Pope John Paul II and the

“Theology of the Body”

• Theology is the study of God

• Theology of the Body is a study of God and the purpose of our existence as discovered and revealed through our bodies.

1. Our bodies reveal something about God.

2. We can look at our bodies and sexual desires and discover the purpose of our existence and the meaning of life.

• Sacrament: makes a spiritual reality visible to us.

  • Ex: The 7 Sacraments make a spiritual reality (grace) visible to us.

  • Ex: Baptism

• The body is also a sacrament.

JOHN PAUL 11 SAYS:

“The body, in fact, and it alone is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery of God, and thus be a sign of it.”

• The inherent ability of the body to act as a visible sign of God’s invisible love.

• The body is a “sign”

• Sign: points to a reality beyond itself and makes a reality present to us.

  • Ex: Road sign

• The body is a sign of something beyond itself.

  • What might that be?

• Being made male and female (human sexuality) points to our call to love one another.

• Sexual union between man and woman is meant to point to our union with God in heaven.

  • Union with God ≠ sexual in nature.

  • Sexual union is a “sign”.

• We’re made in the image and likeness of LOVE itself

  • Bodies reflect our being created for love.

• God is one and at the same time three.

  • Trinity - is an eternal exchange of love.

  • We are called to share in this external exchange.

• In order for love to be present, you need something to love.

• Love must have:

  • A lover

  • A beloved

  • The love between them.

• Love = Communion

  • Communion of Persons: When two or more persons give themselves to one another in love.

Wherever there is love, there is a trinity: a lover, a beloved, and a foundation of love.

Saint Augustine

• Humans were created to participate in the Trinitarian life.

  • To live as a communion of persons.

  • Being made male and female makes it possible for us to image God as a communion of persons.

  • We reflect the external exchange of the Trinity in and through our sexuality.

• The love between them is so strong, it creates another person.

Conjugal love involves a totality, in which all the elements of the person enter–appeal of the body and instinct, power of feeling and affectivity, aspiration of the spirit and of will. It aims at a deeply personal unity, the unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul.

John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, 13

• The love between man and woman is a sign that points to something beyond itself.

  • The union between God and man.

• Sexual love foreshadows heaven.

• The desire for sexual union is an expression of a deep spiritual desire for union with God

• We don’t experience our bodies this way.

• Many are burdened by their bodies.

• Many feel ruled by the “urges” or passions of their body.

• Because of this many feel burdened by rules imposed by the Church about sexuality

• This disconnect of spirituality and sexuality is a result of original sin

• We now experience concupiscence - a tendency toward sin as a result of original sin

• More sin, broken families, sexual abuse, addictions, infidelity...

• “Satan seeks to counteract God’s plan in plagiarizing the sacraments”

Tertullian

• Satan wants to ruin God’s plan of our union with God

• Attacking our view of the body, sexual union and marriage is the most effective way to draw us away from that original plan.

• Lust – disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure

• Primarily selfish in nature

• “In the beginning it was not so” – Mt 19:8

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LOVE AND LUST?

• Lust is a disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure, sought for itself.

• Lust is the counterfeit of love.

DEEP AND DIFFICULT QUESTIONS

• Is there a purpose to life? What is the purpose and meaning of the body?

• What exactly is love?

• Is it possible to be pure of heart?

• Love is the vocation of every person.

• Family is the school of love. Future of humanity passes by way of family.

• The opposite of “to love” is “to use” (not hate)

• No one should use another person as a means to an end (Ex: For utility or pleasure).

• Body speaks a language: the gift of self.

• We are all looking for love. Sometimes we look for the right thing in the wrong places.

• Aquinas ‘Love is willing the good of another person.’

• Pope John Paul II: ‘Love is not merely a feeling, but an act of the will, preferring the good of another to the good of oneself. Love is not easy.’

“Because true happiness, dear friends, does not consist in the pleasures of the world or in earthly things, but in peace of conscience, which we have only if we are pure in heart and mind.”

Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati

Your sexuality is meant to become love, a vehicle of love, conformed unto love.

Bishop Robert Barron

1. Human Sexuality

• Humanity is in an Education crisis, especially in the field of affectivity and sexuality.

• Is rooted in the development and the implementation of a curricula that:

• Allegedly convey a neutral conception of the person and of life.

• Reflects an anthropology opposed to faith and to the right reason.

In light of this educational crisis the Church brings us back to the following teachings:

• Sexuality plays an integral part in the development of our personality and in the process of its education. MFCT, 4

• That as each person grows, “such diversity, linked to the complementarity of the two sexes allows a thorough response to the design of God according to the vocation to which each one is called. MFCT, 4

Hence, Affected sex education must consider the totality of the person and insist therefore on the integration of the biological, psycho-affective social and spiritual elements. MFCT, 4

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

John 3:16

• The Catholic Church‘s teaching on Human Sexuality is anchored on the truth that - God is love and (he is love) in himself he lives a mystery of personal loving communion.

• As a person, I long for the mystery of communion with my fellow human beings and the mystery of love.

• Sexuality is relevant as we respond to our vocation of love and communion.

• The self is completed by the one who is other than the self, according to the specific identity of each person which is derived from and sustained by the Creator. MFCT

• Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his/her body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others. CCC, 2332.

1. Nuptial Meaning of the Body

• “The vocation of the human person is realized in marriage and virginity or celibacy.” FC

• “God‘s plan for marriage involves total self-giving of man and woman to each other.”

• Sexuality, by means of which man and woman give themselves to one another through the acts which are proper and exclusive to spouses, is not something simply biological, but concerns the innermost being of the human person as such.

• It is realized in a truly human way only if it is an integral part of the love by which a man and woman commit themselves totally to one another until death.

• As the Catechism of the Catholic Church succinctly puts it “man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his/her sexual identity.

• Physical, moral, and spiritual differences and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life.

• “It is an illusion to think we can build a true culture of human life if we do not . . . accept and experience sexuality and love and the whole of life according to their true meaning and their close interconnection.”

• “Our creation as male and female and our longing for communion is ‘the fundamental fact’ of human existence.

• As each person grows, “such diversity, linked to the complementarity of the two sexes, allows a thorough response to the design of God according to the vocation to which each one is called. MFCT, 4

• The acts in marriage by which the intimate and chaste union of the spouses takes place are noble and honorable; the truly human performance of these acts fosters the self-giving they signify and enriches the spouses in joy and gratitude.

• Our physical bodies were made precisely to show us this and be the means by which we accomplish it.

• The human body includes right from the beginning...the capacity of expressing love, that love in which the person becomes a gift – and by means of this gift – fulfills the meaning of his being and existence.

• Understanding the fundamental meanings contained in the mystery of creation, such as the nuptial meaning of the body...is important. It is indispensable in order to know who man is and who he should be, and therefore how he should mold his own activity.

• The body, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden since time immemorial in God [God‘s love for man], and thus to be a sign of it.

• That original nakedness, mutual and at the same time not weighed down by shame, expresses this interior freedom of man.... At the root of their nakedness is the interior freedom of the gift - the disinterested gift of oneself.

• The freedom of the gift is the response to the deep awareness of the gift... Through this truth and freedom that love is built up, which we must affirm is authentic love.

• The marriage act... ‘at the same time unites husband and wife in the closest intimacy’ and together makes them capable of generating new life. ‘Both the one and the other happen through the fundamental structure.’

• Christ manifests the love with which he has loved her [the Church] by giving himself for her. That love is an image and above all a model of the love which the husband should show to his wife in marriage, when the two are subject to each other out of reverence for Christ.

1. The Person and Love (Love and Responsibility)

• The person is good towards which the only proper and adequate attitude is love. The value of the person is always greater than the value of pleasure.

1. Love as an Attraction

• Feelings arise spontaneously the attraction which one person feels towards another often begins suddenly and unexpectedly but this reaction is in effect blind.

1. Love as a Desire

• Desire too belongs to the very essence of the love which springs up between man and woman. This results from the fact that the human person is a limited being, not self sufficient and therefore putting it in the most objective way needs other beings. The subject in love is conscious of [desire‘s] presence, knows that it is there at his or her disposal so to speak, but working to perfect this love, will see to it that desire does not dominate, does not overwhelm all else that love comprises.

1. Love as a Goodwill

• Love is the fullest realization of the possibilities inherent in man. A genuine love is one in which the true essence of love is realized, a love which is directed to a genuine (not merely an apparent) good.

1. The Problem of Reciprocity

• Love is not just something in the man and something in the woman for in that case there would properly speaking be two loves but is something common to them.

• Love is by its very nature not unilateral but bilateral, something between two persons, something shared.

1. From Sympathy to Friendship

• Sympathy is a manifestation of experience rather than of activity: people succumb to it in ways which they sometimes find incomprehensible themselves, and the will is captured by the pull of emotions and sensations which bring two people closer together regardless of whether one of them has consciously chosen the other.

• Friendship brings out the element of benevolentia or goodwill (I want what is good for you), and also the characteristic doubling of the subject, the doubling of the “I”: my “I” and your “I” form a moral unity, for the will is equally well inclined to both of them.

1. Betrothed Love

• Love is not just an aspiration, but rather a coming together, a unification of persons. Betrothed love’s decisive character is the giving of one‘s own person (to another).

• The essence of betrothed love is self-giving, the surrender of one‘s “I”. When betrothed love enters into this interpersonal relationship something more than friendship results: two people give themselves to each other.

1. Education in Chastity

• Chastity as a virtue

• Chastity is the virtue that calls us to use our sexuality in a reasonable, responsible, and faithful manner.

• Chastity in all status of life

• Every person, whether married or single, is called to live a chaste life. Like any virtue, chastity must be developed and practiced because our sexual attractions and feelings are so strong and intense, often overpowering. Chastity is defined as the purity of the mind and the heart.

• Chastity is a deep respect and admiration for the person and for the gifts of sexuality and sex.

• As St. John Paull II puts it, chastity is the readiness to affirm and love the person in every situation. You know what you are saying NO to by living chastely, but what are you saying YES to?

• Some think saving sex until marriage will either lead to repression or indulgence.

• Abstinence is the lack of sexual activity. In itself it is not a virtue, but simply abstaining from action.

• Chastity: a definition

• A positive virtue, to be thought only in association with love.

• Is about living an integrated and well balanced life.

• All Christians are called to chastity, whether married, single, or celibate.

• We are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27)

• God became man, in order that man might become God.

• God would rather die than live without us. He sent his own son to redeem the world.

• We believe in the resurrection of the body.

• The body and desire are good in and of themselves. The body is able to make visible what is invisible.

• Glorify god with our body

(1 Cor 6:13, Rm 12:1)

• Our body is the temple of the holy spirit

(1 cor 6:18-20)

• Free - through personal consent

• Faithful - a promise of exclusively

• Total - holding nothing back

• Fruitful - open to the gift of new life

• There is a difference between dressing attractively and dressing to attract.

• When women wear suggestive clothing, men will finish the picture with their imagination.

• Modesty is closely related to mystery and helps to guard purity.

• Many believe that modesty in dress is far more attractive, dignified and classy.

• Pope John Paul said “God has assigned as a duty to every man the dignity of every woman.”

• “Husbands love your brides as Christ loved the church.”

Ephesians 6

• A man who looks at a woman lustfully commits adultery with her in his heart.

• Purity is about wanting heaven for the women we love. Women are a gift to be received not a goal to be conquered. Every woman is somebody’s daughter. Imagine your future bride.

• You’ve had to tell him more than once to stop.

• You feel the need to fix him.

• He enjoys pornography and wants you to do the same.

• He hits you, pushes you, or does anything to frighten you.

• He has a drinking or drug problem.

• He doesn’t care if you lie to your family.

• He puts you down with words, cheats, lies and flirts with other girls.

• He uses guilt to get you to do what he wants.

• He always resents time you spend with your friends and family.

• He behaves badly and then blames it on other people or on things that happen to him.

• He can’t stand on his own two feet without you.

• You can’t stand on your own two feet and remain pure with him.

• Trains the mind to want women to be constantly sexually available and physically flawless.

• Is a fantasy based on lies, manipulation and profit. It destroys marriages, degrades women, emasculates men and distorts the emotional and spiritual dimensions of sex.

• Chastity is a sure way to happiness as it sets you free to love rather than use. It is a stable foundation for a happy marriage. It brings integration, gratitude and joy, preparing us in faithfulness that brings us closer to God.

• A source of self respect, clear conscience, less pressure, the wisdom of how to respect others, improved sex in marriage, help in finding the right mate, the development of virtues.

• Doesn’t matter where you have been, or what you have done, it’s always possible to start again.

• Don’t be afraid to be the saints of the new millennium! Christ is calling you. The church needs you; the pope believes in you and he expects great things of you.