The opening chapter of St. Nicodemos the Hagiorite's A Handbook of Spiritual Counsel focuses on the senses. While the senses are from God, it is all the important, because of this, to guard them from the sinful temptations of the flesh. Why were the senses created? How are they to be protected? How are they to be guarded so as not to lead to temptations? A Handbook of Spiritual Counsel isn't so much to be a list of do's and don't's in the holy life but rather it serves as a guidebook, a handbook of counsel, to assist the soul in its struggle against the temptations of the mind and the flesh. St. Nicodemos starts with the temptations of the flesh but he will also navigate to the mind later on.
Why were the senses created? The answer that St. Nicdomos gives to this question is taken from the holy father St. Gregory the Theologian. "[I]n order to reveal a greater wisdom and the manifold purpose of nature". Man was created by God to be a cosmos, not, according to the philosophers, a microcosmos. Man is a macrocosmos "to be upon earth as a great world within the small one". Man "draws the two ends of the upper and the lower world together and thus reveals that the Creator of both is one".
The mind dwells in the body as a king according to St. Nicodemos. This indicates that the body "is likened to a royal place built by the superb architectural skill of an omniscient Creator". Dualists assert the flesh is inherently evil. It is in contradiction to the mind. The soul is the what is holy while the flesh is corrupted and must be dispelled with. This is anathema to the Christian tradition. While there is a struggle between the weakened state of the flesh that emerges from the ancestral sin, the flesh is inherently good. It shows the earthly state of man and also shows the earthly palace that his mind dwells in. The state of dominion he holds over creation. It becomes a sacred temple for the Creator and reveals the Creator as creator of both the spiritual and material realms. Both are called good by the Creator and Man is declared very good. According to St. John Damascene,
"The irrational creatures are not autonomous; they do not lead but rather are led by nature. This is why they do not object to physical desire, but rush to action just as soon as they feel desirous. Man however being rational leads nature rather than is led by it. Thus when he would desire something, he has the authority either to overrule that desire or to follow it."
Baptism transforms the mind just as much as it does the body. According to St. John Chrysostom who is appealed to by St. Nicodemos, "no sooner are we baptized than the soul shines brighter than the sun, being purified by the Holy Spirit". Once again, the interconnectedness between the material and the spiritual is revealed before our eyes. In the very sacrament of baptism, we witness the transformative effect of the Holy Spirit upon the soul as the water wraps around the body of the Man. The child is lifted out of the water or the catechumen has the water poured over his head and the soul that was once the child of the flesh has become a child of God. He walks according to the law of God and no longer is enslaved to the law of the flesh. He is a freed man. The Eucharist is received not merely for the conversion of the soul but for healing of both body and soul. The tangible and the spiritual come into interaction with each other.
The senses open our minds to the natural world around us. They are given to us to be a guide for our mind to elevate itself toward God. Our eyes, when we look around us and fill ourselves with pure vision, allow us to see the beauty of the Creator and desire to know more of the Creation. Our ears can hear Scriptures and be lifted upward to God. So likewise the other senses operate for our benefits. But some men use the senses inappropriately and these men are led away by their physical desires. They become more like the beasts of the Earth and resemble less and less so Man as the way God created Man to be.
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