Wait a second, this is Ascentra Presents. I didn't come here for fitness advice. I came here for my soul.

We are body and soul together. Like the human being is not just a soul trapped in a body. What we are

is embodied souls or we're in soul bodies. How my name is Father Mike Schmitz and this is

Ascentia Presents. I'm sure at some point we've all heard these words or we've uttered these words, why can't you just take care of your stuff? Me or my siblings, we'd leave our bikes out on the lawn or something and they get rained on. And my dad would be like, what the heck? Why can't you take care of your stuff? We'd leave the basketball in the drive where you're playing basketball and get, leave it out in the weather. My mom would come out like, what's the point of us giving you this thing if you're not going to take care of it?

That's something so essential for us as Christians. Why would the Lord give us something

if we're not going to take care of it? I came across some statistics recently that roughly

three out of four Americans are either overweight or obese. Less than 25% of Americans actually

are physically fit. These numbers have doubled, or these stats have doubled since 1990. So in

the span of one generation, we've had this massive, this shift of some sort. And now, wait,

I don't want to hear this. I don't need to hear this. Maybe you don't. Maybe you don't want to,

maybe you don't need to. I think it's important.. Maybe you don't want to. Maybe you don't need to.

I think it's important. You are your body and your soul. And so because of that, right, because that we know that actually matters. God gave us a soul. He gave us a body. God could say the same thing about our soul. If we're driving it off a cliff, he could say, why should I give you this thing if you're not going to take care of it. The same thing is true when it comes to our body.

Our bodies are as much a gift from God as our souls are. So God could look at us and say, why would I give you this gift if you're not going to take care of it? We could fall into one or two traps because these are the traps that humanity has fallen into over the course of all time. One trap is the body's nothing. The other trap is the body's everything. And we have to avoid these. That's not the Catholic view. The Catholic view is not the body's nothing. Also, it's not the body's everything. So the view that the body is nothing. An example of that would be Gnosticism or Manichaeism, right? I would say that no, we're just, the body's just the shell for the, for the soul, or the body is the, the cage that the soul dwells in. You also would say, like, you know, Hinduism would be something similar, right? Your body gets replaced. You have this kind of karmic cycle. We have reincarnation. Your body isn't you in those cases, Your body simply, again, it's just the vehicle.

It's the car that your soul is driving. That would be narcissism, that kind of idea.

That would denigrate the reality of the body. It would say the body doesn't mean anything.

It doesn't matter at all. All that matters is the unseen part of you. That's the true you.

And we see that right now, right?

We have certain ideologies going on in our culture right now that deny the reality that,

no, your body, that's you. Your soul is yours. Your body is yours. What person is is a body and

soul composite, right? The first extreme says the body's nothing. Doesn't matter at at all. The other extreme says the body's everything. John Paul II talked about this. In fact,

he called it the cult of the body because he was actually warning directly against

this version, this vision that would see the body as nothing, that would see it just as the

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