By Bishop Paul S. Loverde
Special to the HERALD
(From the issue of 4/22/04)

In the second of a six-part series, "Love, Freedom, and the Person: Sexuality and the Catholic Church," Bishop Loverde examines Pope John Paul II’s "Theology of the Body." In this series, Bishop Loverde will show that the Church’s teachings are — so often misunderstood as a litany of prohibitions — are grounded in a holistic understanding of the human person and because of this, they open the door to an authentic understanding of love and freedom. Next week Bishop Loverde will examine the dignity of marriage and the family, to be followed by columns on contraception and natural family planning, homosexuality, and the gift of chastity.

"Then Jesus said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe" (Jn 20:27). How many of us, if given the chance to touch His side as St. Thomas did in this past Sunday’s Gospel, would do likewise? Pope Leo the Great wrote that "it was on our behalf" that Thomas "touched what he beheld."

Seeing and touching — these are bodily senses which often bolster our beliefs. Think of your mother or father embracing you in a hug while saying "I love you." Without the hug, kiss, or pat on the back, our parents’ words would lack a certain fullness. Thomas’ gesture says as much. His touching of Christ’s side and hands reflected his love for Him, as Christ’s bodily wounds show the fullness of His love for Thomas, and for each of us.

Building on last week’s meditation on the human person as made in the "image of God," I invite you to consider an extraordinarily challenging series of reflections on the nature of human love in the divine plan of salvation given from 1979-84 by Pope John Paul II. Spanning 130 general audience addresses, the pope examined the ways in which our bodies and our sexuality shed light on who we are as persons made in God’s image. The pope’s consideration of human love led him to reflect on what he called the "Theology of the Body." His positive, holistic view of the human person merit our close attention, since we are part of a culture in which sexuality and the human body are often objectified, abused, and misunderstood. Collected in The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan, these reflections, which one writer has described as a "theological time bomb" yet to go off, demonstrate the "personalist slant" which the pope has brought to so many aspects of the Catholic tradition.

The pope’s theology of the body cannot be summarized in one column, so I hope that you will pursue his reflections on your own. You will undoubtedly find them to be spiritually and intellectually challenging meditations.

Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body is rooted in the understanding that the human person is made, male and female, in the "image of God." Moreover, as bearing the image of the Trinity, we reflect the inner life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This inner life is characterized by love, for "God is love" (I Jn 4:8). In reflecting this inner life, you and I each have a calling to love, which the pope calls the "law of the gift." The pope writes, "To say that man is created in the image and likeness of God means that man is called to exist ‘for’ others, to become a gift."

The act of self-giving, the pope continues, cannot help but be expressed in physical and bodily ways, in "being a body." As with St. Thomas or with the loving physical gestures of a mother or father for their child, we express our love for one another through our bodies. In fact, to be authentic, our external (bodily) expressions should correspond to our interior attitudes. If they do not, then the bodily act becomes a lie. Consider for a moment the kiss – a sign of friendship, love, and respect. The kiss of Judas, however, turns this sign of love into a sign of betrayal. The correspondence between the bodily act and the interior truth of that act will become important later in our reflections, when we consider contraception and the way in which it renders the conjugal act one of use, not love.

The pope asks us to consider three aspects of Adam and Eve’s experiences: original solitude, unity and nakedness. Adam, surrounded by all sorts of living creatures, was alone (original solitude) because there was no other human person yet present with whom Adam could enter into communion, with whom he could share himself in both a bodily and spiritual way.

Made for communion, Adam’s very nature was frustrated, and God saw that "it was not good for the man to be alone" (Gen 2:18). Thus, God created Eve, and in Genesis we are privy to Adam’s immediate recognition of Eve’s personal value, as someone like himself, "bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh" (Gen 2:23). This recognition is a mutual one, and what follows from it is characterized in nuptial (marital) terms: "For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh" (original unity). At the same time, the bodies of Adam and Eve fully expressed their persons. They were naked and were not ashamed, which the pope calls "original nakedness."

The pope claims that because of these three original experiences — which every person can understand and in a certain sense live — there is a desire that springs up between Adam and Eve, a desire of man for woman and vice versa, a desire for entering into a communion of persons. We see that the value inherent in the body of each person gives rise to a desire for communion and thus the affirmation of the body (one’s own and that of the other) as a means of expressing one’s personhood in the world.

"Desire," writes the pope, "brings with it not the negation, but rather the affirmation, of the body … " This desire, manifested in a life-affirming and life-creating union of man and woman in marriage which the pope calls the "nuptial meaning of the body," is part of our "dignity as a person." Christ condemned lust, the opposite of this life-affirming desire, in the Sermon on the Mount, saying, "But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Mt 5:28). The "prohibition" of lust, writes the pope, "ensures" and "protects" the affirmation of the dignity and "nuptial meaning" of the body.

Our bodies, then, are not "things" or "objects," but rather "temples of the Holy Spirit" intended to "glorify God" (I Cor 6:19). They express who we are as children of God, called to love Him in a radical relationship. In seeing that "it was not good that man should be alone," God made us "male and female," the union of whom is expressed in the radical, mutual relationship of "self-giving" in marriage. For many, this communion is lived and expressed through marriage, but for others, myself included, it is lived and expressed in a life of consecration to God directly.

The "language" and "theology of the body," then, is based on the fact that we are made in His image and called to communion. It is also based on the fact that we are persons capable of making a gift of self to another through our bodies. If this gift — as we will explore next week — is to be authentic, it must be a mutual gift of true love that respects the dignity of the other, that respects the whole person of the other and not merely some partial aspect of the person (e.g., physical beauty).

St. Thomas’ touching of Christ’s wounds led St. Augustine to imagine what Heaven will be like. He wrote, "Perhaps in that kingdom we shall see on the bodies of the martyrs the traces of the wounds which they bore for Christ’s name: because it will not be a deformity, but a dignity in them; and a certain kind of beauty will shine in them, in the body … ."

Dignity and a certain kind of beauty shine forth in our God-given bodies. In his reflections on the theology of the body, our pope offers us a holistic vision of the human person — created in God’s image and called to love.