YOUCAT Question n. 62 Part IV. - What is the soul?
(Youcat
answer - repeated) The soul is what makes every individual person a man: his
spiritual life-principle and inmost being. The soul causes the material body to
be a living human body. Through his soul, man is a creature who can say “I” and
stand before God as an irreplaceable individual.
A deepening through CCC
(CCC 368)
The spiritual tradition of the Church also emphasizes the heart, in the biblical sense of the depths of one's being, where
the person decides for or against God (Cf. Jer 31:33; Dt 6:5; 29:3; Isa 29:13;
Ezek 36:26; Mt 6:21; Lk 8:15; Rom 5:5). (CCC 382) "Man, though made of
body and soul, is a unity" (GS 14 § 1). The doctrine of the fait affirms
that the spiritual and immortal soul I created immediately by God. 368 382
Reflecting and meditating
(Youcat comment) Men are
bodily and spiritual creatures. A man’s spirit is more than a function of his
body and cannot be explained in terms of man’s material composition. Reason
tells us that there must be a spiritual principle that is united with the body
but not identical to it. We call it the “soul”. Although the soul’s existence
cannot be “proved” scientifically, man cannot be understood as a spiritual or
intellectual being without accepting this spiritual principle that transcends
matter.
(CCC Comment)
(CCC 153)
When St. Peter confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God,
Jesus declared to him that this revelation did not come "from flesh and
blood", but from "my Father who is in heaven" (Mt 16:17; cf. Gal
1:15; Mt 11:25). Faith is a gift of God,
a supernatural virtue infused by him. "Before this faith can be
exercised, man must have the grace of God to move and assist him; he must have
the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to
God, who opens the eyes of the mind and 'makes it easy for all to accept and
believe the truth'" (DV 5; cf. DS 377; 3010).
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