DISCIPLINE FOR MY BODY

1.    WHAT IS DISCIPLINE?

DISCIPLINE is an act or a thought which will help my soul to control my body, my desires, to be the master of my body and of all my life.

We have different passions or appetites which are always looking for the good, and happiness. Indeed, passions are neutral: nor good, nor bad. But how we use will make them bad or good. We need to learn during all our life how we use our passions and guide them only to the best, that means, to God.

2.    WHY I SHOULD CONTROL AND DISCIPLINE MY BODY?

I should control my body for different good reasons:

Natural reason

1. To conserve health
2. To develop my faculties, gifts, intelligence and goodness
3. To guide my family
4. To have more joy, pleasure and power in my city, in my country
5. To have a social life
6. Anybody when he loves someone make an effort to prove his love: if I love truly myself, I will prove it through discipline and make my soul able to dominate my body.

Spiritual reason

1. At the beginning, God created my human nature in order: the soul dominates and controls the body; I should recover that order and by this way give back the love that God shows to me;
2. Through efforts, and sacrifices my soul and my body will have more resemblance with Jesus Christ and the Blessed Mother;
3. The discipline and the rules that I will follow and apply to my body and soul can be a penance and a reparation for my sins;
4. The true joy comes from efforts and sacrifices because I will offer this freely for the love of God;

3.    WHAT ARE THE FRUITS IF I DON’T WANT TO CONTROL MY BODY?

If I choose not to control my body and just follow my desires, passions and appetites, the effects are these:

• I will be lazy
• Gluttony is at my door
• I will be drunker, to get some consolation from earth;
• I will try drugs and maybe get addiction;
• Impurity will dominate my soul and body; I will have impure desires against the natural law (homosexuality)
• I will be like an animal which follow only its instinct;
• I will be unable to guide and protect and develop my family;
• I will be unable to educate my children
• I will collapse in misery
• And more it will be very difficult to save my soul

 

"Whenever you feel guilty, even if it is because you have consciously committed a sin, a serious sin, something you have kept doing many, many times, never let the devil deceive you by allowing him to discourage you. Whenever you feel guilty, offer all your guilt to the Immaculate, without analyzing it or examining it, as something that belongs to her…
My beloved, may every fall, even if it is serious and habitual sin, always become for us a small step toward a higher degree of perfection.
In fact, the only reason why the Immaculate permits us to fall is to cure us from our self-conceit, from our pride, to make us humble and thus make us docile to the divine graces.
The devil, instead, tries to inject in us discouragement and internal depression in those circumstances, which is, in fact, nothing else than our pride surfacing again.
If we knew the depth of our poverty, we would not be at all surprised by our falls, but rather astonished, and we would thank God, after sinning, for not allowing us to fall even deeper and still more frequently."

SAINT MAXIMILIEN KOLBE