Living the Theology of Our Bodies, Part I
In my lectures across the nation on John Paul II’s “theology of the body” (TOB), people are often struck by the beauty of this vision for human life and, at the same time, by their own inability to carry it out. Hence, one of the most frequently asked questions I hear is How do I live this?
This is the dilemma of anyone who encounters the teaching of Christ: we don’t have what it takes on our own to fulfill it. As John Paul II says, “Love and life according to the Gospel [are] beyond man’s abilities. They are possible only as a result of a gift of God who heals, restores, and transforms the human heart by his grace.” Living the Gospel, then, is “a possibility opened to man exclusively by grace, by the gift of God, by his love” (Veritatis Splendor 23, 24).
In his TOB, John Paul gives us a 3-fold “program” for opening ourselves to this divine love, this grace: prayer, Eucharist, and Penance. These, he says, are the “infallible and indispensable” means for living the truth of love that God has inscribed in the theology of our bodies (see TOB 126:5).
At first, this might just sound like “standard Catholic stuff” that you’ve heard before. Sure enough, it is. But John Paul II’s “spousal theology” gives us a fresh, mystical perspective that you probably didn’t hear growing up in Catholic school. In this column, the first of a three-part series, we’ll take a brief look at the “spousal” nature of prayer. In subsequent columns we’ll look at the Eucharist and Penance.
As the Catechism teaches, “The entire Christian life bears the mark of the spousal love of Christ and the Church” (CCC 1617). Christians are called to live from within this “great mystery” of Christ’s spousal love (see Eph 5:31-31). This “vital and personal relationship with the living and true God...is prayer” (CCC 2558).
Prayer must never be reduced to a rote recitation of formulas. It’s an invitation to deep intimacy with God. Prayer is where we “let our masks fall and turn our hearts back to the Lord who loves us, so as to hand ourselves over to him as an offering to be purified and transformed” (CCC 2711). We must allow ourselves to “get naked” before God. Masks and fig leaves are the same thing – a way of hiding from God: “I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid myself” (Gen 3:10). Prayer is where we allow Christ’s perfect love to cast out that fear (see 1 Jn 4:18). Standing naked before the heavenly Bridegroom in prayer, Christ washes his bride (see Eph 5:27) so as to prepare her for “nuptial union.”
John Paul elaborates on this spousal vision of prayer in his document on the new millennium: “The great mystical tradition of the Church... shows how prayer can progress, as a genuine dialogue of love, to the point of rendering the person wholly possessed by the divine Beloved, vibrating at the Spirit’s touch, resting filially within the Father’s heart.” He continues: “This is... a journey totally sustained by grace, which nonetheless demands an intense spiritual commitment and is no stranger to painful purifications (the ‘dark night’). But it leads, in various possible ways, to the ineffable joy experienced by the mystics as ‘nuptial union’” (Novo Millennio 33).
Here we see John Paul drawing from one of his favorite teachers, St. John of the Cross. According to this “Mystical Doctor,” prayer leads us to a surrender to God (and him to us) analogous to the surrender of spouses in sexual union. St. John writes, “Just as in the consummation of carnal marriage there are two in one flesh, ... so also when the spiritual marriage between God and the soul is consummated, there are two natures in one spirit and love” (Commentary on the Spiritual Canticle).
Only to the degree that we are “one in spirit and love” with Christ the Bridegroom are we able to love one another as he loved us. It is an experience that comes to those who persevere in Christian prayer. Let us, then, not be afraid to persevere through the painful purifications that lead to us to “nuptial union” with God. Lord, teach us to pray! |
