The Liberation of the Body

We have seen from all the preceding sections of Christopher West’s article the sort of teachings we’re going to be encountering from the Holy Father as we work through the individual sections of the Theology of the Body.

Authentic Sexual Liberation

Authentic sexual liberation is the aim and goal of the Theology of the Body. We have seen from the past few weeks that the Holy Father’s ultimate project is turning our view of the Church’s teaching on sexuality around. He’s trying to show us that what the Church offers is not abstinence from the freedoms of love, but abstinence from lusts that make true love truly free.”Sin’s tactic is to “twist” and “disorient” our desire for the eternal embrace.” is what West says in this concluding section and I could not agree more. We live in a sexually disoriented society, a society that has no conception of the common good, no conception of what a polity truly is, because its sexuality (the very thing which lies at the heart of political thought As Augustine understands in the City of God) is unchaste. Where there is unchastity, injustice and deception will also flourish.

However, there is hope. “Be Not Afraid!” were the words of the Holy Father in his book Crossing the Threshold of Hope and this is exactly what we should hear through all this. The Holy Father’s clarion call that pierces through the darkness is not intended to steal our hope, but to renew it. We find ourselves in the midst of a generation beginning to reject the “freedoms” that the 60’s culture in our country thought would make the world a better place. Our youth are starting to become dissatisfied with the base sexuality that is offered to them as the height and culmination of sexual experience.

There is hope because the world’s vision of sexuality is ultimately counterfeit, and as such, it has no place in the future which God intends. There is hope because this counterfeit has failed to satisfy. The tragic reality is that the world is in the state it is in partly because the teachings of the Church are not adhered to, and when this happens, souls and bodies are wounded. And yet, there is hope. There is hope because despite the tragedy of the wounds that this counterfeit has endured, we are the people for whom confession of sin, penance, and reconciliation with God, and with neighbor are core to growth in perfection.

The world is ripe for the harvest, and the best way we as disciples may be sent out as laborers is to faithfully live the teachings of the Church as authentically as possible. It is in these teachings that we find the freedom to Love as we ought. The Church has never intended for her teachings to be a burden imposed from the outside, but that they should spring from the faithful heart in gladness, and become a wellspring of the living water of salvation from within. When we adhere to these teachings we overthrow a culture that would thwart us, that would seek to make us weak and sick with counterfeit.

We are all of us, tempted by our culture, by our medias, by our distrusts to be very afraid in the midst of a world so backwards and challenging. We are tempted to distrust that there can be hope. We are tempted to stand at the door and keep ourselves from hurt through skepticisim, not realizing that this unhealthy skepticism is itself a wound. We are tempted to stand at the door in fear, timid in the face of a ravenous culture, and we are tempted to assume that salvation’s breaking forth is still a long ways off.

To this, the Holy Father gives us one piece of holy advice, one tenet with which to approach this great labor of hope in the midst of peril, of evangelizing a world ready to overthrow the lies, “Be Not Afraid!“

What then is Sexuality?

What then is Sexuality?

Continuing our talk on homosexuality and homoeroticism and the preliminary foundations of a Christian eros we continue our discussion. We’ll be quoting other Catholic voices in this post, so keep up, and let’s explore the framework of a Christian eros. I will define the term here: and it will be available at the terms page in the near future.

Eros, in theological debates is usually seen as an ascending love, a possessive love. Yet, if you’ll notice I have taken the liberty of redefining this possessive love within the framework of nuptiality and being spoken for by the other. To define the term as I am using it in short: Erotic love is a desiring love, a love that seeks to hold and behold the other. Yet, where in the past some theologians have turned agape and eros into antitheses, Pope Benedict XVI offers a good corrective that helps us understand what I am trying to say.

Even if eros is at first mainly covetous and ascending, a fascination for the great promise of happiness, in drawing near to the other, it is less and less concerned with itself, increasingly seeks the happiness of the other, is concerned more and more with the beloved, bestows itself and wants to “be there for” the other. The element of agape thus enters into this love, for otherwise eros is impoverished and even loses its own nature.

–Pope Benedict XVI. Deus Caritas Est.

My attempt has been to offer a vision of an eros that fits the Holy Father’s teachings, and speaks and operates within the life and language of nuptiality. I have been trying to establish in these commentaries a love that desires rightly, a love that is infused with a return to self giving, even from the depths of desire. Our love, our sexuality must speak the language of being spoken for, the language of nuptiality.

If our sexuality must speak the language of nuptiality, the language of being spoken for by another, either Christ, or the Church then clearly a body in the act of homoerotic union cannot do so. The only thing that homoeroticism speaks is being spoken of by the self, for it disregards the created nature of maleness and femaleness and their spokenness by and for each other. Homoeroticism is simply another manifestation of self-imposed contraception that silences the nuptial word the body speaks. Sexuality must testify to its spokenness either by the final advent of Christ, or by the gender counterpart for which their body was created, man for woman, and woman for man, and the possibility of fertility is included in this goal.

Any attempt at a true eros must embody this self-offering, self-receiving love. The homoerotic situation is lacking, it is not a true eros at all, but an imitation. It is truly a difficult struggle and it is not my attempt to undermine the difficulties. There are many answers we cannot possibly delve into for sake of time and relevance to our primary subject matter, suffice it to say this: We are creatures who find themselves between the fullness of sin and the fullness of redemption, and there is a constant struggle in the human heart.

A body may truly desire members of the same sex to be united with erotically, but this is not nuptial, nor can it be sanctioned by the Church by virtue of her teachings on what nuptiality is and means. Desire is desire, but not all desire is licit. By the very spokenness of Creation as male and female we understand that our bodies are spoken for and speak nuptially. If they are to engage in sexual acts, they must be of a type and this type is the nuptial type between men and women one for the other.

These desires do exist, but they should neither prohibit the authentic living of Christian life, so long as one discerns and fulfills their vocation faithfully, nor be grounds for prohibiting liturgical and ecclesiastical participation. Desires are desires, and like all sinful desires they can be mastered and are not mortal sin.

Let’s transition now to a different leg in our discussion, and look at Hans Urs Von Balthasar’s statements on the eros between men and women.

Not only is the eros between human beings the basis that permits God to impress his own agape on the human person; the encounter face to face between man and woman is also the basis that permits the possibility of such a face to face encounter between God and humanity. In the Church, humanity is given a face for God

–Hans Urs von Balthasar. The Glory of the Lord, Vol VII. Ignatius Press, 1991, 484.

I think that these are very dense statements, but let’s unpack them to help us close off this section of my little thought experiment. Balthasar says that the eros between humans permits God to impress His Divine agape upon us. How so? I think the answer is, if we look at what we have established in reading Pope John Paul II, the ‘nuptial echo’ of the inner Trinitarian life. Or, in other words, the way that through learning sacrificial agape through a true eros, humans learn to open themselves to the other and in so doing open themselves to God.

The sexual encounter is a face to face reality, a reality that allows the encounter between God and humanity is the other thing Von Balthasar is saying. How is this possible? Well, firstly, the Imago Dei, the image of God in which we were created male and female. The encounter between God and humanity that happens in the nuptial union of bodies is positively ecclesial. This goes back to what Pope John Paul II called the ‘prophetic nature of sexuality.’ When sexuality speaks as it should, with all the discipline inherent in its proper expressions it is an opening to the Divine encounter, it is the eros which draws us into true agape and thus into God Himself.

In short as we move to finish reading West’s article I notice something. The funny thing about sexuality in this vision, is that it is like Jesus teachings on having life, sexuality must be spoken for by the other. We must lose it to gain it, and just like there is a way of losing life to gain it, so too there is a way of losing sexuality to gain it.

I know that this too was lots of my opinion, but it is based on the conclusions we have drawn from reading Christopher West’s article, as well as Pope John Paul II. We’re almost done with the article, so stick around with me another week or two while we finish establishing some groundwork and finally get to the lectures themselves. I cannot wait for that day, and I assume you cannot either. I’m chomping at the bit, let’s see if we can’t finish soon, and undertake this monumental task of working through the Theology of the Body together.

Homoeroticism and Contraception

We’re still generally under West’s new context for understanding sexual morality as presented in his article, I merely wanted to do a preliminary exercise in how to arrive at conclusions based on what we have read so far especially the 4 marks of genuine sexuality according to the Holy Father. So this week we’re talking about contraception and self-imposted sterility one the one hand and Homosexuality which I have here termed homoeroticism on the other.

Intentionally Sterilized Acts

The Church rejects contraception on the grounds of bodily bondage among other reasons. To use hormones contraceptively is to put the body in bondage to a foreign schedule of fertility and to subject it to foreign powers. It means to take into our own hands a perfectly functional female body and to tell it “stop being as you were created.” The tragedy is that the modern age spares no expense in attempting to reinterpret this as a positive event.

In men, vasectomies and condoms are much the same. The tragedy is that we assume that there is great freedom in being able to wrap our genitals in balloons, and celebrate this as freedom. This would be hillarious if it were not so obstinately and dogmatically defended. Vasectomies are a rising trend in men in the 21st century, and the tragedy here is that the male body was meant to provide, not only shelter and economic support, or even love alone. In matrimony the woman’s body is a natural receptacle for not only orgasmic pleasure, but seed. The female body was created with this reception in sight.

The overarching inconsistency is that we live in a culture that desires to call this freedom at all costs, despite the bodily detriments and wounds to body and soul that these produce. The human body was created to produce children when sexually mature and engaged in mutual conjugality. Marriages shut off to children are de facto not marital. This does not mean infertile couples are inferior, merely that they too are called to raise, educate and make room for children with their lives and marriages.

Homosexuality and Homoeroticism

The Church does not hate homosexuals, in the least. However, you can see that the initial look at homosexuality falls under all these categories. If you do not wish to begin with the givenness of the body, and that maleness and femaleness are created for each other, there are other ways that the Church may affirm the same realities. For the sake of argument I will do so here.

If we were to examine homosexual actions we have to see the logical conclusion that homoeroticism is a violation of everything conjugal and thus is not truly a sexuality at all. We have seen that sexuality requires nuptiality and that nuptiality has certain conditions of givenness that uphold and support it for it to be true sexual expression of the human body. Now, this is not to say homosexual affections, which we will attend to in the future.

Homosexuality is a form of eroticism turned in upon its own gender. The Church has not outlined a concise and formal Magisterial teaching on the cause of homosexualty, and we will not venture so bold a move. Suffice it to say, we must take seriously that many of the aforementioned conclusions about givenness and especially the freedom for fruitful love are impossible within homosexual relationships.

Many detractors might offer that if you reduce relationships to their solely procreative meaning, then infertile couples are just as morally culpable as homoerotic relationships.

I disagree for the following reason: Infertility is a physical irregularity, but the relationship still expresses as closely as possible the nuptiality made possible by Christ’s reaffirmation of maleness and femaleness. Homosexual unity suffers not only from psychic irregularity, it expresses this irregularity through a physical irregularity that is not a logical consequence, but an election against trust in our createdness.

If bodies speak a nuptial language, this means that my maleness speaks of the type of conjugality it was created for. If I elect to participate in sexuality it must be a nuptial sexuality, it must fit all the positive freedoms that are the responsibility of a true sexuality.

Sexuality cannot possibly mean anything through which or to which I apply genital desires and thoughts. As all other bodily interactions it has to have a common language and an ethic to guide it.

As we have been deducing, sexuality is not a self-evident right, but a discipline with certain goals and rights and responsibilities whose ultimate outcome is mutual upbuilding of male and female unity towards the creation of an existence outside the two, a contingency, a child. To have the freedom to do this is the ultimate right and responsibility of a marriage where conception is possible.

Bonding and intimate togetherness alone cannot fulfill the nuptial meaning of the body because in being spoken for by each other, our bodies testify to their procreative abilities. This is the great freedom of the Church, that she is free to love children, free to welcome them, free to love sexuality because she offers an authentic one, free to love nuptiality, because it is rightly reflected in her doctrines. The Church is the great liberator, freeing us from a society that tells us that the lowest common denominator of license and desire is freedom. The Church offers us a renewed vision, a faith that is costly, but because of its cost, is worth so much more.

Homoerotic union is simply a violation of the sexual vocations inherent to the faith. It is a self-sterilization. Again, the cause is undeclared formally by the church, and the suffering and pain and torn emotions in homosexual Christians is certainly not to be taken lightly, or callously. Compassion impels our ultimate concern for our brothers and sisters, but we must nevertheless reaffirm 2,000 years of Christian wisdom.

Sexual Ethics and the 4 marks of Sexuality

For those of you looking for pure exegetical and interpretational work, skip this post and the next, it’s a lot of opinion drawn on preceding conclusions. If you’re curious, read on.

Last time, we spoke on the nature of bodies as Truth affirming entities. We concluded that: We must be careful that our bodies speak the Truth, and thus that their actions are found to be in God(Jn.3:20-21).

In short, either our bodies will testify to a politics of the Kingdom or they will testify to a politics of our kingdom, and thus be devoid of Justice, Truth and Beauty. “Ultimately all questions of sexual morality come down to one simple question: Does this truly image God’s  free,  total,  faithful,  fruitful love or does it not?” If it does not then it cannot possibly be a manifestation of the advent of the Lord. What this will mean for us in practical terms is “Masturbation, fornication, adultery, intentionally sterilized sex, homosexual acts, etc.+ none of these image God’s free, total, faithful, and fruitful love. None of these behaviors express and renew wedding vows. They aren’t marital.” Neither Pope John Paul II nor Christopher West intend to be uncharitable, but as we have seen, love has certain freedoms it makes available, but these freedoms can only be fully manifest in disciplined people.

The sexual disciplines of the Church are celibacy and holy matrimony, and only these echo the free, total, faithful, fruitful love of God. Let’s break it down one by one. We will use the Holy Father’s 4 requirements of love,

1) Free

2) Total

3) Faithful

4) Fruitful

Masturbation- cannot manifest free love because it is bound to individuality and is as Augustine might put it incurvatus in se or, turned in on oneself. Masturbation cannot be total love, because it has no room for making possible the existence of a contingent third, precisely because solitary masturbation has no other to share with. There is no freedom for the other, and therefore there is no room for the totality of love which ultimately makes space for a third.

Without nuptiality, the shared word that the body must speak, there can be no totality or freedom for love. Masturbation cannot be a faithful love, because faithful love requires an openness to the other. Faithfulness requires an other, and without this other, there can be no faithfulness without a shared nuptiality, and this nuptiality is necessary for love. Since there is no nuptiality, there can be no fruitfulness, and therefore, it is not marital, and what loves are not marital have no place in sexuality.

If our sexuality must speak the language of nuptiality the language of being spoken for by another, either Christ or the Church then clearly a body in the act of masturbation cannot do so. It cannot and will not because masturbation is a use of sexuality as an end itself for the single engaged body. Yet, as we have seen, sexualit is legitimated only through our participating in and with and for the other.

Fornication- Fornication too is a violation of the nuptial meaning of the body. Fornication is bound to be unfree. By its nature it is in bondage to corruption.

Fornication is the promise of my body, albeit with strictures and limitations. It is my rejection of you as subject of my love, and my reduction of both you and myself to objects of pleasure. Fornication is not a free love at all, it is an offering of my body while withholding the love that is necessary to make my body true gift. A gift half-given is no gift at all.

To take my body and place it in your hands before true freedom is possible is a violation of the meaning of my body because truly, without exception it is already always spoken for. Either by future spouse or by the holy orders of the vocations of the Church.

What we must have learned by this point in our journey with the writings of the Holy Father and Chritopher West is that marriage is not the institutionalization of sexuality, but the discipline by which sexuality learns to be truly free of corruption and lust and bondage to decay.

Fornication is not the violation of an institution, but an inability to participate in sexual freedom from the outset. This partial offering of myself is by its very nature unfaithful, both to either of the Church’s vocations, and to my own body’s nuptial meaning on the one hand and to your own vocations and the nature of sexual freedom on the other.

With all this said certainly the relationship may still bear children but this is not the fruitfulness intended. Without love, without mutuality, without proper dignity bestowed between persons any contingencies that develop out of this unhealthy union are inherently wounded, as is often the case in terms of children born out of wedlock.

The unfaithfulness of the parents establishes a culture of broken homes and the future relationships of children are often are wounded in the family that has been subject to the ravages of infidelity and the improper use of sexuality outside the freedom made possible by authentic unity in conjugal love.

Adultery- Adultery is commonly spoken against in the biblical narrative. Suffice it to say that it is a disordered use of human sexuality because as in fornication, the promise is not total. If the word our bodies speak is ‘yes’ unequvocally when they elect each other through sexual expression. If this promise has been made once, it cannot be made again, or unmade.

The adulterous body is a body severely wounded by over-commitment, as is the fornicative one. The promise to one commitment, one love and one covenant has been stretched to the point of breaking. The self has been violated by over-committing and thus must reduce each passing relationship into more and more shallow and objectified and thus objectified expressions.

To offer the body that has sacramentally elected another through matrimony to a foreign entity is to violate not just the election of the other, but my own as well. My own election of my beloved has been severely wounded and thus I have wounded my own choice for myself by removing my beloved’s freedom to love me. Now the teachings of St. Paul on divorce’s only legitimate dissolution being unfaithfulness begin to make sense.

A New Word for an Ancient Consensus

A New Context for Understanding Sexual Morality is Christopher West’s next subheading.

My disclaimer here is that West has good intentions, but this is not so much a new context as a development of the whole Church’s teaching. West’s intention is to undo the perception of the Church’s teaching as a series of prohibitions. However, terms like “new,” and “fresh,” are usually and almost always red-flag terms for faithful Catholics. West has good intentions but this heading is not such a good idea because what Pope John Paul II has in mind is a development and clarification not so much an “undoing” or “editing” of past Church teachings.

Let’s continue reading. For those of you well versed enough in John Paul II’s theology or the Theology of the Body, you might be chomping at the bit to get to the good stuff, but I felt we needed some extensive groundwork before undertaking such a dynamic project. Understanding does not come with the acquisition of much knowledge, but in careful and patient examination to understand the Truth.

Last week we talked about the joys of matrimony and the political dimension of conjugal union as well as the ultimate fiat that such union represents. This week we’re going to talk about how the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, begins to restate ancient Truth with renewed vision. He recontextualizes without change, and reaffirms without slipping into unnecessary silence on the one hand, and verbose licentiousness on the other.

When we come to understand everything we have extrapolated from our survey’s position on the vocation of Christian life, we begin to understand that the Church’s sexual ethic is not a prison, or a list of laws, but a summons to “embrace our own “greatness,” our own God-like dignity. It’s a call to live the love we’re created for,” as Christopher West puts it. When it comes to understanding human sexuality and the vocation of the body nothing could be more perfect than this calling to live the love we are created for.

West’s goal with this article is to have us embrace our understanding of sexuality in terms of the Image of God. He’s attempting to say what the Holy Father intends, and no, he does not offer a comprehensive summary, but it’s a great introduction that should draw many readers into direct interaction with the Theology of the Body. The dignity of the human body, as we have seen requires chastity, requires a dignity that covers and does not uncover through the corruption of lusts, but with the eyes of Divine Love.

Pope John Paul II describes the body and matrimonial sexual union as “prophetic.” As I had begun to state earlier in the three part series on vocation we just finished. Where the Holy Father uses the term “prophetic” I used “political,” but I am glad to see I reached the same conclusion that West and the Holy Father seem to be stating. We witness to the same thing, that bodies speak Truth, or they speak lies and we should take every action that they may speak Truth. That the body and conjugal union either speaks the Truth about the Lord and ourselves, or it testifies to the bondage of sin and deceives all.

Pope John Paul II goes on to describe the necessary cautions we must have and emphasizes a charism none too often talked about, discernment. He says we must learn to distinguish between true and false prophets, because just as through matrimony and proper conjugal love the body can speak Truth, so too when divorced from the disciplined nature of matrimony the body can speak lies.

We must be careful that our bodies speak the Truth, and thus that their actions are found to be in God(Jn.3:20-21).

The Christian Vocations (Part Three)

This is the third of a series of three. Click the following for parts One, and Two.

This is the third and concluding post in our overview of the Holy Father and West’s interpretation of Christian vocation. This week we will focus on cultural renewal and the joys in matrimonial union. For those of you wondering when we get to the good stuff, this is the good stuff. Ok, but seriously, we’ll get to the first lecture soon. I just felt it important to lay a level playing ground for a wide audience. Let’s continue shall we?

Last week we said that marriage is a prophetic happening that God uses to confront sin.

To be diligent in contending with sin this means marriages must needs have a chastity and discipline all their own, and suddenly St. Paul’s exhortation to abstinence even within marriage for prayer and fasting begins to not only make sense, but almost becomes a necessary correlative of nuptial union by the virtue of the meaning of marriage as a way of contending with the sinful order.

Marriage is also supposed to bring happiness, joy, fulfillment and contentment to those called to it. To bring this happiness though, spouses must engage the disciplines of marriage rightly and order themselves towards these disciplines with all loving diligence.

The joy found in proper nuptial union is the most powerful weapon against the dis-ordered state of the world we find ourselves in, but we can only find this joy through the chastity that will bring us into the clarity of sacramental imagination. We can only contend with sin as married couples to the extent that we begin to see all our bodily actions as happening in God, and thus working towards fulfilling the advent of Christ more and more perfectly through growth in the loving disciplines that marriage provides.

The body has a “language” that’s meant to express God’s free, total, faithful, and fruitful love. This is exactly what spouses commit to at the altar. “Have you come here freely?” the priest asks, “to give yourselves to each other without reservation? Do you promise to be faithful until death? Do you promise to receive children lovingly from God?” Bride and groom say “yes.

This is the heart of how the Theology of the Body provides cultural renewal, through marriage, through the family, through the original nuptial meaning of the body and it’s power to manifest the advent of Christ in part, and proclaim Him until he comes.

The body says yes, when all is said and done and the sacrament of matrimony occurs. “Spouses are meant to express this same “yes” with their bodies whenever they become one flesh.” Every act of sexual union is a confirmation and renewal of wedding vows, proclaiming the fiat of the bride and groom both to Christ and each other until He comes again. The words “take you to be my wife/husband can only be fulfilled in the conjugal act,” and therefore the act itself is a “be it done unto me according to your will Oh Lord.”

Every act of conjugal unity must embody this fiat which is basically Latin shorthand for Mary’s ‘yes’ to the work and will of God. Marriage itself never justifies licentiousness or lust, it only makes room for the further growth of chastity. Marriage is a catechesis of the sexual self, in precisely a mirrored but co-equal way that celibacy is. They both work towards the same goal, and apart from either of these our bodies are in rebellion to Christ and His Lordship.

We can only contend with sin as married couples to the extent that we allow room for Christ to happen between us in terms of both physical and spiritual life. This is precisely the reason that the Church forbids contraception. If Christ cannot happen through the advent of children where it is naturally possible, then marriage is devoid of a necessary dimension of the advent of Christ between persons. Any marriage that denies the possibility of procreative power, either through adoption, or conception, or involvement with children is a marriage that is wounded by a peculiar lack of Christ.

I know that there has been lots of opinion in the last two posts, but these are the sorts of conclusions I feel we must draw at the outset if we are going to rightly begin to interpret the Theology of the Body.

The Christian Vocations (Part Two)

This is the second post of a series of three. Click the following for parts One, and Three.

In our last post, I tried to focus more on celibacy, this week I’d like to fcous more on marriage in both West’s article and what we can expect to learn from the Holy Father Pope John Paul II.

In a different way, marriage also anticipates heaven. “In the joys of their love [God gives spouses] here on earth a foretaste of the wedding feast of the Lamb” (CCC, n. 1642). Why, then, do so many couples experience marriage as a “living hell”? In order for marriage to bring the happiness it’s meant to, spouses must live it as God intended “from the beginning.” This means they must contend diligently with the effects of sin.

This is what West has to say, and I’m lifting it directly, because I like it so much and I could not reproduce something as concise and precise if I tried.

Marriage is a war on sin. As is all Christian life. My professor Dr. Green taught us that as charismatics especially we have to recognize the value of “the mundane” in spiritual warfare and that to live the Christian life is spiritual warfare.

For those of you who have no clue what I’m talking about, let me give you a history lesson from my protestant upbringing.

Spiritual warfare in the tradition I converted into Christianity in, was a specifically charismatic bodily act of intense and vigorous prayers in tongues and doing battle with mostly imaginary foes. In this view, spiritual warfare was something one engaged in periodically, and it was for the sake of individual victory. What Dr. Green taught me, was that spiritual warfare is much bigger than myself and that spiritual warfare should always sacramentally point to the advent of Christ in our present reality.

In other words, as I mentioned above, to live Christianly is to do war with the devil. We see this in the temptation narratives. Christ needs not do anything but carry on in His mission faithfully. The temptations are distractions from the mission He is already on. Yet, to live this life, with singular focus on God is precisely what the gospels desire from us, for it is in this manner of living that we do war on sin.

That’s what’s really at stake in a proper Theology of the Body, seeing our bodies and our sexuality as eschatological manifestations of the advent of Christ in the world. If we’re to avoid the common conception of marriage as the worst possible thing ever, or a “living hell” as West puts it, we have to reshape what marriage is and speaks to us if we’re going to understand it rightly as a blessing and not a curse. Marriage must contend with sin through the acts of matrimony and the married life itself.

This means that marriage is a militant, yet, ordinary and beautiful thing. Marriage is militant precisely by rightly establishing the freedom for love between persons if they engage the discipline of marriage rightly. The Christian wages war on the devil precisely by being free in Christ, and especially by living the ordinary life, the life of simple holiness, this is what is well pleasing to God. The freedom for love established in marriages has all the power to overthrow the world when it’s met as a discipline to be grown in.

Do not let that pass you by:

I said that marriage is a discipline. It is not just a friendship with legalized sex, it is not a contract between two persons, nor is it solely grounded in love, it is a discipline, and as such has strictures and requirements and outcomes. As Pope Benedict XVI says “The cross reminds us that there is no true love without suffering, there is no gift of life without pain“(I know this is a Pope John Paul II blog, but it applied, so thanks for understanding). Marriage is a discipline of the cross, but it is a joyous cross as is celibacy for the Kingdom.

I do feel that this short introduction does not speak enough for asceticism, but it is merely a brief survey, and we’ll get to more of what the Holy Father says presently.

Both Marriage and celibacy are for the Kingdom, and they both further the gift of life, through the sufferings inherent in both ways, and the gift of life that both bring through their diverse, but redemptively directed pains. Marriage is a manifestation of true love when done appropriately, and as such must suffer, the concerns and burdens of neighbor, spouse and children, yet these concerns too are a manifestation of the cross and advent of Christ Himself.

Celibacy too faces unique pains and challenges that help Christ’s gift of life come into the world. The fraternity or sorority in celibate life draws the wider Church into an awareness of the future fulfillment, yet there are pains for celibates. The renunciation of possession, the vow to remain untouched until the day of Christ, and the vow to remain chaste in body and mind present a unique set of challenges that bless the church as well. Both of these however are bound to their ultimate nuptial meaning, specifically that meaning which is borne in Christ, and for Him and through Him.

Matrimony is bound to male and female for as such He created them and to this the bodies of men and women obviously conform and testify. The nuptial meaning of the body is not merely a philosophical extrapolation, but a fact of life. The outcome of marriage is the conforming of two persons to Christ in the Spirit of Him Who fills them with Himself. Further, this conforming reaffirms the original purpose of marriage not as companionship, but as the procreative furthering of the gospel through a physical manifestation of the Triune love.

And here’s a segway into a personal observation:

Marriages have the freedom and responsibility to contend with sin. I cannot even begin to express how many of my married friends have told me that they noticed a lot of their selfishness and other sins once they have become married. Marriage is not only about these personal sins, though they are obviously important. It has a political dimension as well. When we come to this section in the actual lectures I plan to say much more, but for now let’s begin to open up a way in which marriages might be a politics all their own.

Hospitality.

The Christian emphasis on hospitality is supposed to find embodiment not only in the houses of worship that grant asylum to the weak and weary, but in the homes and lives of married couples who work to make available resources or hospitality for the poor in various ways, concerning themselves with a proper and rightly ordered ministry to the weak, the weary and those in need according to the command of Christ.

Hospitality is the Christian vocation across the board, to love enemies, pray for the sick and the weary, the infirm and the injured, to visit in prison those who are innocent and guilty, marriage is called to all these things as well. Not only as non-sacramental good works, but as politically charged acts that publicly speak the Truth about the Catholic beliefs about marriage: namely that it preserves, sustains and renews cultures and continues the works of Christ in the world. If we wish to make an impact in the way in which we impress the sanctity and validity of marriage, it will be less through political showboating and more through the visible charity of the marriages we so strongly wish to defend.

We’ll continue the discussion next week.

Thanks for reading.

The Christian Vocations (Part one)

All life is called life. This is the premise we have really established in the three previous sections. Our bodies are called for each other, and our origin was perfect union for the sake of one another. In history we find the struggle to allow bodies to be for one another. Yet in the end this shall be fulfilled and our bodies shall have perfect freedom to be for one another once again. This is the end we await, the final perfect freedom for love.

All human sexuality and embodiment is claimed by Christ’s own life and career, and the death, burial and resurrection that establish Him as Lord over all creation. All Christians have vocation, and we must not make the mistake of attempting to see the celibate as the called and the married as strictly free to do as they wish. All persons have a sexual vocation that is spoken to them through their embodiment. Male or female our bodies inform us about both the rights and responsibilities we shall share in as creatures.

My own maleness tells me that either I am a priest, monk, third order celibate or a husband, there are no alternatives. These are the various streams my life may take. These are the possible callings on my life, and my body, it’s chaste desires and the shape of my experiences will help me discern my ultimate vocation, though at the time of this writing I’m pretty certain where I fit in.

Not only does my male embodiment speak to me of the ecclesiastical vocations I share in, it speaks to me about the nuptial union I shall participate in. The male body was made for woman, and the female body for man. If we are to find the ultimate meaning of our bodies it is only through this earthly nuptial union or the spiritual one. My embodiment speaks to me that I am made to be united, either to Christ and the church, as a husband to many and father to all, or as a husband to one  and a father of all in a different sense. Both experiences are affirmed by Christ and His Church.

All life is called into the discipleship of the Lord, and whether married or celibate, we have to learn to see our bodies as called into service for the sake of others. Either we will have erotic love for spouses, or we will have erotic love for God, that is why only celibacy and marriage are the options legitimated by discipleship. Male and female He created them, and their matrimonial union and their celibacy are the only options for what our bodies must engage if they are to participate in the future that God intends.

When the Word became flesh, the body entered theo-logy(the body has become a Word about God), and now we have seen that study of the body has led us to Christ and through Christ to the intended end planned by the Triune Lord. Yet this end, is not solely marriage affirming, it affirms celibacy as well. It affirms celibacy as a co-equal vocation with marriage and both are the most profoundly Truthful and authentic living out of who we are as male and female.

When lived properly according to the loving discipleship that Christ has called us to, celibacy is not a rejection of sexuality or the human call to union. It points to their fulfillment in God. Celibacy is granted by Christ and was embraced by Christ Himself as “for the sake of the Kingdom” (Matt 19.12).

This Kingdom points ultimately to Christ Himself and His life as the fullness of the Kingdom, and the sacrifice of marriage is in order to show the present reality of the kingdom among us. Jesus said that there would be eunuchs for the Kingdom and that those who could accept it should. St. Paul emphasized a similar motif.

However, neither of these is a higher calling, they are merely the only two possible legitimate expressions of human sexuality according to its role as a creature of God. Those who sacrifice sexuality in this way point us to the already present Kingdom of God in our midst through the chastity made possible. Christopher West says of celibates “In a way, they’re “skipping” the sacrament (the earthly sign) in anticipation of the ultimate reality. By doing so, celibate men and women declare to the world that the kingdom of God is here(see Mt 12:28).”

Just like every other sacrament, matrimony and celibacy are tied up into being an eschatological manifestation of the future God intends. To simplify: Matrimony and celibacy are signs to us of the future of God and they manifest that future in part, today, right now. As St. Paul says “Now we see as through a mirror dimly” (1 Cor. 13.12), but our dim manifestations of the light of Christ shall someday become His presence to all reality ‘face to face’.

The Ultimate Experience of the Body & Sex

For those of you just joining us, please scroll back and read the first few introductory posts, since we are slowly working through Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body and are setting up some foundations for how and why to read these lectures through an article penned by popular Catholic writer and someone who has many articles on the Pope’s Theology of the Body Christopher West.

Well, let’s get right into it.

The next section is about our experience of the body in the resurrection. Christ says in response to the Pharisees and Sadducees that we are no longer given or received in marriage (Matt. 22.30). However, we need not fear it is not that the desire for union and togetherness is done away with, but it is fulfilled in God

As a sacrament, marriage is only the anticipation of the final reality, it merely points to what is yet to come. In that day, we will no longer need signs, everything will be full of grace, we will not need signs of heavenly things, we will not need signs of grace, we too shall be full of grace and Truth Himself, and we will embody the grace that the sacraments signify.

The signs will be unnecessary because the full consummation not rejection of those realities shall be at hand. Christ will show us the true nuptiality at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. We need not fear, because the Bible nor the Tradition teach a forgetting of our lives on earth, the Holy Scriptures teach a consummation of union, not the abolishment thereof.

Growing up, when I heard that there were no marriages, I assumed there were no families, and thus no memory of life on earth. Heaven terrified me because I had grown up assuming that there would be no union between my mother and my father, no union between myself and my family. I had no coherent vision for what a world without marriage might look like other than a terrifying one.

However, we must understand that Jesus intends this for good and not evil and therefore we must understand that in the project of fulfillment that is the King of Israel’s modus operandi, the end of marriage is not an end at all, but a consummation, it will have no fuller fullness than the reality which we see in part now, and shall see in full in the end of all things.

“For man, this consummation will be the final realization of the unity of the human race, which God willed from creation. …Those who are united with Christ will form the community of the redeemed, ‘the holy city’ of God, ‘the Bride, the wife of the Lamb” (CCC, n. 1045).“

This consummation will fulfill the opening statements of Genesis, and what God has established, not even He shall tear asunder. The two shall be one flesh. If Jesus condemns divorce, how shall the Lord at the end of all things divorce us from all other things? It’s impossible. Redemption and the consummation is for all creation, not mere individuals alone, but over all created things. All that is in Christ will have perfect koinonia in a way that is foreshadowed now, (in my opinion most precisely through Eucharistic celebration).

What God does in the end will not be different from the beginning, it will be the fulfillment of the beginning. In the resurrection The Holy Father will teach that we discover the same nuptial meaning from the beginning is not abandoned, but fulfilled. It will not be alienated from sexuality or the procreative meaning of the body, this shall merely be fulfilled in the end of all things in a way that we may not now recognize, but that will make perfect sense in the end of all things. The nuptial and procreative meaning of the body will meet with the mystery of God face to face, and in so doing shall speak a new word, yet this word shall agree with and fulfill all that has come before.

The Historical Experience of the Body & Sex

“Original sin caused the “death” of divine love in the human heart.” is how Christopher West opens our next section in the prologue to our reading of the Theology of the Body.

I do notice he focuses his overview a lot on sex and sexuality, there’s so much more to the Theology of the Body, but it is important to how we read the Theology of the Body, especially in a generation starved for a true sexuality.

Notice how “death” appears in quotations in West’s opening line. This section will address the realities of the fall and life under the sway of sin. Where the last section in our brief outline looked at original unity this section will look at the dawn of lust, and the power of sin in the history of humanity. It will examine the loss of true eros for an eros devoid of God’s love. The Holy Father will go on to teach us that eros is not evil, but flawed under the power of sin. Human sexuality can still be ‘very good’ but it requires proper redemption in order to do so.

“Men and women of history now tend to seek “the sensation of sexuality” apart from the true gift of themselves, apart from authentic love.” is how West continues his survey, and he could not be more right. Ours is a culture that has removed persons entirely from the realm of sexuality, in every facet, and has exchanged nuptial personhood for a vision of the human body as a commodity bought and sold to the bidder who evokes the highest emotional response or incites the most lust. West only briefly touches on this entire section and once we hit the primary text, we’ll do a lot more looking at this idea in the text, it’s really rather astounding and I feel this short post won’t do it justice.

Our society is based on the facets of mechanism, the body as object, as commodity, as economic purchase, rather than person. Sexually, the “revolution” only enslaved us to a denigrated view of the body as object of our purchases rather than as subject open to the other. Our society would like to force us into the prudishness of empty personhood, wherein the only authentic love is a simulation projected on movie screens. The world would like to entirely remove personhood from the sexual equation. To this the Holy Father, and the entire Church reply a resounding and powerful “No.”

The biggest mistake the sexual “revolution” made was assuming that if we merely exposed more skin and rejected more and more limits we would finally arrive at the height of sexual liberty, but this is not true. The prudishness of past generations and their unwillingness to talk about sex is equally as impoverished as the over-sexualized modern cultures. The Church has always been a refuge of a true, healthy and developed, sacramental sexuality. Though before the 20th century there was not a single text that could address human sexuality with the mastery that JPII approaches it with.

Further, there has always been the problem of the relation of nakedness and lust in the Christian tradition. There have been “restorationist” movements, but there have always ended poorly because they miss the point. With piercing insight and summarization West says: “We cover our bodies not because they’re bad, but to protect their inherent goodness from the degradation of lust. Since we know we’re made for love, we feel instinctively “threatened” not only by overt lustful behavior, but even by a “lustful look.” Now some people have taught themselves to reject this feeling as some sort of degradation of their freedom, but this is actually the glaring voice of freedom calling them back to authentic love. To put it another way, Bonhoeffer says that ‘Shame is the irrepressible memory of our disunity with God…‘as well as out fellow creature.

In this section of the lectures, the Holy Father will continue to examine the teachings of Christ, focusing on lust and the statement that whoever looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery. Let’s look at the following block quote for a fuller understanding of what we can expect when our readings bring us thus far:

Christ’s words are severe in this regard. He insists that if we look lustfully at others, we’ve already committed adultery in our hearts (see Mt 5:28). John Paul poses the question: “Are we to fear the severity of these words, or rather have confidence in their salvific …power?” (Oct 8, 1980). These words have power to save us because the man who utters them is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29).

The life, death and resurrection of Jesus are not merely therapeutic realities. They are not meant to merely give us coping mechanisms to handle sin until the end with meager progress, the life and career of Jesus are meant to give us the fullest anticipation of the eschaton through the holiness that He Himself offers and makes possible. “Christ’s death and resurrection effectively “liberate our liberty from the domination of lust” as John Paul expresses it (March 1, 1984).“

Nothing is more critical than, as I have been stating in all the prolegomena, that we liberate what our culture calls liberty from itself. Our task is to give it over to proper keeping in the loving embrace of authentic love, chastity and with eyes towards the final consummation of humanity in the nuptial embrace of Christ Himself.

The Historical experience of the body is always a war between love and lust in the heart of women and of men. Even so, it is necessary that we recognize the advent of the Lord and the redemption of the body are already in our midst. We come to recognize this through bearing our crosses and letting our lusts be crucified with Christ and we progress from sexual anarchy to sexual salvation.

We can progressively approach an eroticism that embraces the nuptial meaning of the body and is therefore truly Christian if we approach this new eros with a renewed ethos that establishes sexuality as a nuptial pursuit of Truth, Justice, Goodness and Beauty. This is where the project of cultural renewal in the Theology of the Body really begins to take shape.

We have been created for each other in Love Himself, and what our culture champions cannot help but be not only insensible to us, it is a sheer and vast travesty that among our Protestant brothers and sisters, and even among young Catholics in modern society there is a generation who by and large has no clue of the meaning of chastity, even if they attempt to live chaste lives.

The Original Experience of the Body & Sex

Continuing our little prologue to the Theology of the Body with West’s article I’m going examine what the Pope has to say about original sexualty with West’s interpretation in mind, and we’ll work through some things to look for when we read the Theology of the Body.

West points out that the war between the sexes to us seems normal to us but that it is actually foreign to human nature by its being a product of the fall. “Before sin, man and woman experienced their union as a participation in God’s eternal love.” I think that this is truly profound. What West is saying is what JPII will teach us, and that is: The body, human sexuality, and all human interaction have their origin in God. What strikes me, is that the eternal love of God is not only our origin, as this statement says, but through the doctrine of reconciliation we see that it is our goal as well. The entire original innocence project that the West grounds his teachings of eschatology in through the idea of recapitulation is what is shaping statements like these.

West observes JPII teaches that “original unity flows from the human being’s experience of solitude.” Even with God and all creation with him, man is still alone, he still requires a helper, one that is ‘bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh.’ Man Has God and Creation, and yet he is alone. This is crucial, because it teaches us that one can have God and yet be unsatisfied or unfulfilled in a way that is not sin.

Christopher West also goes on to say that it is this experience of solitude in the biblical narrative that is key to understanding the unique vantage of human sexuality. It stands apart in that it is not mere mating, it is a sharing of love. Love requires sharing between two persons in order to be love. The man is called to use his body as an instrument of Love in God’s image and a proper reflecting of that love must be given back and this can only happen in and with and through another person.

I’d like to share an interesting passage for our examination from the article.

How did he know that she too was a person called to love? Her naked body revealed the mystery! For the pure of heart, nakedness reveals what John Paul calls “the nuptial meaning of the body.” This is the body’s “capacity of expressing love: that love precisely in which the person becomes a gift and + by means of this gift + fulfills the very meaning of his being and existence” (Jan 16, 1980).

Get that and don’t let it slip past you. Two very important things just happened in that short little passage.

1. Our bodies have a revelatory (and that is precisely the word for it, unless one were to use the word apocalyptic,) power when our hearts are pure and we live out our sexuality according to the call of Christ. Due to the purity in both Adam and Eve they are immediately cognizant of their nuptial nature, and their spokenness for each other happens in the moment when Adam rejoices in Eve, and her personhood, which he can now fully give himself over to. I think that there is a slight misdirection that is possible in a certain frame of this reading presented by West. If we are not careful we could equate more nakedness with more truth, which is certainly not the case. There is a type of modesty and chastity that is proper even when God unveils them.

To not stress the point too much bvut provide a foundation for my critique of West, let’s look at The Life of Moses by Gregory of Nyssa, in which St. Gregory calls God a dark illumination. I think this is the sense of nakedness we are to assume from this. The point West brings out is certainly important, but we cannot be idyllic, or assume that more nakedness would mean more truth.

There is a certain holy unknowability of the other, as other. Just as sex does not allow us to more deeply know each other without the disciplines that make it meaningful and True, so too nakedness is not a virtue, but a condition thereof, and only within the limits of nuptiality. Nakedness is not, despite opinions, or misintentions in reading West, a fruit of chastity, and any “return” which our sexuality is engaged in, must deal first with our current state under sin, and secondly with Christ’s vision of the future and our final destination at the marriage supper of the Lamb. Let’s return to West and the Holy Father.

The pope is teaching us that there is a meaning in the body that comes from chastity. He is also teaching that it was original unity in that moment through the virtue of chastity that unveils the meaning of their bodies for each other. Through the nakedness apprehended through original chastity, he understands the woman as for himself, and himself as for the woman. Truly, we cannot expect to gain much in attempting to search out nuptial meaning with willingly tainted sight. Can we?

2. The body has a meaning for union. It is made for nuptaility, either to Christ, or to a spouse.

This too is huge. Whereas our cultures teach that sexuality is a matter of choices and tastes and selections based on autonomous desire, PJPII is teaching that the body has a meaning outside itself and for the other. The body speaks a unitive word in its very existence, maleness was created for femaleness and femaleness for maleness. They point to each other and their union simply is de facto the natural order.

The male-female union fulfills the greatest commandment of loving one another as Christ has loved us because in the nuptial sharing they truly offer their bodies to one another. This is my body which is given for you (Luke 22.19) is the apex of the creaturely direction of humanity. To give our bodies for and to one another as they did in Genesis, the man for the woman, and the woman for the man is to fulfill the command of Christ. Christopher West says, “God created sexual desire as the power to love as he loves. And this is how the first couple experienced it. Hence, they ‘were both naked, and were not ashamed’ (Gen 2.25).”

They were not ashamed because in original unity there is no fear, and thus no shame(1 John 4.18). In the beginning, there cannot be shame because the bodies are fulfilling their original purpose which is the complete other-turned self-disclosing love that is found in the Triune Lord. They saw each other with the eyes of love, which is not blindness, but the only true sight.

—

So what can we draw from all this?

In the beginning, sexuality was for the other, as was the body. What I assume we should take from this is that the Holy Father will teach us how to apply to our own lives an interpretation of sexuality that is for the other. I assume we will be led away from questions such as “what do I want?” for questions of “how may i love my spouse more perfectly?”

John Paul II’s lectures on the Theology of the Body and West’s commentaries take up this theme again and again. Love for the other. A love free to be truly free because we are created to be here for each other. In the lectures, as you may have already noticed from our overview, he speaks again and again of ‘the nuptial meaning of the body.’ This meaning is revealed in and through our bodies and proper reflection not only on the genesis accounts but on Christ Himself. Pope John Paul II does precisely this by wedding the Genesis accounts to the teachings of Our Lord.

When he speaks of the nuptial meaning of the body the Holy Father means that our bodies reveal that we are and have meaning for each other. It means we are gifts to one another. It means our bodies and our sexuality are something we give to and to receive from one another. We know this, of course, only because we can and do know Christ’s body and it is God’s spoken word about both Himself, ourselves and everything in between.

We can discover the meaning, the purpose, the telos of our own sexuality, our own families, our own relationships and religious vocations by reflecting on Christ Himself. The passage I have quoted in previous posts, is highly illuminating in this regard where St. Paul the Apostle tells us that ‘The body…is meant for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body.’ (I Cor. 6.13)

A Theology of the Body?

Christopher West’s Article, which we have been examining as a prolegomena to this larger work I’m undertaking in dialouging with in coming to understand Pope John Paul II’s (PJPII) Theology of the Body (TOB) continues with another section called Why is the Body a “Theology”? And in examining this section as well as the others we’ll have completed a valid study of why and how we should read these lectures and what we’re looking for along the way.

I will eventually make a bibliography page where all the references and articles and resources may be found, and referenced for use by scholars, students and curious audiences of all sorts. I will also be attending to making a page for theological terms. It would help if you would comment with your questions and concerns for clarification, so that I might better assist you with my readings. If you should ever desire, email me: e[dot]silva501[at]gmail.com. But for now, let’s continue our discussion with West’s next section on how we should read the TOB.

West says “According to John Paul II, God created the body as a “sign” of his own divine mystery. This is why he speaks of the body as a “theology,” a study of God.“ I always took the title as rather evident, but I guess it skips the awareness of some. I always assumed that since Christ is fully human and fully divine a proper understanding of the body should be done theologically. However, for those who are curious as to what this might mean, let’s explore a bit more.

God has created the human body “as a sign of His own divine mystery.” The word sign there is incredibly significant for our intents, and our purposes. The Holy Father offers us a specific way to interpret the body. Sacramentally. Three things make themselves evident, through West’s commentary on JPII.

Let’s examine at least three ways in which the body claims theological reflection and speaks theologically.

1. God’s plan of salvation intimately involves human bodies– From Mary to Jesus, and all the saints in the Old Testament and in the New Testament and throughout the Tradition, bodies matter. God speaks to us through the bodies and actions of all the peoples in the bible and all the saints in the Tradition. We see most especially in 1 Corinthians, that if there is no resurrection we are fools, but if there is, then we have the highest hope of all. Few topics receive more attention in St. Paul’s writings in more exquisite detail than the resurrection.

However, most concretely, God’s plan of salvation involved The Human Body, Christ’s own body is God’s word to us about our own. The Human Body is God’s ultimate destination for creation, if as Colossians says He is the goal, the telos, the purpose of Creation. If this is the case, then the body and specifically Christ’s own body is God’s Word to us about what God intends for all bodies, and thus the body requires a theology.

2. The Body is a sacramental reality– The body is a sign of the work of God because it is in Their image, namely the Triune image. The body is a visible sign of the sacramentality of creation. As the image of God we are intended to be bearers of the grace that we signify through male and female bodies. An outline I am reading concurrent with West’s article says:

Man is the highest expression of divine self-giving, and the nuptial meaning of the body is the primordial sacrament, which efficaciously transmits the invisible mystery of God’s Truth and Love. Man is the highest expression of divine self-giving, and the nuptial meaning of the body is the primordial sacrament,which efficaciously transmits the invisible mystery of God’s Truth and Love. –Theology of the Body Outline (page 4, bottom)

For those who did not understand, let me simplify. Man is the highest word that God has spoken to all creation about itself, and its identity most especially through Jesus of Nazareth. This is reaffirmed in the coming of Christ who truly and finally affirms humanity in the eyes of God, and affirms that as St. Paul says, the Body is for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body(I Cor. 6.12-20). Through our very existence in right relationships we embody what God intends to speak to all the world about himself through our created forms.

As West says ” In Christ, “God has revealed his innermost secret: God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange” (CCC, n. 221). Somehow the human body makes this eternal mystery of love visible.“

The meaning of the body, intended as it is for community expresses the community of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The body then, is truly a sign of God, and therefore needs theology.

“Celebrated worthily in faith, the sacraments confer the grace that they signify. They are efficacious because in them Christ himself is at work: it is he who baptizes, he who acts in his sacraments in order to communicate the grace that each sacrament signifies.” (Catechism 1127)

3. God’s Word to us is the Nuptial Meaning of Our Own Creation: Yes, as St. Paul says, The Body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. The image of marriage is not an extrapolation, but intimately tied to Israel’s image of God as covenant redeemer and lover. God’s work and word to us then, is the nuptial meaning of the body, for God. Yet, if God is Triune, and is truly Father, Son and Holy Spirit, then when we address this God as Father, we also address Him as fellow human being and neighbor through Christ Our Lord. To address God is to address Christ who is The Neighbor, and to address this Neighbor means to address all neighbors.

West has a lot to say on this in his article as well, he says:

Somehow the human body makes this eternal mystery of love visible. How? Specifically through the beauty of sexual difference and our call to union. God designed the union of the sexes as a “created version” of his own “eternal exchange of love.” And right from the beginning, the union of man and woman foreshadows our eternal destiny of union with Christ.

The union of the sexes then reflects the Divine Triunity and the eternal procession of love from one Person of the Trinity to the Other. The Pope and West will go on to say that this original unity is what was always intended to foreshadow the final fulfillment in Christ. They will both teach us that “The Bible uses spousal love more than any other image to help us understand God’s eternal plan for humanity.” The marriage supper of the lamb is the final unveiling of what it is that God intends and has intended from the beginning.

The crucial thing here is that Pope John Paul II is showing us how sexuality too undergoes a recapitulation that  establishes a call for us to live in the image in which we were made. To love in the Love we were created for. To be free for our neighbor, our spouse, our church and our society. To have proper nuptial union is the best and highest analogy for the Divine unity, and and there is no human action which more precisely corresponds to this.

So why is the Body a Theology?

1. It teaches us God’s original intentions for humanity and creation and speaks as much about God as it does humanity because of Jesus Christ. As a sign of God, the body is a proper study of God.

2. His plan of salvation has always included bodies and the resurrection of Our Lord only furthers the point. Also, a proper study of Church History shows that gnosticism has always been an ancient enemy of the faith and if God speaks a word about the body, there is from the beginning a theology of it.

3. The nuptial union, the intent of unity and marriage is written into our very maleness and femaleness. Now, marriages are not exclusively the vocations of the Christian, but the unity and community they embody are. Whether married or celibate, the call for all Christians is to more perfectly reflect the divine love which we were created in, and to return to the love which we were created for.

4. The body speaks in the image of God, as male and female and offers us as much about God as it does ourselves when studied properly.

5. The Body in the image of the Divine Triunity has a responsibility to be a work of God, and as such speak prophetically, just as nature testifies to God and thus has a theology, so too the body, most especially, because it is in the Divine Image.

Therefore, there can and must be a Theology of the Body.