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Dear Father Angelo,

I thank you again for your answer.

I’ve thought a lot about your words in the last email, and I wish you guided me once again.

By reading a book by Pietro Pomponazzi – a famous philosopher of the 16th century, who also wrote “De Immortalitate Animae” – I’ve learned that he (who was later disowned by the Church) claimed that the soul, unlike everyone thought, dies together with the body and then dissolves in the air. Of course, this was enough for him to be censored. Beside its logical accuracy, I still have to understand what the soul is, whether it floats in the world of Platonic ideas, or if it is part of an atomistic “picture”, I’d say Democritean, even. You see, Father, in all this I go on as a tiny sailor who is lost in a vast ocean… In this universe of ideas, arguments, and thoughts, I swim submissively, as a leaf blown by the wind. My mind is steadily seesawing towards the depths of thought…

Best wishes,

Emanuele

Answer from the priest

Dear Emanuele,

1. I understand your difficulty in understanding what the soul is.

Philo, a great Jewish philosopher of the first century, said that “the mind which is within us can understand everything, but it cannot understand itself” (Legum allegoriae I,9).

What can we do to understand ourselves?

St. Augustine figured it out when he wrote: “Let me know You, let me know myself” (Noverim Te noverim me).

It cannot be in any other way, since we are created in His own image and likeness.

2. However, Aristotle in simple terms said that “it is the soul by or with which primarily we live, perceive, and think” (De anima, 412,12).

Indeed, if there is something that differentiates a living reality from a dead one is the presence of the soul.

The soul is the origin of life.

If it were not a tautology we could say: the soul is what brings life! (translator’s note: “soul” and “bring life” have the same root in Italian: anima, animare)

But thanks to this tautology we understand what this is about.

The soul is what makes us alive.

3. You may say: plants are also alive. They should have a soul too!

Yes, even plants have a soul. They have a simply vegetative soul, meaning that they absorb, grow, blossom, and produce their fruits.

Similarly, animals have a soul too. They are called animals for this very reason (translator’s note: see above). Their soul is the origin of vegetative and sensible life.

4. And now to men, who are even more perfect animals because – beside having a vegetative and sensible life – they also have a rational and spiritual one.

In other words, they have a rational soul.

5. Thanks to this rational and spiritual life, men can know everything: not only material things, but also spiritual, like God, the sanctifying grace, the theological virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

If men did not have a spiritual soul, they could not even suppose the possibility of such spiritual realities.

6. Since the human soul is rational and spiritual, it is also immortal.

That’s why Pomponazzi was wrong when he said that, at the end of our lives, our soul would dissolve.

Only material realities dissolve or disintegrate.

The human soul, being rational and spiritual, is not material, nor composite. And precisely because it is not composite, it does not disintegrate, nor dissolves. It is simple and therefore also immortal.

7. I am aware I did not say much.

But this is enough to say that it’s worth exploring this mysterious and invisible reality.

God wanted it to be spiritual, so that we could know Him, love Him and keep Him within ourselves.

8. I would love to end with the words of St. Catherine of Siena: “You, high and eternal wisdom, did not want the soul to be alone, but you accompanied it with the three powers of memory, intellect and will.

These powers are one, so that when one of them desires something, the others follow.

Hence if memory contemplates Your benefits and Your immeasurable goodness, immediately intellect wishes to know and will to love and wants to execute Your will.

And why did You not want it to be alone?

You do not want the soul to be alone because you do not wish it to be without Your love and the love of our neighbors.

Thus it is perfectly united, made one with You and the neighbor through love and charity” (Orison 24)

I wish you to make your soul the place where God spreads His delights so abundantly, that you can testify them to others.

I entrust you to God and I bless you.

Father Angelo

Translated by: Francesca