When the body doesn't obey the soul's desires (St. Francis on "Brother Ass").

You know the house on the street. Every neighborhood has one. The dog barks at everything that moves. It lunges at joggers. It tears through the flower beds and knocks over the trash cans. And somehow, the owners never seem to notice. They wave from the porch as their dog terrorizes the mail carrier. "Oh, he's friendly!" they call out, while the rest of the neighborhood exchanges knowing glances.

But here is the curious thing: who notices the untrained dog? It is not the people who let their own animals run wild. It is the neighbor who has spent months teaching her retriever to heel. It is the man who gets up early every morning to walk his dog on a proper leash, who has invested in obedience training and follows through with consistency. The more disciplined your own animal, the more acutely aware you become of the chaos next door.

This little observation from suburban life opens a window into one of the most important, and most misunderstood, dynamics of the spiritual life: the relationship between the soul that is growing in holiness and the body that seems increasingly unruly the holier one becomes.

 

The Paradox of Progress

If you have ever tried to pray seriously, to commit to a life of deeper devotion, you have likely encountered a frustrating paradox. The closer you draw to God, the more you seem to notice everything in you that resists Him. You sit down to pray, and suddenly your body demands a snack, a nap, a stretch, anything but stillness. You resolve to fast, and your stomach stages a revolt that would make a toddler proud. You commit to purity of thought, and your mind becomes a carnival of lewd obsessions.

This is not a sign that something has gone wrong. It is, in fact, a sign that something has gone profoundly right.

The Apostle Paul knew this paradox intimately. In his letter to the Romans, he laid bare the inner conflict with an honesty that still startles us two thousand years later:

"For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:19–24, NRSV)

Notice two things about this passage. First, Paul is not describing the experience of someone far from God. He is describing the experience of someone whose inmost self delights in the law of God. This is a man deeply in love with his Creator. Second, the intensity of the conflict does not diminish as Paul grows in faith. If anything, the conflict becomes more vivid, more articulate, more keenly felt.

This is the spiritual version of the trained-dog principle. The more your soul is disciplined in love for God, the more you notice the wildness of the flesh. Not because the flesh has gotten worse, but because your spiritual senses have gotten sharper.

 

Brother Ass

St. Francis of Assisi had a wonderfully earthy way of talking about this. He referred to his own body as "Brother Ass," a stubborn donkey that needed to be led, fed, disciplined, and occasionally endured.

There is a profound theological tension held within those two words. He does not call the body "Enemy Ass" or "The Demon Flesh." He calls it "Brother."

By choosing the word brother, Francis acknowledges the essential goodness and kinship of the body. A brother is someone you are tied to by blood and by God; a brother is a companion on the journey, a member of the same family, and a fellow creature of the same Creator. It is a title of affection and respect, recognizing that the body is not a disposable shell but an integral part of who we are.

Yet, he immediately pairs that kinship with the word "Ass."

(cue the immature giggle from the peanut gallery)

He recognizes that while the body is a brother, it is a brother with the specific temperament of a donkey.

Anyone who has worked with donkeys knows they have a will of their own. They balk. They sit down in the middle of the road. They go left when you pull right. They are not malicious; they are simply stubborn. They prioritize their own immediate needs—comfort, food, and rest—over the destination the master has in mind. The genius of the phrase is that it perfectly captures our dual reality: we must love our body as a brother, yet we must manage it as a beast of burden. It is a useful and good creature, but it cannot be the one holding the reins.

St. Francis often faced temptations against chastity. That is, he struggled with lust. There are multiple stories about how when overwhelmed by such temptation he'd throw himself naked into the snow (perhaps, if there is no snow, we might employ a cold shower). There is one occasion when he went outside (it is unclear if he was naked in this particular story) and built himself a wife, children, and a household of servants as snowmen... then told himself, well, (paraphrasing) 'now that I have a family, I must labor to get them clothes, I must feed them...'

All this sounds pretty extreme. A little bit ridiculous, if we're honest. But that's the kind of length a saint is willing to go to battle the temptations of the flesh. At the same time, though, there is a point when we are so engaged in disciplining "brother ass" that we can go too far, and the effort becomes counterproductive.

As Francis approached the end of his life, his perspective shifted from rigid discipline to a more compassionate stewardship. According to the Second Life of St. Francis by Thomas of Celano, Francis eventually looked back on his extreme penances and said to a companion: "Rejoice, Brother Body, and forgive me, for now I gladly fulfill your desires, and I hasten to satisfy your complaints" (par. 211). He realized that while the "ass" must be disciplined, it must also be cared for so it can do the work of the Master. He noted:

"The servant of God in eating and drinking and sleeping and supplying the other necessities of the body, ought to satisfy his body with discretion, in such sort as that Brother body shall have no right to murmur saying: 'I cannot stand upright and attend to prayer, nor be cheerful in tribulations of the mind, nor work other good works for that thou dost satisfy my needs" (St. Francis qtd. by Brother Leo, The Mirror of Perfection, Ch. 97).

St. Francis goes on to say that only after the body has been treated properly are we in position to discipline it if it, like an "ass" has been properly fed and well taken-care of, still persists to stubbornly resist in prayer, in holiness, in the work it ought to perform. In other words, the body needs discipline. Go ahead and throw yourself into the snow, or take a cold shower, if that's what it takes. But do not be so harsh on the body that you neglect it, that you refuse it proper rest, or exercise.

This is a good admonition for those of us doing strict Lent disciplines, even extreme fasts. If your body is too fatigued by your discipline, it might be time to relax the disciplines just a bit, just enough to allow your body to get the rest it requires. A neglected dog or donkey will not become disciplined, it will act out. A well-fed and well-rested body that is unruly, though, needs discipline. This is a bit of a "balancing" act, but it's one we should endure with discernment.

This is the body. The body is not bad. Scripture is emphatic about this. In the opening chapter of Genesis, after God forms the human being from the dust of the ground and breathes life into those nostrils of clay, the text delivers its sweeping verdict: "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good" (Genesis 1:31). The body is part of that "everything." It is included in the divine declaration of goodness. It is not a prison. It is not a mistake. It is a gift.

And yet this good gift has a persistent tendency to wander off the path. Not because the body is wicked, but because it is fallen. What we contend with is not the body as God designed it, but the body as it now exists in a world marked by sin, subject to disordered desires that theologians call concupiscence. The inclinations of the flesh pull against the intentions of the spirit, not because matter is opposed to God, but because the harmony between body and soul was fractured in the fall and has not yet been fully restored.

Paul captures this tension with surgical precision when he writes to the Galatians: "For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want" (Galatians 5:17).

 

The Gymnasium of Holiness

Here is where the devotional insight deepens into something genuinely surprising. The struggle with the flesh is not an obstacle to holiness. It is, in many ways, the very gymnasium in which holiness is built.

Think about physical fitness. No one develops strength by lifting things that are easy to lift. Muscle is built through resistance. The weight has to push back. The body has to strain against something heavier than it can comfortably manage, and in that straining, in that repeated effort against resistance, strength grows.

The same principle operates in the soul. When the flesh pulls toward comfort and the soul chooses discipline, the soul grows stronger. When the body demands indulgence and the spirit says "not yet" or "not this," something is being forged in that refusal. Patience. Self-mastery. A deeper reliance on grace. A more profound humility born from the honest admission that we cannot do this on our own.

Paul understood this too. Writing to the Corinthians, he used the language of athletic training: "Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified" (1 Corinthians 9:25–27).

The language is striking. Paul does not say he destroys his body. He does not say he hates it. He says he disciplines it. He brings it under control, the way a trainer brings a powerful but unruly animal into obedience. The body's energy is not eliminated; it is redirected. The donkey is not shot; it cannot be beaten to the point of injury or fatigue if it is still to perform its necessary tasks; it is trained to carry its load.

The greatest saints in the history of the church often reported the most intense battles with the flesh. St. Augustine famously struggled with his sensual desires for years, praying the desperate prayer, "Lord, make me chaste—but not yet." St. Jerome, even while living as a hermit in the desert and mastering Hebrew, confessed that his mind would often fly back to the dances of Roman girls, requiring him to throw his body into thorn bushes to snap his mind back to Christ. Even St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the "Little Flower," struggled with the simple frailty of the body, often falling asleep during her time of prayer and having to remind herself that a father loves his child just as much when they are sleeping as when they are awake.

This was not because they were worse sinners than the rest of us. It was because they were more honest about the battle, and because the closer they drew to the light, the more clearly they could see every shadow. A room looks clean enough in the dark. Turn on a floodlight, and suddenly you see dust on every surface. A beam of sunlight through the window illuminates the dust that's floating in the air. Growing in holiness is like turning on that light. You do not create the dust. You simply, finally, see it.

 

The Rescue

But Paul does not leave us in the gymnasium sweating and straining without hope. After his anguished cry in Romans 7, he answers his own question immediately: "Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:24–25).

The rescue is not something we manufacture through sheer willpower. The rescue is a Person. The entire struggle with the flesh is meant to drive us, again and again, back to the one source of strength that never fails. Every time Brother Ass sits down in the road and refuses to move, we are given a fresh opportunity to cry out for help. And every time we cry out, grace meets us in the struggle. Not by removing the struggle, but by giving us what we need to endure it and to be transformed through it.

This is why humility and honesty about our weakness are not signs of spiritual failure. They are the very posture that opens us to grace. "My grace is sufficient for you," the Lord told Paul, "for power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9).

 

Living With Brother Ass

So what do we do, practically, with this stubborn donkey of a body?

First, stop being surprised by the struggle. If you are fighting the flesh, you are not failing. You are awake. The person who feels no tension between spirit and body is likely the person who has stopped paying attention, the owner waving from the porch while the dog runs wild.

Second, develop small, consistent disciplines. You do not train a donkey with a single dramatic gesture. You train it with daily repetition. Choose one area where your body tends to rule your spirit, whether it is sleep, food, comfort, distraction, or something else, and begin to practice small acts of saying no. Not out of hatred for the body, but out of love for the soul's freedom.

Third, be gentle with yourself when you fail. Brother Ass will sit down in the road again. You will lose your patience with the donkey. When that happens, do not despair. Get up, take hold of the reins again, and ask for grace. The saints were not people who never fell. They were people who never stopped getting back up.

Finally, remember that this body, this stubborn and beautiful and maddening body, is destined for glory. Paul promises that the one "who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you" (Romans 8:11). Brother Ass will not always be stubborn. One day, body and soul will be perfectly united in the joy for which they were made. The donkey will finally walk in step with its master, and the road will lead home.

Until that day, the struggle is the path. Walk it with courage. Walk it with humor. Walk it with the humility of someone who knows that the strength for every step comes not from within, but from above.