Man is Body, Soul, and Spirit

Usually, two parts are distinguished in Man: the mortal body and the immortal Soul, but Maria Valtorta, from her Autobiography, identifies three parts:

"In the body is the soul, and in the soul, the spirit."

She thus states that Man is composed of a body, a Soul, and a spirit. This tripartition is not a new idea, but it remains a little-known truth. Indeed, only Saint Paul clearly expresses it, and briefly, in one of his epistles: "May the God of Peace himself sanctify you entirely, and may whatever is in you, The Spirit, the Soul, and the body, be kept blameless until the day of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ!."

Maria Valtorta specifies the roles and characteristics of each of these components while making choices among the hypotheses generally formulated about them. However, it is in the exploration of "the spirit" that she pushes her reflection the furthest, opening the door to mysticism, illuminating many aspects such as:

• how the Kingdom of God is present within us and how the inner struggle with God takes place,
• the physical process of the visions and revelations that result from it,
• the paradoxical bliss of the martyrs or that of the "Victim Souls" participating in the Passion,
• the death of Souls nonetheless created immortal by God,
• the slipping of some of them into Hell where no particle of God penetrates,
• etc.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, commenting on Saint Paul's passage about the tripartition, brings clarification while remaining concise:

"Sometimes the Soul is distinguished from the spirit. Thus Saint Paul prays that our "whole being, spirit, soul, and body" may be kept blameless at the coming of the Lord. The Church teaches that this distinction does not introduce a duality into the Soul. "Spirit" means that man is ordered from his creation to his supernatural end, and that his Soul is capable of being elevated gratuitously to communion with God."

This elevation of the Soul is of particular importance in Maria Valtorta, who makes The Spirit the place of what she calls, in her own words, "superspiritual beatitude".

The glorious body

See also the expanded article: Flesh, senses.

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The Assumption of Mary uniquely illustrates that her body, as it was, entered into Glory by the power of God, thus escaping corruption. Good and fleshly, created by the union of Anne and Joachim, this body is equivalent to our future glorious body, the one we will receive when our earthly shell has returned to dust.

In the biblical story, Enoch and Elijah were also taken up with their bodies. However, they were not brought to Heaven, which remained inaccessible because of Original Sin. Jesus explains to Maria Valtorta that they were taken "to a place known only to God". Mary, however, was raised directly to Heaven, to God, in a fullness that only her Immaculate Conception allowed. Her Assumption thus anticipates the destiny promised to the righteous, revealing the splendor of bodily glorification in eternity.

The carnal being and God's design

But as far as we are concerned, our body and our flesh create in us contrary and rebellious tensions. Saint Paul recognizes himself as "a carnal being, sold under sin." He observes his inability to accomplish the Good he desires and his tendency to commit the evil he rejects. This inner Struggle, common to all men, reveals the weakness of our human condition.

In "this valley of tears," as the Salve Regina sings, we bear the weight of sorrows, pains, morbid and physical illnesses in our body throughout our earthly journey. These sufferings can lead us to perceive our body as an enemy, an obstacle on the path to happiness and holiness.

However, such a vision would be Unjust and erroneous, as it would go against God's design. Indeed, the human body participates in the dignity of "the image of God." It is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual Soul, and it is the whole human being, body and Soul united, who is destined to become, in the Body of Christ, the Temple of the Spirit. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church recalls, the body is called to be the dwelling of God himself in his third person.

The Vatican II council, in Gaudium et spes, goes even further: "Body and Soul, but truly one, man is, in his very bodily condition, a summary of the universe of things which thus find, in him, their fulfillment" This statement emphasizes the nobility of our body, which must not be despised but understood in its sublime vocation.

Christ himself sanctified the human body by incarnating. His body and blood became the foundation of the Eucharist, the mystery at the Heart of Christian faith. It was a true body, true blood, given for the salvation of the world.

In developing John 7:28-29 on the identity of the Messiah, Jesus explains, in the revelations to Maria Valtorta, why it was necessary for him to take a human body to accomplish the Redemption. God did not choose to send an angel nor intervene directly, but wanted the Word to fully incarnate to share our condition and redeem humanity at great cost. This Incarnation underscores the infinite value of our body, destined to participate in God's glory.

"Who is to be the Christ? An angel? More than an angel. A man? More than a man. A God? Yes, a God. But joined to human fleshthat it may complete the expiation of the guilty flesh. Everything is to be redeemed through the same matter by which it sinned. So God should have sent an angel to expiate the sins of the fallen angels, to expiate on behalf of Lucifer and his angelic followers. Because, as you are aware, Lucifer also sinned. But God did not send an angelic spirit to redeem the angels of darkness. They did not worship the Son of God, and God does not forgive the sin against His Word begotten of His Love. But God loves man and He sends the Man, the only perfect Man, to redeem man and obtain peace with God. And it is according to justice that only a Man-God may fulfil the redemption of man and appease God."

Maria's work illustrates this: Jesus shared our humanity also in moments of joy. He loved the land of his birth, he celebrated the bWaterty of Creation, he rejoiced in maternal love and friendship, he ate and rested.

The meaning of suffering

The meaning of suffering in Christianity is sometimes difficult to understand for those who have not experienced Christ's love. The Cross is a Scandal and folly to men, said Saint Paul. Indeed, if one does not dive into the Heart of the Redemption, one cannot understand that Jesus was both impatient to live his Passion Neighbore, so painful, and overwhelmed by strong emotional tension. One cannot understand St Paul affirming: "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church. One cannot understand the martyrdom of the deacon Stephen, killed by stoning and falling asleep in death while gazing at the glory of Christ. He was the first of tens of thousands of martyrs who followed his example.

Maria Valtorta offered herself as a "Victim Soul", receiving the Invisible Stigmata and lived, on the bed of suffering where she was nailed, the paradox of redemptive joy following and imitating Christ. In a burst of exultation, she expresses its meaning:

"O blessed, blessed Pain that have taken me from the world and given me to God! Blessed for the knowledge which has come to me from you! Blessed for the charityyou have infused into me! Blessed for the wings you have restored to my self whereby I have been able to collect myself in heaven with all my holiest desires! Blessed, O Pain, that have joined me to Jesus on the same cross, in a single mission, which has been perpetuated for twenty centuries, to bear souls to the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of God to souls! I shall never cease to bless you, O Pain, O my joy, for in you I have found peace!"

This Blessed suffering resembles that of martyrs. Maria Valtorta explains it on the occasion of the terrible demonic assaults she endured. Although the physical suffering was intense, her spirit remained in Peace, anchored in Christ, who, having "suffered to the end the trial of his Passion, is able to help those who are being tested", in the refuge where he dwells: "the Soul of the Soul":

"It was something strange. My soul remained ever the same: united to God, in peace, in thirst of sacrifice. Prayer was my joy; I desired the sacraments more than air itself. My flesh was mad. It produced an effect, by the will of I don’t know who, whether it is the Most High or the Most Low, as if I were split in two. God reigned over my spirit; in the material part Lucifer bit, incited, disturbed - and sometimes bent into the mud. Then the spirit and the flesh were reunited, and there followed the anguish of having been weak.... I have suffered hell."

Our body, this ephemeral companion of the Soul, will eventually disappear: "dust returning to dust". However, this bruised body cannot be reduced to a mere temporary envelope: the unity of the human person will enter God's eternity with its immortal Soul and glorious body.

The final resurrection and the glorious body

Saint Paul describes this final resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:35-58: "What is sown perishable is raised imperishable." Not the resurrection of Lazarus or the daughter of Jairus, which were only a return to earthly life, but the one given by God for eternity. Maria Valtorta has the vision::

"[...] and the whole body becomes alive again, just the way ours is. The same, but different in appearance. There are very beautiful bodies, with a perfection in shape and color which make them resemble artistic masterpieces. There are other horrible ones, not because of any real crippling or deformity, but because of their overall appearance, which is more proper to a brute beast than a man. Grim eyes, contracted faces, a savage appearance, and, what strikes me most, a darkness emanating from their bodies and increasing the lividness of the air surrounding them. Whereas the very beautiful ones have laughing eyes, a serene visage, and a gentle appearance and give off a luminosity which forms a halo around their being from head to foot and radiates out on all sides."

Thus the glorious body is different for the resurrected: sublimated and luminous for the elect, deformed and dark for the damned. A prolongation of what is observed on earth: love or hatred illuminates or distorts the Face. But in what way does this glorious body resemble our carnal body? An answer is found in the appearance of the resurrected Jesus to the apostles. Maria Valtorta describes him as both similar and different at the same time. His glorious body is real yet spiritual.

"In fact, although Jesus, the Risen Jesus, is really He, it is not He at the same time. If one looks at Him carefully, He is different. The features of His face, the colour of His eyes and of His hair, His size, hands and feet are identical, and yet He is different. His voice and actions are the same, and yet He is different. His body is a real one, so much so that it now intercepts the light of the setting sun, as its last rays enter the room through the open window. It casts behind Him the shadow of His tall person. And yet He is different. He has not become proud or offish, and yet He is different."

In her Lessons on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, the Holy Spirit comments to Maria Valtorta on the fact that the resurrected Jesus still bears his wounds in the hands and feet as the apostles observe:

"When Jesus rose, He testified to three things: [...]

II. that He really died crucified. For this reason, He preserved in the glorious Body, the stigmatas of the Passion. From that Body, all the signs of the Passion had disappeared, the aging, the filths, and the heavy balms of the embalming. However, to demonstrate that the real Christ, human and not an incorporeal figuration of Him had been affixed to the cross, there remained in the true Flesh, the true holes of the nails and the cut of the lance.

III. that He had forever conquered death and had risen as God, in Body and Soul, forever and ever. Just as the pious women saw Him at the sepulchre, the apostles on the night of the Resurrection and the disciples in the successive apparitions, so they saw Him and they see Him and will see Him in the instant of the judgement particular to the spirit of every deceased man from earthly life to that of the afterlife; [...]"

Thus we will carry with us what made our spiritual glory, but no longer the abuses. One should not be surprised that a saint prolongs in Heaven the apostolic life he led on earth. The inhabitants of Paradise indeed keep their personality and all that made the specificity of their human life, as Father Michel Mallet recalls so well in The Worship of Saints.

The immortal Soul

See also the expanded article: Soul.

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The word Soul comes from Latin, anima, which means breath, life. This word covers several meanings in everyday language as well as in Genesis. It is rightly that St Thomas Aquinas extends the notion of Soul to all living beings, speaking of "animated" beings as opposed to "inanimate" objects. If he uses the generic term Soul, he does not put everything on the same level: he distinguishes vegetative life, animal life, and spiritual life. The latter is the one retained by the Catholic Church, under the name "Soul", as the principle of life and thought of man.

Indeed, created by God in his image, the human person is both a corporal and a spiritual being, as we have exposed in the previous paragraph on the glorious body. The immortal Soul is the spiritual element of his being. Soul and body are so united that they form a single nature: their separation is death. It is in this sense that Maria Valtorta uses the word Soul, even though occasionally Jesus applies it to things, for example the Temple of Jerusalem.

The Soul is created by God

The creation of Souls, in their initial splendor, is shown to Maria Valtorta in a beatific vision. The Father creates Souls out of love for his Son. The Son judges them out of zeal for his Father. Man is immediately constituted fully in becoming, from the embryo, even if the Soul is infused into the fetus. "From its fertilization" specifies Evangelium vitae. What the National Consultative Ethics Committee (France) calls, speaking of the embryo, a "potential human person."

This process of birth justifies that Man in his body and his Soul is "a summary of the universe of things which thus find, in him, their fulfillment". St Thomas Aquinas justified it thus: "The Soul preexists in the embryo; it is at first nutritive, then sensitive, and finally intellectual". And he further specifies: "The embryo initially has only a sensitive Soul. This disappears, and a more perfect Soul succeeds it, which is both sensitive and intellectual."

Jesus, in Maria Valtorta, specifies:

"Man, at first, is but a seed that grows, a seed of flesh, instead of gluten or of marrow, like the seeds of cereals and of fruit. At first he is but an animal taking shape, the embryo of an animal like the one now swelling in the womb of that sheep. But the moment that this incorporeal part, which is also the most powerful in its subliming incorporeity, is infused into the human conception, then the animal embryo does not only exist as a beating heart, but it lives according to the Creating Thought, and becomes man, created in the image and likeness of God, the son of God, the future citizen of Heaven."

Which can be paralleled with this other passage:

"And to the equality of conception, formation and manner of birth of the children of man and woman on the Earth, corresponds another equality in Heaven: the creation of a soul to be infused into the embryo, so that it may be the soul of a man and not of an animal, and it may accompany him from the moment of its creation until death, and may survive expecting the universal resurrection, when it will join the risen body and have with it a reward or a punishment. A reward or punishment according to the deeds accomplished in the earthly life."

The life and death of the immortal Soul

The dead Soul

God says it in Ezekiel: "the Soul that sins is the one that will die". Therefore, the immortal Soul can die, and there are dead Souls in the heart of the living. Jesus, in Maria Valtorta, explains this apparent paradox:

"Without grace, you would simply be animal creatures that had reached such a point in evolution as to be endowed with reason, with a soul, but a soul on an earthly level, capable of acting in the circumstances of life on earth, but unable to rise up to the regions where the life of the spirit transpires. Little more than beasts, then, that act by instinct alone [...] Grace is thus a sublime gift, the greatest gift that God, my Father, could give you [...] A soul that loses grace loses everything. The Father has created her to no avail; the Son has redeemed her to no avail; the Holy Spirit has infused his gifts into her to no avail, the Sacraments exist for her to no avail. She is dead. A rotten branch which, under the corrosive action of sin, becomes detached and falls from the tree of life and in the end rots in the mud."

A person, good though still alive biologically, can be spiritually dead because of sin, indifference to God, or lack of charity. This is called "mortal sin", and if it is voluntarily and consciously persisted in, the Soul entirely slips into Hell, for eternity, since the "dead" Soul is immortal. Eternal life corresponds to eternal death. The stake is therefore Grace for Man designed to be "a little lower than God", which Jesus reaffirms to Maria Valtorta after the psalmist:

"If a soul were able to preserve herself as she is after Baptism and after Confirmation-that is, when she is literally soaked with grace-that soul would be only a little less than God."

The Soul therefore has an inestimable price:

"[...] the price and the value of a soul is such that the treasures of the earth do not suffice to buy it. The Blood of a God is needed. Mine." says Jesus.

It is because of its value that such a Soul is the target of the Adversary. He relentlessly tries to share with it the feeling that caused him to fall forever from Heaven: the Pride of Believing himself equal to God.

The living Soul

Jesus, in the work of Maria Valtorta, announces that the Soul goes through three phases of creation:

"The first is creation. The second a new creation. The third is perfection. The first is common to all men. The second is peculiar to just people who through their will elevate their souls to a more complete revival, joining their good deeds to the perfection of God’s work, whereby their souls are spiritually more perfect and form a connection link between the first and third ones. The third is peculiar to the blessed souls, or saints, if you prefer so, who have exceeded by a thousand degrees the initial stage of their souls, a stage suitable to man, and have transformed them into something suitable to rest in God."

Indeed, if the immortal Soul is universally created by God for all men at their birth, Baptism is a new creation or more precisely a regeneration as sons of God, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It opens the door of the Spirit to us, frees us from sin, making us members of Christ and participants in the Mission of the Church. It is the new birth that Jesus speaks about to Nicodemus. The third birth is that of holiness, which begins with the coming of Christ in us. In her Autobiography, Maria Valtorta defines this path by an analogy with the Annunciation at the end of which Christ was incarnated in Mary.

"I think that every soul is like the Virgin before the Annunciation. Every soul being called to form Christ as a newlywed bride is to form her creature. The conception of Christ in us takes place when we declare our Ecce ancilla Domini. First there is only the Lord’s invitation, borne by his angel. His inspiration. But the event is not completed until a soul, in an outburst of love, responds, “Yes, I do.” Then the Spirit descends to overshadow the generous, loving soul; He descends with his fire, his light, his gifts, and the conception has its start. Christ is incarnated in us, not, of course, I well know, as in Mary, but He is incarnated and born spiritually; He grows, takes shape, and informs us with Himself; and the more the soul annihilates and destroys herself to make room for Him alone [...]"

Saint Paul says no different: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." It is indeed when we have God in us, which is the etymology of enthusiasm, that we can access Heaven and its truths.

"Your soul, if it were alive, would tell them to you‑the soul that, when in grace, is held like a flower in the hands of your angel; the soul that, when in grace, is like a flower kissed by the sun and sprinkled with dew, through the Holy Spirit, who brings it warmth and light, who waters it and decorates it with heavenly lights.

How many truths your soul would tell you if you were able to converse with it, if you loved it as that which places in you the likeness to God, who is Spirit, as your soul is spirit.

[...] "Didn't I say, 'Whoever loves me will observe my Word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our dwelling in him?' The soul in grace possesses love and, in possessing love, possesses God‑that is, the Father, who conserves it; the Son, who instructs it; the Spirit, who illuminates it. It thus possesses Knowledge, Science, and Wisdom. It possesses the Light.

Consider, then, what sublime conversations your soul could engage in with you."

All this takes place in "the Soul of the Soul," which is our spirit, the place where our free will is exercised, the tent of the struggle with God.

The spiritual Spirit

See also the expanded article: The Spirit.

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Certainly, the tripartition is not a new idea. It is found in various forms in ancient philosophy as well as in modern thought, but nothing approaches what Maria Valtorta expresses. She speaks of the spirit (with a lowercase letter). In French, this word covers many meanings that Italian, as Latin, distinguishes. Spiritus in Latin and spirito in Italian designate the spirit covering our eternal identity, whereas the word mente designates the intelligence that chooses what it wants to serve. It is therefore here about our eternal identity.

Maria Valtorta wrote her statement in 1943, at the request of Father Romualdo Migliorini, who questioned her about her spirituality. She had not yet received the visions of the Gospel that would bring her fame; it is therefore a meditation proper to Maria Valtorta and not a dictated text, which came later. A dictation from Jesus, given on May 1, 1946, explains what Maria Valtorta briefly wrote in her Autobiography:

"There is a difference between the separation of the soul from the body, through real death, and the temporary separation of the spirit from the body and from the vivifying soul, through ecstasy or contemplative rapture. While the separation of the soul from the body brings about death, the ecstatic contemplation, that is, the temporary flight of the spirit outside the barriers of senses and matter, does not bring about death. And that because the soul does not become completely detached and separated from the body, but it does so only through its better part, that plunges into the fire of contemplation."

Body and Soul are thus indissolubly linked until death, but there is in the Soul an autonomous component capable of temporarily escaping matter to reach Heaven. If the cause of this escape is contemplation, in other words God, The Spirit is under the control of our free will: one can want to open the Soul to God or want to exclude him. This is the difference between the life and death of the Soul subjected by God to our choice. Therefore, eternal life or eternal death depends on this.

Extraordinary assembly of representatives of the Catholic Church, convened to discuss and collectively decide on important issues.