IN FOCUS - The Body as an Instrument of God | KAIROS GLOBAL | JUNE 2026

Author : Sonia Kurien

Intro

Sonia Kurian takes a look at physical fitness, the excesses of it in our present time, and what truly matters with strength.

Article

Of all the people to write about physical fitness, I count myself the last of them all. I was always more a bookworm than a sports enthusiast, mostly because my hand-eye coordination is rather atrocious. I’m not saying this to be modest – the first time I ever played volleyball, I served the ball and it came right back down and smacked me in the face. Other sports were not better. I was also blessed to be rather skinny for the first 30-odd years of my life, and so I could eat whatever I wanted and never gain much weight. Some blessings are only granted for a period of time though, and it’s good to appreciate them before they’re gone.

In the last few years, my weight has been catching up to my terrible eating habits and I’m always discovering the need to keep tabs on my physical fitness. While I struggle to stay consistent with it, I know that when I keep up a workout regimen through the week, I tend to feel a greater mental clarity. And it always feels so good when you can be physically nimble without groaning like death may come for you tomorrow. Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to start lifting weights immediately either. I simply want to take time to reflect on what it means that our body is a temple, made in the image and likeness of God.

I tend to live by the maxim that ‘virtue is found in the middle,’ and hence I stay away from the extreme ends of any practice in life. I firmly believe God purposely made food delicious – it is to be a delight and joy for us to enjoy. I rather love GK Chesterton’s stance ‘that the proper form of thanks… is some form of humility and restraint: we should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them.’ Similarly, I think we should show our gratitude for the gift of our bodies, to God, with humility and restraint as well. We don’t need to be puritanical in punishing our bodies by only eating the blandest food that bears uncanny similarities to wood pulp, for fear of a single fold appearing on our bellies. Neither do we need to indulge our bodies to the point of lavish gluttony, completely lacking any restraint to curb our desires. Like I said, virtue lies in the middle.

Now of course, our soul is more important than our physical bodies. There is no point in being the perfect specimen of physical health, while making everyone in your life miserable as you strive to attain this perfection. It may be worth examining to see if your love for your body has taken over your love for your neighbour, if you suspect yourself to be guilty of this little vanity. The opposite is possible too, of course. I remember roughly eight or so years ago, when I found myself driving from noon Mass to my lunch spot, growing increasingly impatient with the drivers on the road who seemed to have nowhere to be, or at least in no hurry to get to their next stops. As I grew increasingly antsy, I was suddenly struck by how impatient I was being. In a moment of forced self-reflection, I asked myself why I was getting so frustrated, and I realised that I was getting ‘hangry’, as they say. Now I was someone who could go an entire day without eating, and for most of my life up to that point, I was never one to get hangry. I also had family members who used to get hangry, be rather unaware of their affliction, and continue to inflict cutting snark on everyone else around, until food was obtained for them. I was rather stunned that a little bit of hunger could make me so unkind to my neighbour on the road, so I decided to return to the practice of fasting regularly, to conquer this new little vice that was rearing its head. After a few months of fasting my lunch twice a week, and being very intentional to take deep breaths and smile, lest I fall back to my little vice, I found I had conquered it quite well. What good is free will, if we can’t use it to stamp out a little vice after all?

Similarly, one Lent I took up the practice of daily exercising for at least 40 min, as a little mortification for myself. I don’t mind foregoing meat during Lent, but I knew forcing myself to exercise would truly hit me where it hurts. It’s still the most memorable Lent to date, because I hated having to exercise, and I hated it even more that I felt so good afterwards (as you can see, I still have a long way to go being less stubborn in life in general). 

In recent years culture as a whole has taken a turn for the looksmaxxing and body-hacking extreme of physical fitness. Growing up, I barely knew any college kids who worked out regularly, let alone high schoolers. Now though, it seems unusual to meet someone who can’t monologue their entire workout regimen and weekly schedule to keep all their muscle groups in check. I find this interesting, because when I was in school, even though none of the guys worked out, it was quite normal to have guys jump in to break up a fight, or help you lift something into your overhead compartment on a flight. These days, I find it rather ironic that everyone works out, and yet no one wants to use all this potential energy and strength to help someone weaker, who may need it in the real world. 

Of course, I know we live in an increasingly polarised society, where people are afraid to impede others’ personal bubbles for fear of offending them. It just seems that if strength was a gift from God, in order to help those who are weak, then even our physical strengths are meant to be cultivated to be at the service of the weak, and not for our own vain glory. Often in today’s world, it seems the cultivation of physical strength is no longer to honour the body or to help the weak, but at the service of likes and followers on social media. If this is the case, then physical fitness is no longer an act of honouring the body God has gifted you, and you have walked yourself to the other extreme. You may have conquered the vice of gluttony or laziness, but you have now gone off the deep end into vanity. Both extremes stop you from loving your neighbour, and thus require virtue to step in to mediate. 

This is why, in all actions and endeavours, we must always stay close to Christ – so we might discern and allow Christ to reveal the hidden intentions of our hearts. We humans are excellent idol-making machines. When I was younger, I laughed at the Israelites in the Old Testament, for their inability to be disciplined enough to stay away from running after idols for five whole chapters in a row. As I have gotten older, I have seen how much like Israel I am. As soon as I think I have given up the idol of gluttony, I find I have instead built a shrine to the idol of scrupulosity. When I successfully shake off scrupulosity, I find I have now waded knee deep into pride. When I climb out of pride, I find I have walked too far from humility and am now in despair. And on and on it goes, with only the Lord to constantly steer my boat straight as it bobs about wildly in the waves and temptations of life. As St Augustine prayed in his Confessions, ‘My soul is like a house, small for you to enter, but I pray you to enlarge it. It is in ruins, but I ask you to remake it. It contains much that you will not be pleased to see: this I know and do not hide. But who is to rid it of these things? There is no one but you.’

Let us cling to the Lord as readily as we cling to our idols, asking Him to guide our idol-making hearts away from anything that draws us away from Himself. May He teach us what it looks like, to honour the gift of our bodies – to embrace our bodies with the deep awe and tenderness with which He shaped every tendril of hair on our heads. To rebuke the accuser’s shame that we have attached to the folds and crevices we pull in in the mirror. How would we feel if we saw our own children or nieces and nephews accuse their bodies the way we do our own? Let us ask the resurrected Lord who appeared with His scars intact to His disciples, and thus honoured even the wounds on His own body as the medals that proved His love for us – to show us how to love our bodies as He perfectly accepted and loved His own. May His heart guide our own, in every thought, decision and action we take. 

Author Profile

Sonia Kurian lives in Houston, USA and is a clinical systems

analyst in the healthcare sector. Her interests include

writing, reading, iconography and animated karaoke

sessions.