own and our neighbor’s bodies. Humans all through human history have always had problems obeying these commandments. Not only are they difficult to obey because of concupiscence, but the devils constantly temp us to disobey. The result is very little obedience from humans on every sin God wants us to avoid.

Human perfection in a body that is mortal but destined for immortality is an exceptional gift from God. I think He wants us to demonstrate our own eagerness to possess this great gift. That’s why He placed concupiscence in our hearts and permits devils to tempt us.

We Must Deny Our Very Selves

Jesus has inaugurated the Divine Mercy devotion where He makes it known that He will forgive anyone who believes and tries to do better. With any demonstration of good intentions on our part, Jesus will Himself enter into our struggles and bring many more souls into perfection than we can do on our own.

Divine Mercy makes it easier to find salvation, but however one does it, we must refrain from any action that violates God’s holy rule, and we must do what God commands us to do no matter how repugnant it seems. I think the mandate to remain sexually pure and to avoid any hatred and hostility against our neighbor are the two commands we moderns have most difficulty with.

God allowed his Divine Son to be beaten and put to death by the most vicious and brutal death imaginable. Jesus, being a divine Person already had incredible power at His fingertips. He could have overpowered his enemies in a heartbeat if He had wanted to, but He lived to fulfill the Father’s will. It was the Father’s will that the Lamb of God allowed Himself to suffer at the hands of the wicked. This sets the stage for the wicked to repent and seek forgiveness if they want to. It also sets the stage for God to punish the wicked with hell if He sees that they will never repent. Most importantly, it sets the stage for God’s divine Son to demonstrate how tenaciously He wants all of us to abide by His Father’s will.

Jesus was killed by the wicked because they wanted to be rid of Him. Every one of us humans should be prepared to suffer death for the same reason, as we die fully subordinate to our Father’s will. This is how most of the early martyrs died of persecution. God will then elevate us to live out the reality of being His sons and daughters in this life, so we can learn to deny our very selves and so that we can, in the next life, be trusted as sons and daughters of God.

After our personal resurrection, when we are in our immortal bodies, God will infuse spiritual virtues into our souls making it impossible that we could ever again disobey God.

Life in Heaven Is All About Loving God

Even though we will love our families and our neighbor perfectly in God’s heavenly kingdom, we have been designed by God to long for a more fulfilling form of love. Even in this mortal life, we always notice something inadequate about human love. We love our hobbies and our possessions, but we all notice that after several years we begin to tire of them. We love our spouses, our parents and children, but, over time we get to know them so thoroughly that, as is often the case, we become bored with their company (and they with ours!)

This is fine. This is because of the longing that God put into our hearts. We long for something and Someone who is always an adventure, Someone we cannot become used to or bored with, Someone who is constantly surprising us with things new and interesting, challenges that draw us out of ourselves and into His world so that, even if we live for many millennia, He will always be profoundly attractive and interesting.

Profoundly attractive and interesting is exactly the way God is, and He wants a loving relationship with each one of us according to the way He is. That’s why He induced this thirst for Him the very moment He created us.

Conclusion

Don’t disappoint God by selling yourself short. Live the Christian life He commands all of us to live. Love everyone as He commands us to do, but above all, learn to love God with your whole mind, your whole heart, your whole body, your whole soul with all your strength and inherit the profound happiness and joy that only a child of God can experience.