A Book Review . . . Building Strength For Performing The Works Of Charity

By MITCHELL KALPAKGIAN

Fit For Eternal Life: A Christian Approach to Working Out, Eating Right, and Building the Virtues of Fitness in Your Soul, by Kevin Vost, Psy.D. (Sophia Institute Press, Manchester, NH, 2007), 229 pp. $17.95. Available from www.SophiaInstitute.com or 1-800-888-9344.

Informed by St. Paul’s teaching about the body as a “temple of the Holy Spirit” and citing Pope Pius’ XII’s statement that “the Church, without any doubt whatsoever, approves of physical culture, if it be in proper proportion,” Vost’s book integrates perfectly the principles of physical fitness to the moral life.
Quoting Christ’s words, “You must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” he applies this teaching to the life of both the soul and the body. Because man’s nature consists of the hylomorphic union of both body and soul, the health of the body affects the state of the soul, and the spiritual life influences the physical condition of a person.
Using St. Thomas’ words that the glorified body in Heaven “will be subject to the glorified soul” and “the glorified soul there will flow into the body a certain perfection,” Vost argues that exercise disciplines the body to obey the soul and orients the flesh to submit to the spirit. He adds a striking observation about Christ’s own physical fitness: “in his humanity, he would not have had the stamina to carry out his exhausting public work had he been in less than peak physical shape.”
Guided by Pope Pius XII’s admonition about “proper proportion,” Vost’s counsel about physical culture never leads to the worship of the body, a neglect of primary obligations at home or work, or to spiritual sloth.
Relating the value of fitness consistently to the virtues of fortitude and temperance, he affirms that exercise activates a person’s energy and produces greater strength and endurance for performing the works of charity and suffering hardships. Bodily perfection — whether body-building weight training or aerobic exercise — cultivates good habits that develop self-discipline, will power, and perseverance that also serve the moral life: “Physical culture and spiritual culture were literally made for each other — by God himself.”
Because all virtues require the formation of good habits as Aristotle and St. Thomas teach, the regular practice of daily or weekly exercise strengthens the will and disposes it for the cultivation of moral virtues.
Several chapters offer valuable common sense and the wisdom of the author’s own experience with high-intensity weight training, aerobic exercise, and diet to improve the body’s fitness, not as an end in itself, but for the sake of the harmony of body and soul that strives for perfection in both physical life and moral excellence.
In St. Thomas’ words quoted by the author, “Virtue, insomuch as it is a suitable disposition of the soul, is like health and beauty, which are suitable dispositions of the body.”
This ideal of the perfection of the harmonious union of care for the body and nourishment of the soul is a classical definition of happiness in the thought of Aristotle. As the soul informs the body, reason governs the will and controls the appetites. The virtues moderate the passions and achieve the golden mean of neither too much nor too little which the life of temperance achieves for both physical culture and spiritual life.
This balance, however, is “not compromise between virtue and vice; rather it is a golden peak of excellence that towers above deficiency and excess.”
For both physical development and spiritual growth Vost explains the role of progression. Just as “our muscles increase in response to exercise” (doing more repetitions with the same weight), so the habit of fortitude (determination, perseverance, firmness, and endurance) increases a person’s courage in living the moral life.
High-intensity weight training in which “as muscles become stronger, they must be put to harder and harder tests,” corresponds to the athleticism of the Christian moral life that St. Paul compares to the feats of the runner and boxer. Strength, stamina, endurance, and fortitude distinguish both the athlete’s excellence and the Christian’s moral perfection: “We do not grow spiritually through half-measures, nor do we make our bodies stronger that way.”
The paradox of death and rebirth relates to both bodily strength and moral courage. The pain or strain of exercise that rebuilds stronger muscles compares to the suffering and affliction that fortify man’s spiritual nature. Christ’s teaching that “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,” it does not bear much fruit, applies to both moral virtue and physical fitness. Physical and moral muscles develop when the weights strain the body and sufferings test the soul. This process of “assault and defense” rebuilds the muscles and the virtues to a higher level: “When the siege is lifted, the body responds by rebuilding those ramparts a little bit higher and a little bit sturdier.”
The virtues of self-control, temperance, and fortitude govern both the athlete’s performance and the Christian’s moral battle because both make similar demands — staying the course, running the good race, persevering through hardships, and exercising will power.
This hardy life, however, does not demand overcomplicated or time-consuming regimens. Vost includes not only weight training and aerobic exercise as building blocks to fitness but also recognizes the value of the ordinary work of normal daily activities that contribute to health, from lawn mowing to gardening to grocery shopping to washing the car that also burn calories.
In a chapter on nutrition he warns against trendy diet regimens that come and go with poor results and recommends a normal balanced diet from all the food groups (meats and nuts; dairy products; grains and cereals; and fruits and vegetables) without any need for vitamin supplements, asking “do you personally know anyone suffering from dietary deficiencies such as scurvy, rickets, or a protein deficiency?”
While physical fitness and spiritual strength make demands of exertion and discipline, they are not the specialization of the professional athlete or the spiritual warrior, but for all ordinary persons whose bodies and souls have great potential for fitness, beauty, perfection, and excellence.
The virtue of temperance not only orders fitness and cultivates beauty but also conquers the deadly sin of gluttony that makes a god of the belly and distracts the mind from spiritual ideals. St. Thomas’ list of the traits of gluttonous eating and drinking that Vost cites — “hastily, sumptuously, too much, greedily, daintily” — summarizes the preoccupation with excessive bodily pleasure that violates the balance of body and soul and produces a slothful lethargy that retards the works of charity and the life of the mind.
All these decisions about exercise, diet, and supplements that demand fortitude or temperance also depend on prudence, “right reason applied to action” in St. Thomas’ words.
A chapter entitled “Simple Sample Weekly Workouts” shows the practical judgment of prudence in selecting the right exercises for each person, many of them requiring no more than twenty minutes.

The Theological Virtues

Finally, Vost integrates the value of physical fitness to the theological virtues: “If we believe that God wants us to perfect our bodies as well as our souls, we must rely on faith to help us reject secular, hedonistic values and to tend to our bodies with a higher purpose in mind.”
Faith does not idolize the body or fall victim to vanity. The virtue of hope anticipates the many benefits that follow honest, diligent efforts to improve and perfect body and soul in cooperation with God’s natural laws that govern “the wonderful workings of our own bodies and our capacity for reason.”
Beginning with St. Paul’s comparison of the body to a temple, Vost concludes with St. Thomas’ statement on charity that relates the virtue of love not only to God and neighbor but also to the body: “out of the love of charity with which we love God, we ought to love our bodies also.”
To be the hands, feet, touch, mouth, and beauty of God in the world, man must perform the corporal and spiritual works of mercy through the instrument of a body that is strong, enduring, agile, and courageous. While true fitness engages all the virtues in the right balance, proportion, and order, it culminates in “making a strong and beautiful home for Charity to live in, and to radiate from.”
In a secular world that glamorizes sports, worships the body, and idolizes physical beauty and shapeliness, Fit for Eternal Life unifies and orders man’s body and soul to give glory to God and to use man’s nature “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14) for its most noble purposes in the quest for the higher things that are above rather than for self-worship.