Theology of the Body Lessons for Racial (and other kinds of human) Justice

When he closed the book-length series of Wednesday talks that he had started early on in his papal ministry, Pope John Paul made sure to say, “...the term 'theology of the body' goes far beyond the content of the reflections presented here [technically, “the Redemption of the Body and the Sacramentality of Marriage”]...” [TOB 133:1]. In fact, Pope John Paul's Theology of the Body offers a biblical foundation for a theological vision of the human person as the image of God. As such, it can be applied to every aspect of human life.

Since my entire adult life has been enriched by the insights of the Theology of the Body (TOB), I found it natural to go to this source-text for help in processing the racial crises in which we are immersed. It was not hard to find basic principles that I can use to critique media messages, slogans, even feelings and gut reactions to the flood of images and stories I am encountering as we continue to process and attempt to address a situation that can no longer continue as before.

In TOB, Pope John Paul makes much of the Bible's insistence on the creation of human beings “in the image of God, male and female” (Gen 1:27). Unique in material creation, in the human being, the body expresses a person. In one of the most beautiful sections, the Pope presents the revelation of Eve: woman, whose presence is a revelation that humankind, created in the image of God, is a partnership of equals. Adam finds that Eve is, like himself, a body-person: a person who is a body—but a body that is not precisely like his own. That first, fundamental human difference is sexual. As a species, we can only be represented by male and female (not either/or).

The otherness of the equal human companion reflects that first Other who is God, the one who created us to be enriched by our communion with himself, and created us a human family so that we could enrich one another by imaging God together and to each other. There is no subordination here. Neither expression of human nature, male or female, is better or more divine than the other. All other differences are simply variations on a theme. But the differences themselves are a communication. They speak of mutual enrichment; that each person will have something of value to give and to receive.

Of course, the first humans didn't have much time to enjoy that gift before someone introduced the poison of doubt. In the case of the original sin, it was a suspicion against God's fatherhood [TOB 26:4]. And once that was breached, humans began to steel their hearts further. Did you ever notice how, after the original sin, the man and the woman hurried to protect themselves from each other instead of from their real (and mutual) enemy? In our generalized experience, don't we all experience a kind of built-in suspicion against human brotherhood and communion? A fear of not having all that we need for our flourishing? A doubt that we can all flourish together? This is not natural; it was introduced by an enemy. It is a lingering poison in the human mind.

The person who is encountered in a body that is like, and yet also unlike, one's own, is to be loved for his or her own sake, never looked upon, thought of, spoken about, dominated or exploited as a means to an end [TOB 31:3]. How many times in history has this principle been violated! Isn't that why the current national crisis is exploding? Isn't this also behind a great deal of the historical injustice in our nation's immigration laws, which were first formulated in the early 20^th century with explicitly racial motivations?

The person is unique and unrepeatable, irreducible to any collective adjective or generalizations. He or she is “master of his/her own mystery” [TOB 110:9], with freedom and potential to surpass all expectations, limitations, and pessimistic prognostications that would doom him or her to a predetermined outcome based on demographic projections. Perhaps we suffer a kind of “social acedia,” an apathy of will and imagination that hesitates to propose greatness as a real goal, including the greatness of self-mastery (without which nothing worthwhile can be accomplished) [TOB 49]... Maybe the root of this social acedia is a personal acedia that is satisfied with the superficial, or with the entertainment I can enjoy right now on my phone.

This person before me is “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2:23): We are members of the same family, available to one another to build each other up on this side of eternity.

This person before me, equal to me but different from me (whether in sex or age or ethnic background or number of chromosomes...), is a concrete invitation from God for me to enter into a truly human and humanizing relationship; to really become, with him or her, a sign of the “communion of Persons” in Whose Image we were made and in whom we will, if we live our vocations fully, live forever [TOB 9:3].

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Because nothing is more real than a story, here's Father Josh Johnson, telling his: https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/entertainment_life/faith/article_f132ca58-a9f0-11ea-91b7-b7ca56544615.html.

• Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/frjoshjohnson or on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frjoshjohnson.
• Listen to his podcast, Ask Father Josh https://media.ascensionpress.com/category/ascension-podcasts/askfrjosh/ (here's a special episode “Healing the Racial Divide".
• And here you can listen to a homily he preached on Trinity Sunday:

Mary's Assumption and the Latest Scandal

The sickening revelations just keep on coming; 70 years worth of credible allegations, settlements and secrets. Some of the details are so revolting they cry to Heaven for vengeance. I can feel helpless, unless I go to the Lord in a spirit of reparation, to offset, in union with the Eucharistic Jesus and his infinitely precious sacrifice, some of that horrible debt of justice. I created a prayer guide for personal or group Eucharistic Adoration in Reparation which you can download and copy. (It is a bit long, so you might prefer to just download it to a device rather than print it all out!)

I can't help but relate the sins committed in and against the body to the feast we celebrate tomorrow: Mary's Assumption, body and soul, into Heaven. It is not only a dogma of faith that Mary was taken up into Heaven with her human (and now glorified) body: it is a dogma of faith that is surprisingly unknown to many Catholics, even Sunday Massgoers, that our own bodies are destined for the same kind of resurrection and glorification. When Paul had to scold the Corinthians about their lax sexual morals, he did so in the light of the resurrection of the body: "The body is not for immorality: it is for the Lord, and [amazingly] the Lord is for the body" (1 Cor 6:13).

In the words of Pope John Paul (July 9, 1997):

Mary’s Assumption reveals the nobility and dignity of the human body. In the face of the profanation and debasement to which modern society frequently subjects the female body, the mystery of the Assumption proclaims the supernatural destiny and dignity of every human body, called by the Lord to become an instrument of holiness and to share in His glory.

Mary entered into glory because she welcomed the Son of God in her virginal womb and in her heart. By looking at her, the Christian learns to discover the value of his own body and to guard it as a temple of God, in expectation of the resurrection. The Assumption, a privilege granted to the Mother of God, thus has immense value for the life and destiny of humanity.

Cinderella: See it for Lent SPOILER ALERT

Last minute details from Fairy Godmother: the curfew!

Tuesday night is discount night at the nearby cinema, so five of us piled into one of the convent vans and headed out to see Cinderella, the princess movie that even Father Robert Barron did not disdain to review (although he reads way more into the story than I ever would). Seriously, Barron's review of Cinderella seems to assume that the Branagh film follows the (Christian-worldview-inspired) Grimm tale to the letter. That would explain the huge significance he attributes to the stag (traditionally a Christ figure, but absent from the Grimm telling). I'm not so sure Branagh meant it that way. (There's no stag in the Grimm tale, but there are details I'm glad got overlooked: do you remember what the evil stepsisters really did to fit into the amazing shoe?) Branagh's Cinderella is a live-action Disney remake, complete with flitting bluebirds and a kitty-cat named Lucifer.

Most of us grew up with the fairy godmother kind of magic.he magic in Grimm's tale is the bestowal of nature, with which Cinderella has a kind of Garden-of-Eden relationship, while Branagh gives us very magical magic laced with whimsy. But Cinderella is a kind of morality tale, and Branagh does not shy from this. That is the whole reason this movie is so appealing: it's not the wry retelling or the prequel that redeems the stepmother and sisters, but an encouragement to virtue. "Have courage and be kind" become the repeated exhortation, the ground rules for a new society. In the most striking moment of the whole film, more impressive than the pumpkin-coach, more stunning than the dress, more surprising than the lizard-coachmen (and the snack one of them snatched), as Cinderella is leaving the house hand in hand with her Prince, she turns to her scheming stepmother, who is slowly collapsing along with all her plans. We all expect a stunning comeuppance, but what we hear is "I forgive you."

That is what makes Branagh's Cinderella the Girls Night Out movie for Lent. Cinderella's "happily ever after" doesn't hinge on her meeting and marrying Prince Charming (well, Prince Kit). Without that grace of forgiveness, there would have always been at least a bit of her heart still captive to the injustices she had suffered. Eventually, her resolve to "have courage and be kind" would have imploded. Instead, like a good habit forged throughout Lent, it gave her the ability to transcend the provocations and choose a higher good than delicious vengeance.

Another approach to the Cinderella story comes in book form. This is Jennessa Terraccino's The Princess Guide: Faith Lessons from Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. Jennessa is here in the Boston area (we carry her books in our Pauline bookstores) and she sent me a review copy--quite timely! I did not read the whole book (I leave that to our in house expert in all things Princess, Sister Julia), but I did give it a substantial going-over, and I read the Cinderella chapters clear through. Terraccino bases her book on the Disney versions of the three classic Princess stories in the title. Using details from the movies, she develops advice for young women on things like body image, modesty, fashion, preparing oneself for marriage, and potential minefields like recognizing manipulative behavior, living together before marriage, and "settling" for Mr. Not-Right. Throughout she uses language and insights from the Theology of the Body.

I thought that the book, while rich in sensible content, seems to be either preaching to the choir (and thus reinforcing a young woman's virtuous path through the world of dating) or addressing young adult women who may have already established convictions and habits that practically preclude the book's message from being taken seriously. I can't help but wish it had been directed, at least in layout, to a young readership: say, age 12 (or even 11), given all that children are exposed to in what passes as "romance" in the secular media. That would meet a need that grows more urgent by the day, unless more producers take a page from Branagh.

Book Review: The Thrill of the Chaste: Catholic Edition

The Thrill of the Chaste: I've always thought that was the best title imaginable for a book on the pure of heart. And now Dawn Eden's early book, written while she was on her way to becoming a Catholic, has been issued in an updated and revised "Catholic edition."  A Twitter conversation with Eden led to my receiving a review copy--which I read precisely as a most unchaste film was breaking box office records all across America.

I was expecting something a bit more targeted; a bit more on the "relationships" which would seem to be the only context for a book about chaste living. Instead, what I found in The Thrill of the Chaste is an integrated book of Catholic spirituality for young adults who are puzzled about how they can, in the words of the subtitle "find fulfillment" in their relational lives, not only with a prospective spouse, but in a deeper way: living a fulfilled life, rich in healthy relationships (starting with the self!). The Thrill of the Chaste uses the desire for a fulfilling spousal relationship as a home base for a thorough presentation of the human vocation to love. After all, the search for love is a driving force in every person's life, because we were created for God, who is love.

Sadly, the vocation to love is frequently compromised, and in many people's lives it is violated, leading a person to seek love in all the wrong places, or to sabotage their own desire for it. This was the case in Eden's life. Her book is a testimony to the mystery of the cross, in that the unjust and dehumanizing suffering that was inflicted on her has become, in her two books (the other is My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints) a means of light and guidance for thousands of others.

In some ways, Thrill is a catechism for young adult Catholics: a presentation of aspects of the faith that are particularly relevant (and particularly susceptible to misinterpretation) among the twenty and thirty-somethings who may for a time have fallen away from the practice of the faith to follow all the rules of the surrounding culture--only to be left disappointed, disillusioned, spent and alone. Eden does not just offer the readers guidance for getting their outward act together in a way that would be consistent with Catholic sexual morality: she puts it in a complete Catholic context with a presentation of the human vocation (in the words of St John Paul the Great's talks on love, better known as his Theology of the Body), the meaning and place of the Mass and Confession, the path of spiritual growth (ordered toward Heaven!) and the irreplaceability of a warm, personal relationship with Jesus. She does all this while also addressing issues like workplace flirtation and fashionably modest attire.

A thoroughly personalized book--Eden is drawing on her own struggles and misconceptions--The Thrill of the Chaste does not preach from on high, but offers a voice of friendship and accompaniment to those on a contemporary "Road to Emmaus."

Synod on the Family and the Pope of the Family: Be Informed!

With the Extraordinary Synod on the Family scheduled for this fall, people are already talking about the way bishops from around the world might deal with the serious problems so many families are facing. That makes the next few months an opportunity for Catholics to familiarize themselves with the very positive vision our Church has about married love.

Now's the time to get acquainted with the insights of the man Pope Francis called "the Pope of the Family," Saint John Paul II.

This is the unique pastor who spent decades as the spiritual companion and guide of numerous couples from their courtship through to the grandparenting years (not one of these couples suffered a divorce). He collated their experience with his own understanding of the Bible and the spiritual life,  releasing a groundbreaking book on the philosophy of erotic love, as well as a biblical reading of "human love in the divine plan" (also known as Theology of the Body). (When you're ready, there's a low-cost 6-part online video course overview of the Theology of the Body.)

If you can attend the Theology of the Body Congress in July, the roster of speakers and topics is outstanding (too bad I can't fly in from England for those few days!). And there is also an active Theology of the Body Community on Google+ where you can raise issues and share insights based on Saint John Paul's TOB writings as well as his principle documents on the family: The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World, the Letter to Women and the document On the Dignity and Vocation of Women. While reading up on John Paul II, don't miss Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical, God Is Love, which is almost his version of Theology of the Body!

TOB Tuesday: a New Book!

Emily Stimpson "walked into a Catholic bookstore" one day in 2001. Of all the books on offer, including titles that directly spoke to the eating disorder that was controlling her life, it was John Paul II's "Theology of the Body" that ended up changing her life.

"It had the word “body” in it, and I wanted a theology of the body. I wanted to know what this Church of mine had to say about the flesh I despised."

She read the book clear through, discovering an unexpected vision of what it means to "be" (not just "have") a body--and also a new appreciation of creation itself, all of it (even food; maybe especially food).

I wish I had known about this new Theology of the Body book earlier! It is still new, but it is the kind of thing I'd want to shout from the rooftops. Because the Theology of the Body, while it has the most obvious (and perhaps universal) applications in the realm of sexuality, is not about sex, but about the mystery of the human person as the image of God. And sometimes the Theology of the Body has to start with "the" body; the body God created to express your own unique and unrepeatable essence.

TOB Tuesday and "The Light of Faith"

Mom with granddaughter #3, earlier this year.
I like the way that this photo lets you see the
"ray of light" from this relationship of love.

While I am on retreat, I have prepared a daily tidbit for you from Pope Francis' first encyclical, Lumen fidei ("Light of Faith"). Today's passage could have been taken right from Pope John Paul's Theology of the Body:

"The fact that our human loves contain that ray of light also helps us to see how all love is meant to share in the complete self-gift of the Son of God for our sake. In this circular movement, the light of faith illumines all our human relationships, which can then be lived in union with the gentle love of Christ" (N. 32).

Earlier, Pope Francis had written about faith as a communion with Christ that allows us to see with his vision. Here, that seeing with his vision leads to loving with his love. 

TOB Tuesday: The opposite of love

One observation Pope John Paul made while still known to the world (if he was known at all) as Karol Wojtyla was that the opposite of "loving" a person wasn't "hating" but using. When a person is reduced to a means decided by someone else, that person is being treated as a thing, not a person or partner at all. In Love and Responsibility, and later in his Theology of the Body, Wojtyla says that even when both parties in a relationship agree to what amounts to mutual exploitation, love--if it is there at all--is seriously compromised.

Is this for real?

Dr. Carlos Taja from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops:

 

TOB Tuesday: My Body is Me, and it matters

For TOB Tuesday, another video from a student at the John Paul II Institute for Studies of Marriage and the Family. This one has the provocative title "Who I do in My Body Matters."

TOB Tuesday: Body Image

Sara Hulse is a graduate student in the John Paul II Institute for Studies of Marriage and the Family (in other words, a Vatican-established graduate school devoted entirely to the Theology of the Body). When our sisters went to Washington DC for the launch of the new translation of Love and Responsibility, they interviewed some of the students. (Look for more of these insights on future TOB Tuesdays!)

 

TOB Tuesday: Is TOB just a proof-text?

An earlier post for TOB Tuesday inspired a comment:
Will you discuss the question that TOB is based on proof texting? I'm bothered about that possibility.

Here's what I answered in an off-the-cuff way:
     Re: proof texting, I assume you mean TOB is an attempt to establish a scriptural foundation for the 1968 document "Humanae Vitae."
     It is clear that Pope John Paul intended to give the Church just such a gift. But did he do so after the fact, relying simply on the appeal to proof-texts as his only basis?
     If you read "Love and Responsibility" first (published in 1960) you see that Karol Wojtyla had been doing studies in the area of marriage and sexuality for many, many years. That is why he was part of Paul VI's commission on the birth control question: he was an acknowledged authority on human sexuality before there even was such an area of study. Both the documents of Vatican II and "Humanae Vitae" itself reflect some of Wojtyla's characteristic phrases with regard to marriage.
     TOB was actually written before he became Pope; it is the "biblical" companion volume to his more philosophical Love and Responsibility. (Since he could not publish the work in book form on being elected, he adapted the content to deliver it in person, by word of mouth).
     He did not make this stuff up in the quiet of his office; couples who had been college students during his time as a campus minister were sharing their stories and experiences with him--for decades. The real authors of Theology of the Body are those Polish couples who bared their souls to their pastor and friend. TOB is the distillation of those families' lives, put in conjunction with the Scriptures through the heart of Karol Wojtyla.
     Simply reading the Theology of the Body would be enough, I think, to override the accusation of proof-texting. The content and correlations are simply too deep. Proof-texting is necessarily superficial and disconnected; there is no inner logic or harmony among proof-texts as there is in a genuine sapiential reading of Scripture (which is what Marquette scripture professor William Kurz, SJ, calls TOB).
     I hope you will join us for the program! Even if you missed the first classes Saturday, you can catch up by using the archived files.

Later, I put a link to the post and comments on Google+ and got this input:
...a comment that Alice von Hildebrand made about TOB once struck me very strongly -- that TOB is about much more than birth control, much more than sex or marriage.  The parts of TOB relating to the glorious body, for example, go far beyond these narrow issues.  Could reducing most TOB conversations to birth control/sex feed the argument that it's an after-the-fact excuse for Humanae Vitae?  Maybe.

Good point! The sections of Theology of the Body that don't deal in an explicit way with marriage are often completely ignored, giving the impression that TOB is only about the hot-button issues. I am afraid I have been guilty of continuing that impression, assuming that these are the only areas in which most people have reservations about Church teaching that TOB addresses. There's not a whole lot of controversy right now with the resurrected life. Maybe there ought to be: Sister Helena tells me that in her work with young adults, there is very little recognition that that line in the Creed ("I believe ... in the resurrection of the dead") is about our future, body and soul.

What do you have to add to the conversation?

Can you take my place a minute?

Mom's healthcare crisis is preventing me from promoting the Theology of the Body class we will be hosting online starting May 4. I'd be so grateful if you could invite people you know to join us. Here is a flyer you can print out (or share the link to). It is especially good to share with deacons and "ministry people" in general.

With so much confusion in the area of marriage--people who are not just puzzled by Church teachings, but alienated from the Church or scandalized by what seems to be a rigid insistence on old rules, it is vital that practicing Catholics have a clear understanding of where the Church's teachings come from--and of how much beauty they uphold. That is why Pope John Paul spent almost five years offering these lessons.

If you haven't read any of his "TOB" talks, or have only heard references to Theology of the Body, why not join us? (Registration is now open for all 6 sessions.) You can go at your own pace: once a session has been recorded, you can log in later to watch it. Why not sign up for the first one (being recorded May 4) and get a taste?


If you can, I'd be very grateful if you shared the following on Twitter and Facebook:

Register now! Catholic Updating Series on the Bible and the mystery of marriage. Internet webcast starts May 4 www.ustream.tv/channel/TOB-TV Pls RT

TOB Tuesday: The question of marriage

Today the US Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments in the first of two "same-sex marriage" cases. Not only is this, as Justice  Kennedy remarked, "uncharted waters," it is an area in which many people are pulled in two different directions: one by the head, and one by the heart. The nature of marriage seems an irrelevant and abstract question.

My Catholic education gave me a sense of direction, but when I was in school (back in ancient history), issues related to marriage and sexuality seemed pretty straightforward. Speaking for myself, I have to say that I did not get a very strong background in where the Church's teachings were coming from; I could only tell you (in a very rudimentary way) what those teachings were.

Then Pope John Paul II was elected.

He dedicated almost five years of his papacy to correcting that lack, giving Catholics the "big picture." He started "in the beginning" with Adam and Eve. He spoke almost every Wednesday morning about "original nakedness"; "being naked without shame" and other things that Popes had never thought to express in public. He spoke of the true meaning of eroticism (as an energy meant to draw us to beauty--and to God); why there is no marriage in heaven; what is the real problem with birth control; what Jesus meant in calling some to celibacy for the Kingdom. He remarked that being "created in the image of God, male and female" tells us something about the Trinity. He delved into five books of the Bible in particular: Genesis, Song of Songs, Tobit, Matthew, Ephesians, making this a rich, biblical understanding of human relationships.

Pope John Paul called this a "theology of the body."

If you have ever had to explain the Church's stance on same-sex unions, the contraception mandate, divorce and other painful realities; if you have been mystified or even scandalized by those teachings, and hesitated to share them with your children or defend them in public, Pope John Paul's Theology of the Body will surprise you with the real beauty, the divine beauty, that is the foundation of every one of those controversial teachings that the media so often refer to as "rules."

I am coordinating an online overview of that Theology of the Body on May 4, 11 and 18. I invite you to visit the bookstore website (www.visit.pauline.org/chicago) to learn more about the program, and to register for it. Even if you cannot join us in real time on those three Saturdays, your registration gives you access to the online video at your convenience. Because the program will be archived as Internet video, this is ideal for groups to use, no matter when they meet: a projector and speakers will allow a roomful of people to share one registration. (The content will keep you talking for days.)

Please ask your local parish to put information in the bulletin as well (at the bottom of this post I have a sample bulletin announcement). On the bookstore site, you will also find a trailer to share on social media. We have a Facebook page and a Google+ community (Theology of the Body), which I invite you to like or join.

Trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtaDjkZMstA
Website: www.visit.pauline.org/chicago
Register: www.ustream.tv/channel/TOB-TV

BULLETIN NOTICE REQUEST

Please post the following announcement in your email, newsletters, web site and social media, beginning in April (continuing through May 18).
Thank you!

DAUGHTERS OF ST. PAUL

Online Catholic Updating Series on the Theology of the Body, Pope John Paul's meditations on the Bible and the mystery of marriage.
Internet webcast May 4, 11, 18; archived video accessible with registration (www.ustream.tv/channel/TOB-TV)
Information: www.visit.pauline.org/chicago or call 312.854.9656

TOB Tuesday: The Redemption of Desire

I haven't done a TOB Tuesday post for a while, but I'm glad to have the occasion: A couple of weeks ago received a review copy of Christopher West's latest book, "Fill These Hearts: God, Sex, and the Universal Longing." Much of the material is familiar--West incorporated it into the Theology of the Body "Head and Heart Immersion" program I participated in last October. Here's my take on the book version:

A healthy antidote to the twin maladies in Western culture (the full-throttle pursuit of pleasure on the one hand; the puritanical/jansenistic suspicion of it on the other), "Fill These Hearts" takes desire seriously as a vitally important aspect of the spiritual life. Ignore or repress it, and life, prayer, morality and religion itself are reduced to dry and unappetizing duty. Gorge yourself with short-term satisfactions and you become a hamster on a wheel, turning every relationship, opportunity or experience into a means to the same end, the never-ending pursuit of a "more" that will always fail to satisfy the soul. There is a third way, West promises: desire rightly ordered keeps fire in the soul, even as it keeps the soul turned toward the ultimate good of communion with God.

This is a book about that rightly ordered desire. How do we recognize our deep desires? How do we respond to them in an enlightened and even passionate way without being driven blindly by them into destructive choices? How do we live "temperately, justly and devoutly" (Tit. 2:12) in this present age, when even a walk down a city street means encountering soft porn on billboards and bus shelters? Is it possible to live sexual purity passionately? (Yes! West says: "A properly disciplined eros is even more wild than its 'frat house counterfeit'.") What does all this mean in the relationship of man and woman?

West illustrates this highly readable book not simply with references to Scripture or to the writings of Popes and saints, but with abundant pop culture references to the insatiable (if often misinterpreted) hunger for God, the ultimate goal of desire. Thankfully, West also disproves the common contemporary suspicion (nurtured, no doubt, by the reduction of "devotion"--a word of passion--to "duty") that Heaven might be boring!

Feb 14 is now Theology of the Body Blog Post Day!

By my own decree, here at Nunblog St Valentine's Day shall henceforth be known as...


Theology of the Body Blog Post Day!

And to kick it off, here is a St Valentine's Day greeting from Cardinal George (released last year)!

Create your own St Valentine's Day Theology of the Body blog post and link it here--or share a great TOB story or article (you'll find some starters at the Theology of the Body Institute website).

TOB Tuesday: Coming Soon

 Next week, Christopher West will be doing a live webcast based on his new book, "Fill These Hearts" (the book trailer I posted yesterday):
6 p.m. ET on Thurs., Feb. 7. 

Sign up here: http://www.livestream.com/imagebooks

TOB Tuesday and the most despised verse in the whole Bible

It's in today's first reading. You know the one. "Wives, be submissive to your husbands."

If that's all you know from the letter to the Ephesians, you will be likely to (a) skip right over the entire paragraph, (b) dismiss the letter to the Ephesians as an ancient text that is impossible to take seriously in the modern world, or even (c) shrug off the entire Bible.

Pope John Paul did his best to see that you don't fall into that temptation. He spent months' worth of his Wednesday "Theology of the Body" talks going over that famous Chapter 5, word by word.

Why? Just so we would be more respectful of the Bible, even if we found its message hard to stomach? No! Because if we would only read it, really read it, we would discover that in some ways, that part of the late Pauline letters is the crown jewel of the entire gift of Divine Revelation. Paul tells us in the very beginning of the letter that this is what is going on: "God made known to us the mystery of his will...to bring all things into one in Christ--things in heaven and things on earth." By the time you get to Chapter 5, you are prepared for the specifics. And so Paul descends from the heavenly heights and goes right to the heart of the home, and even into the most intimate recesses of the home, and begins to talk to husbands and wives about their relationship.


He didn't start there; Chapter 4 leads in (as we heard yesterday at Mass) by reminding us of the love Christ had for us: he loved us and sacrificed himself for us, the Church. So when Paul gets to the nitty-gritty stuff of family life, he has already set the stage. The model relationship is no less than the love of Christ for his Church, and the Church's response to that love.

Paul isn't telling women just to be "submissive" to any and every sort of behavior or abuse: He starts out by telling all the Christians to "be submissive to each other out of reverence for Christ." "Mutual submission" is to be a characteristic of any Christian community. And if you keep reading, you see that he says wives ought to "be submissive ... as the Church submits to Christ." The Church does not submit to abuse from Christ! The Church accepts the sacrificial love of Christ, and tries to respond to that love.  So Paul tells husbands that their love should be "as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed himself." The "masculine" expression of submission is not "Yes, Dear," but "This is my body, given up for you; take and eat." In the same way, the wife's love should be welcoming and receptive of that sacrifice "as the Church submits to Christ." This is Holy Communion in the heart of the home! Just as Christ and the Church are one Body, husband and wife are one flesh. And then Paul marvels, "This is a great mystery [Latin: sacramentum], and I mean this in regard to Christ and the Church."

In other words, marriage is not about the couple as much as it is a reflection of the real marriage, the real "two become one" of Christ and his people--all of us. God has fulfilled the "mystery of his will, to bring all things into one in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth." Marriage is really a heavenly reality, expressed in human terms and participated in through such human means that we think it is really utterly earthly. And so we can miss the divine invitation that the human sacrament offers.

In this week's Mass prayers, the Prayer after Communion reflects this perfectly:

May your Sacraments, O Lord, we pray,perfect in us what lies within them,that what we now celebrate in signswe may one day possess in truth.

Home again, Home again!

I have a long wait in the Philadelphia airport for my long trip back to Chicago (via St. Louis????). But here at Gate E13 there is a magnificent view of downtown in a kind of frame of bright clouds; I have the ease of a Southwest Airlines "stand-up" computer table to use, plus my communications technology (and a Kindle), so I have a chance to begin to catch up on a few things after almost a week away.

Already the "processing" of the TOB experience has begun, thanks in part to a project I was engaged in between the sessions. I had brought a voice recorder to get some interviews from my fellow participants, in case I had another opportunity to host a radio show. Guess what? There in my mail box was a message asking me to ... host a radio show on October 24. I had a few technical issues with the recorder (not the least was failing batteries--and all the spares I had brought seemed to be just as weak as the old one), but I did get a few "TOB voices" on issues around Theology of the Body and the rhetoric of the "war on women." One of the most distinctive voices came from a young woman who runs an orphanage in Sierra Leone. When I get back to my office, I will be busily putting those interviews together in a usable form--I hope!

Among the insights I got from the presentations by Christopher West was the not-exactly-news that people are all, always, looking for love. Peter Kreeft speaks of this in terms of the "God-shaped hole" in the human heart. It's a search that testifies to our ultimate destination, but we keep expecting proxies to meet that need. Some people, West said, become "addicts" whose lives are consumed by the search for the next "hit" whether it is in the form of serial relationships or some less-than-human filler. Theirs is the path of idolatry: putting a human being or an earthly good (like pleasure or achievement) in God's place. But not even in the best of all marriages can the spouses really complete one another to that degree!

Others try the "stoic" route and simply try to repress the desires of the heart, the way the "iconoclasts" of old went around trying to destroy the icons of Jesus and the saints that were supposed to be windows into eternity. For the stoics, there's no place to go anyway.  Until this afternoon, I had kind of pegged myself as the "stoic" type. After all, my hero in 4th grade was Mr. Spock from Star Trek, the half-man, half-Vulcan who didn't have any pesky feelings complicating his life! Nope. I just have a kind of subtle "addiction" that I pursue with all the doggedness of our more aggressive panhandlers back in Chicago.

Only the "mystics" get it right. They aren't afraid of intense desires, knowing that these are a message system from God telling us that life on earth is lived in the tension of the "already" and the "not yet" of communion with God: already lived now in the sacramental language of the body, in view of the full experience of what it means to be the image of God (which is too big a reality for any place but heaven).

TOB Tuesday: African Voices

By the bounty of Twitter, I was led to this post featuring an open letter to Melinda Gates by a Nigerian woman in the biomedical field. You may have heard that Gates plans to pump $4.6 billion in birth control into Africa to "liberate" the women of that continent. "I see this $4.6 billion [in birth control] buying us misery. I see it buying us unfaithful husbands. I see it buying us streets devoid of the innocent chatter of children. I see it buying us disease and untimely death."

Now working in England, Obianuju Ekeocha (age 32) points out that the African women she knows and among whom she grew up, do not look on childbearing in the same way that the billionaire American does. "Unlike what we see in the developed Western world, there is actually very high compliance with Pope Paul VI's 'Humanae Vitae.' " There is a natural, societal appreciation for the language of the body (that the cosmopolitan North had to learn from Pope John Paul II).

There is a healthy acknowledgment, too, that their villages do not have the medical infrastructure that widespread access to contraceptive chemicals and devices presume: "...Where Europe and America have their well-oiled health care system, a woman in Africa with a contraception-induced blood clot does not have access to 911 or an ambulance or a paramedic. No, she dies."

Then there's the environmental impact: "....as $4.6 billion worth of drugs, IUDs and condoms get used, they will need safe disposal. Can someone please show us how and where will that be? On our farm lands where we get all our food? In our streams and rivers from whence comes our drinking water?"

Ekeocha doesn't just tell Gates (and the rest of the wealthy western world) where she has failed to think things through; she suggests ways that the allocated billions could respond to the needs of African women and children, beginning with prenatal and pediatric care, and continuing through food and education programs and support for women-run microbusiness and for already functioning organizations that deal with issues of domestic violence, sex trafficking and forced marriage.

Ekeocha's letter (and a follow-up email to the blogger who posted it) shed real light on the issues behind one very confused Catholic woman's efforts to use her incredible wealth on behalf of others.

TOB Tuesday: Pornography and Purity of Heart

While I was visiting my family in south Louisiana, I managed to make it to the chapel of Our Lady of Wisdom in Lafayette for my friend Fr. Sibley's mass and TOB homily. He gave a broad TOB introduction before focusing on the sin of "unchastity" mentioned in the Gospel. (If the people of Lafayette realized what a fantastic preacher Fr. Sibley is, he'd have to celebrate Mass in the Cajun Dome to accomodate the crowds!)

Listen to Fr Sibley's homily on porn addiction for yourself, and then share the link far and wide so that it reaches people in most need.