In our introduction to this website on Catholic parenting, I mentioned that the Theology of the Body will provide the lens through which we view our vocation, our mission, as Catholic parents.
We begin this episode with a very brief summary of the Theology of the Body.
- Can we see God? No, He is pure spirit. But as bodily and spiritual beings, we can make Him visible in the physical world.
- We are made in the image and likeness of God. Since God is love, and we are made in His image, we will find fulfilment only when we love as He loves.
- God exists as an eternal exchange of love in the Holy Trinity: The Father loving the Son and giving the gift of Himself to Him; the Son, receiving and experiencing the gift of the Father, offers the total gift of Himself to Him. The love that they share is the third person of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Made in the image and likeness of the Holy Trinity, we too are made for loving communion.
- This call to loving communion is stamped right here, in our bodies. The husband, in his male body, offers the gift of himself in love to his wife. The wife, receiving and experiencing the total gift of her husband, reciprocates his love through the total gift of herself to him.
And their love, open to the Lord, the Giver of life, becomes, God willing, another person, their child. The complementarity and union of the husband’s body and his wife’s body, their one-flesh union, thus becomes an icon, an image of Trinitarian love, a love which is free, total, faithful and fruitful.This call to love as God loves is referred to as the spousal meaning of the body. Of course, the Catechism is clear that in no way does this mean that God is sexual. He is pure Spirit. We must remember that we are made in God’s image; He is not made in our image.However, the union of a man and a woman in marriage serves as what St John Paul II refers to as a primordial sacrament, a visible sign, a template so to speak, to help us understand who God is. It also helps us better understand the spousal meaning of the body, the call to love as God loves in and through our bodies.
- This spousal meaning of the body can be lived out in our lives, whether as married persons or persons who live celibacy for the sake of the kingdom. How?
- Through the language of the body. When we speak this language well, when we love as God loves, in and through our bodies, freely, totally, faithfully and fruitfully, we are true prophets. But when we do not speak this language rightly, we become false prophets.
- Finally, our male and female bodies, with our call to communion, not only reveal who God is, but also gives us a little glimmer, a foretaste of Heaven. It points us to an infinitely greater reality – Paradise, the wedding of the Lamb, when we join the communion of saints in the heavenly wedding with our bridegroom, Jesus. And in and through that beautiful union with Jesus, He draws us into the life of the Holy Trinity, the eternal exchange of love. It is only in that heavenly wedding that the spousal meaning of our bodies, and our ache for that ultimate love that satisfies, will be definitively fulfilled.
As Dr Christopher West likes to say, the whole biblical message can be summed up in five words: “God wants to marry us!”
This is a very truncated and obviously inadequate treatise of the Theology of the Body.
There is so much more to share about the Theology of the Body (TOB). The above summary only scratches the surface of the teaching in a very superficial way. In no way does it do any justice to this vast and beautiful teaching of Pope St John Paul II. Please avail yourself of the resources available online.
The Blueprint to Catholic Parenthood
What does the Theology of the Body have to do with parenting, you might ask? The short answer is – everything.
Not only will we find fulfilment and our meaning in life by living out the spousal meaning of our bodies as spouses and parents; it will also help our children know who they are, whose they are, and where their ultimate address is meant to be. It is now our task, our mission, to form their conscience, their GPS, so to speak, to help them get there.
How do we do that? By living out our triple role as priest, prophet and king, in our family. We will discuss this in the next episode.
Resources
RECOMMENDED READING:
- Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, Michael Waldstein, Pauline Books & Media (2006).
- Theology of the Body for Beginners: A Basic Introduction to Pope John Paul II’s Sexual Revolution, Revised Edition, Christopher West, 2009.
- https://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/media/articles/what-is-the-theology-of-the-body-christopher-west/
- Theology of the Body in One Hour. Jason Evert, Totus Tuus Press (December 21, 2017)
The Plan of God for Marriage and the Family:
Man, the Image of the God Who Is Love
(Familiaris consortio, n.11)DOWNLOAD THIS RESOURCE AS A PDF
God created man in His own image and likeness[20]: calling him to existence through love, He called him at the same time for love.
God is love[21] and in Himself He lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in His own image and continually keeping it in being, God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion.[22] Love is therefore the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being.
As an incarnate spirit, that is a soul which expresses itself in a body and a body informed by an immortal spirit, man is called to love in his unified totality. Love includes the human body, and the body is made a sharer in spiritual love.
Christian revelation recognizes two specific ways of realizing the vocation of the human person in its entirety, to love: marriage and virginity or celibacy. Either one is, in its own proper form, an actuation of the most profound truth of man, of his being “created in the image of God.”
Consequently, sexuality, by means of which man and woman give themselves to one another through the acts which are proper and exclusive to spouses, is by no means something purely 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 a woman commit themselves totally to one another until death. The total physical self-giving would be a lie if it were not the sign and fruit of a total personal self-giving, in which the whole person, including the temporal dimension, is present: if the person were to withhold something or reserve the possibility of deciding otherwise in the future, by this very fact he or she would not be giving totally.
This totality which is required by conjugal love also corresponds to the demands of responsible fertility. This fertility is directed to the generation of a human being, and so by its nature it surpasses the purely biological order and involves a whole series of personal values. For the harmonious growth of these values a persevering and unified contribution by both parents is necessary.
The only “place” in which this self-giving in its whole truth is made possible is marriage, the covenant of conjugal love freely and consciously chosen, whereby man and woman accept the intimate community of life and love willed by God Himself[23] which only in this light manifests its true meaning. The institution of marriage is not an undue interference by society or authority, nor the extrinsic imposition of a form. Rather it is an interior requirement of the covenant of conjugal love which is publicly affirmed as unique and exclusive, in order to live in complete fidelity to the plan of God, the Creator. A person’s freedom, far from being restricted by this fidelity, is secured against every form of subjectivism or relativism and is made a sharer in creative Wisdom.