Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1085
"In the liturgy of the Church, it is principally his own Paschal mystery that Christ signifies and makes present. During his earthly life Jesus announced his Paschal mystery by his teaching and anticipated it by his actions. When his Hour comes, he lives out the unique event of history which does not pass away: Jesus dies, is buried, rises from the dead, and is seated at the right hand of the Father 'once for all.' His Paschal mystery is a real event that occurred in our history, but it is unique: all other historical events happen once, and then they pass away, swallowed up in the past. The Paschal mystery of Christ, by contrast, cannot remain only in the past, because by his death he destroyed death, and all that Christ is—all that he did and suffered for all men—participates in the divine eternity, and so transcends all times while being made present in them all. The event of the Cross and Resurrection abides and draws everything toward life."
Just a quick thought concerning our most Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, as he prepares to resign this coming Thursday, February 28, 2013.
The single line, "The event of the Cross and Resurrection abides and draws everything toward life" can be understood in a number of ways. An obvious, and perhaps the most appropriate, understanding is that of the liturgical sacrafice of the Holy Eucharist, where we do what Christ did in offering himself to the Father "in memory" of him, as he instructed his Church to do. At that time, when Christ is made truly present on the altar, we participate in his Paschal Mystery in a very significant way. In some sense, we can understand how this "unique event of history" which was the offering of God himself for the salvation of man is also an event "which does not pass away," but which "abides," as we know that throughout the two thousand year history of the Church, the Eucharistic sacrifice continues to be celebrated and remembered, and the Church continues to be sanctified through this Sacrament.
What this also should remind us of is the prayer of the Church. The liturgy is prayer. The celebration of the Sacrament is a prayer. Our offering of ourselves to God along with the offering of Christ through his minister, the priest, is one that must always be prayerful. It is also intercessory. It is also sacrificial.
Each time we are able to praticipate in the Paschal Mystery through the Holy Eucharist, we must share in the offering of self which Christ made on our behalf, and we must recall that the offering he made was in intercession for us, was sacrificial of his very self, and was in all ways a prayer to the Father.
We too, especially in the season of Lent, must find ourselves making new our offering to the Father. We need to enter into a prayer that intercedes for the Church, for others, and for ouselves. We need to make sacrifices which will draw us closer to the truth, to the Heart of Christ, to the ability to "worship in spirit and in truth." We must pray, in the Mass, with Sacred Scripture, with our bodies through our penances, with the Church through the liturgy, with our families and friends, and certainly with our daily lives, in the work that we do. We must invite the Holy Spirit to be with us as we rise, that the whole day that we have been given, we will in turn offer back to the Father. What else can we learn from the Paschal Mystery if not that our very lives have the power and the value to be something worth offering to the Father. We exist out of the gift of love that God has given to us. We therefore must take the gift of life and offer it back to our Creator, just as the Son has revealed to us.
This is precisely what I believe the Church is being taught by the witness of our Holy Father. Pope Benedict XVI has spoken of the call upon his heart to intercede for the Church; to serve the Body of Christ particularly through prayer and fasting. His leadership is one that we should not fail to follow now. This Pope has been a blessing to the Church in so many ways, and his witness of life is not over yet. This final act of sacrifice is ongoing, because as long as Pope Benedict XVI lives, he will be offering himself to God in prayer and fasting on behalf of the Church, for the sake of us all, that we will more fully enter into the Paschal Mystery. This is the kind of "rebirth" that Nicodemus questioned Christ about. He asked Jesus how a man could be "reborn." It is the process of entering into the sacrifice of Christ that is precisely how we are made new. Jesus told us that we must be made into "new wineskins," because the wine of the New Covenant will burst our old skins, as they are dried up and ill prepared.
We need to enter into the event of the Cross, in our prayer, our fasting and our intercession, so that with the Holy Father, we too will participate in this "unique event of history which does not pass away" and so that we can truly hope to share in the ongoing event of Eternal Life one day.
Showing posts with label catechism of the catholic church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label catechism of the catholic church. Show all posts
Monday, February 25, 2013
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Pop-Culture for the Win!
Well... let's be honest, we will probably never actually mean that pop-culture is the "winning" side (at least in the spiritual sense). However, two examples, one of a song and the other of a movie, seemed to offer some good and appropriate reflection.
First, the song. It is a short clip of the lyrics from a very popular song, "Sigh No More" but the popular band, Mumford and Sons. They are:
First, the song. It is a short clip of the lyrics from a very popular song, "Sigh No More" but the popular band, Mumford and Sons. They are:
Love it will not betray you,
Dismay or enslave you,
Dismay or enslave you,
It will set you free.
Be more like the man you were made to be.
There is a design, an alignment,
Be more like the man you were made to be.
There is a design, an alignment,
A cry of my heart to see,
The beauty of love as it was made to be.
The beauty of love as it was made to be.
The second, a short clip from the recently released film The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey. [Sort of a spoiler so beware.] Bilbo speaks to the company of dwarves about their mission. He says something along the lines of (paraphrasing from memory):
"I have a home, and a warm bed, and food in my pantry, and the Shire.
You do not. That is why I am going to help you."
The idea in both the lyrics of the song and the good will of Bilbo is that home is something that we are moving towards, that we long for, that we seek and search for. I have no intention of getting into the nature-grace debate here; I mean only to say that belonging and resting in something that we belong to is a desire that seems to come naturally to us, and to be shared in common by all people.
In the lyrics, the idea of the heart being designed and aligned to seek the beauty of love is something that many people, when they pause to reflect on it, will understand and agree with. While the realistic side of us may remember that the world is fraught with suffering and that the love given by our fellow man can be shallow and imperfect, it does not change that whether we are people of faith or not, we often put our hope and trust in love itself, as a pure ideal of self-giving care for others, as a final end or perfect state. For those who do believe, we understand this to be an end in eternal beatitude with God, who is perfect love.
Looking then at the words of Bilbo, we see someone who knows of his home, of his rest, in something that is good. He has found a place of peace and love where he belongs. Yet, he is so roused by encountering others who do not have such a place of peace and rest, that he will leave his own home to aid them in finding theirs! It is an easy analogy for the spiritual life, where the Christian who knows his end in God then turns to his fellow man who is searching for beauty, truth and goodness, and points him in the right direction. Moreover, he walks with him, assisting him on the path and remaining with him until they both reach that final end.
This may not be what the average person gleans from listening to Mumford or from watching the Hobbit, but then, on the other hand, I think many people who might not be looking for a spiritual element or the Christian themes present will still understand those truths as they apply to every human heart.
The Catechism says (356):
"Of all visible creatures only man is 'able to know and love his creator.'
He is 'the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake,'
and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God’s own
life.
It was for this end that he was created, and this is the
fundamental reason for his dignity:
What made you establish man
in so great a dignity?
Certainly the incalculable love by which you have
looked on your creature in yourself!
You are taken with love for her;
for by love indeed you created her,
by love you have given her a being
capable of tasting your eternal Good."
Certainly, we require faith (and therefore, God's grace) to truly comprehend all of this, but we can also recall at a young age understanding the feelings of needing a home, of being drawn to the good and beautiful, of love being a safe harbor in the chaos of the world, etc... and these are human experiences that span all peoples in all cultures, because though they vary greatly, at the end of the day, they are united in the need for love to sustain us and for us to give love in return.
There are too many things that could be said about this and too many qualifications necessary, so let us just reflect on this: may we first recognize that it is God who has loved us first, who willed us into being and continues to will our existence even now. It is from Him that we receive life and grace, and the invitation to eternal life with him. It is for us to acknowledge and accept this love that is being offered to us, and to rejoice that we are so cherished! It is then for us to give the same love, as best we are able, in turn to our brothers and sisters, to our families and friends, to our coworkers and to the man or woman on the street. We will do better in our own walk towards eternal life if and when we offer to help the other person to get there too! What great mercy of the Lord would it be for us to arrive in heaven and be assured that we had assisted others in finding their home, too.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
I'm a Survivor
So maybe Destiny's Child is a little corny, but you'll have to humor me here.
The song "I'm a Survivor" came into my head today, and it certainly lifted my spirits. If you have been feeling in any way exhausted, used, abused, abandoned, worn out, ignored, unappreciated, etc... you may want to think about what it means to say you will survive, that you will fight, that you will work harder.
My friends, life is a struggle. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or has been hidden away with fairies or something. But I would argue that the reason I acknowledge it as such is probably not the same reason that is generally considered. Not to cut out the obvious fact of the struggle to survive and all of its sharp teeth, but more importantly it is the struggle to be whole, to be pure, to be good, that is the true task at hand.
There is much to consider about these terms, even just about the ideals. To be good, what is that?
Aristotle would tell us that as humans, we naturally seek the good that we see for ourselves. St. Thomas Aquinas would add that this natural good is our ultimate fulfillment in God, who is our source and end. Many various wise people (who I am not at liberty to cite here, being that my memory is not so strong) have expounded on these points and discussed (at ridiculously great lengths) what it means for man to desire his good, and how man can know what his good is, and if there is a universal good for all men or if each person's good is specific to his own being.
Today is not the day for philosophy (we started with Destiny's Child) so I will skip over those many arguments and discussions. Those are certainly questions worth mulling over, so take time to consider them. The Church would tell us that our purpose in existing is to "know love and serve" God (timeout to read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1: "God, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life...God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life"). So if our end is to know our Creator, that means a lot about our everyday. The beautiful thing here (though there are many) is that our Creator (whom we are to come to know) is a loving one. He certainly is beyond and above our littleness, and yet he stooped to come amoung us and rescue us from our brokenness. Not only that, but he left us with a rather useful and sound map and compass (the Church) to lead us ever-more away from the brokenness and into his marvelous light.
So our good is to be fulfilled, to become who and what we were meant to be, to discover the glory that dwells within ourselves that we may have been unaware of. For us to pursue this, we need the tools given to us by the Church. We need the Sacraments. We need Baptism to irradicate the stain of original sin from our souls. We need the Eucharist to purify and sustain us, to transform us, that we would be made "holy by the power of your Spirit" and that our humanity may paritcipate in the glory of the Word made flesh. We need Confirmation, that our lives will be under the counsel and love and guidance of the Holy Spirit. We need daily prayer and communal prayer to lift us up beyond the darkness of this world. We need Confession that we can be healed of our many sins and discover the mercy and grace that God so abundantly lavishes on his children when they ask.
To learn habits of good, to develop virtues in place of vice - this is the ever-present task. Every action and thought and word we participate in will lead us further down the path of wholeness or further down the path of division. We are either fulfilling some potential for good in us or rejecting some potential for good in us. Certainly there are many things which in and of themselves are rather neutral (picking up the phone, eating an apple, smelling some cookies, going to the bathroom...) but when one begins to really examine this life, everything truly does take on some level of meaning in the greater picture. The battle is a life-long struggle. Every smaller battle trains us and strengthens us so that the greater challenges are not impossible to face. If I eat my apple and I'm enjoying it and I am grateful for its existence and then for its new existence in my stomach, I am certainly appreciating the gifts of one who loves me (God) and I am a happier person because I have received that which I did not deserve. Meanwhile, if I am eating out of functionality, or even bitterness because I would rather eat a cookie but I'm dieting, I am not finding praise or worship or gratitude in my heart but self-righteousness and maybe pride. Now certainly we can't go crazy being scrupulous about every little detail, but the idea is important because it does imply that we acknowledge God as Lord of our entire lives and our whole selves and not just a God who we visit on Sundays or think of occassionally.
For our persons to every be united as we are meant to be, to really understand our souls and bodies as a whole, as the true one being that each individual is, than we need to recognize both the divisive effects of sin on our lives and the unitive effects of virtue and grace on our lives. They stand in stark contrast...to discover oneself in an even deeper way it is required that we live (to our best ability, which can be very great with the aid of grace) in harmony with God's laws, and the natural law, which is given by God. We must understand that we are more free and more able to be who we are called to be when we not only obey the laws given to us but love them. They bring peace. They stir up a sense of self that is profound. They allow us to know our hearts, to see our inner selves, and yet to love and respect our bodies and how all of our person is intrinsically and intimately united. Just in the same way, every sin taps a wedge into the bedrock of our person. Every sin, whether purposeful or omission, leads us out of love and into darkness. Every minute spent thinking over the offenses of another is a minute not spent loving in this world. Where we might have forgiven and found healing, we are wasting ourselves on bitterness or malice. There are so many things that can lead to our bedrock breaking into pieces!
Sexual sins, or sins with our bodies, are perhaps the most dangerous. If we are willing to treat our very selves as a tool or function for accomplishing some good feeling or "act of freedom" or proof of our self-control or self-possession, what we are truly doing is proving how lost and blind we have become. No one who loves himself would harm himself. No one who is proud (in the good sense) would abuse himself. No one should seek what they think is "good" when it isn't good for them! But how often we are subject to that! How often we think that if we can only impress some person, we will have a better life. And so we wear things we would not normally wear, or say things we would not normally say. Or how often do we believe that the person we are is simply not good enough for whatever we secretly yearn for in the depths of our hearts, and so we settle for far lesser dreams and far more tragic treatment because we have forgotten who we are and who we were made to be. Just for the record, God never ceases to call us to be the beautiful and resplendent children he has made us. Never. We can spit in his face and the next moment he is still holding his arms out. Certainly it takes time and great effort (and most of all, real humility) for us to be reconciled if we have developed habits of sin that control our lives, but we are never outside of his mercy and love. Never!
St. Claude de Colombiere wrote this most beautiful prayer:
"Lord, I am in this world to show Your mercy to others.
Other people will glofiry You by making visible the power of Your grace by their fidelity and constancy to You.
For my part I will glorify You by making known how good You are to sinners,
that Your mercy is boundless and that no sinner no matter how great his offences should have reason to despair of pardon.
If I have grieviously offended You, My Redeemer, let me not offend You even more by thinking that You are not kind enough to pardon Me.
Amen."
That is something to chew on.
So this is our hope and our task - to desire the good (which is our being-in-love with the One who has first loved us!!!) and to pursue it with all of our selves, even in the tiniest of ways, every day, come what may. If we can strive to avoid sin, and beg for the grace to avoid it even more, and beg for the grace to be sorry when we do sin and for the grace to recognize the things which lead us to sin or our inclinations to sin, we will slowly begin to weed out those things that so deeply wound us and allow ourselves to begin the weight lifting and strength training that we need for this war!
(If you would like to read more on the Church's teaching on the beauty and truth of the gift man has been given in sexual love and its right-ordering, I highly suggest reading Humanae Vitae http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html and The Theology of the Body http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/jp2tbind.htm.)
Say it with me now,
"I'm a survivor
I'm not gonna give up
I'm not gon' stop
I'm gonna work harder..."
Yeah... :)
The song "I'm a Survivor" came into my head today, and it certainly lifted my spirits. If you have been feeling in any way exhausted, used, abused, abandoned, worn out, ignored, unappreciated, etc... you may want to think about what it means to say you will survive, that you will fight, that you will work harder.
My friends, life is a struggle. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or has been hidden away with fairies or something. But I would argue that the reason I acknowledge it as such is probably not the same reason that is generally considered. Not to cut out the obvious fact of the struggle to survive and all of its sharp teeth, but more importantly it is the struggle to be whole, to be pure, to be good, that is the true task at hand.
There is much to consider about these terms, even just about the ideals. To be good, what is that?
Aristotle would tell us that as humans, we naturally seek the good that we see for ourselves. St. Thomas Aquinas would add that this natural good is our ultimate fulfillment in God, who is our source and end. Many various wise people (who I am not at liberty to cite here, being that my memory is not so strong) have expounded on these points and discussed (at ridiculously great lengths) what it means for man to desire his good, and how man can know what his good is, and if there is a universal good for all men or if each person's good is specific to his own being.
Today is not the day for philosophy (we started with Destiny's Child) so I will skip over those many arguments and discussions. Those are certainly questions worth mulling over, so take time to consider them. The Church would tell us that our purpose in existing is to "know love and serve" God (timeout to read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1: "God, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life...God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life"). So if our end is to know our Creator, that means a lot about our everyday. The beautiful thing here (though there are many) is that our Creator (whom we are to come to know) is a loving one. He certainly is beyond and above our littleness, and yet he stooped to come amoung us and rescue us from our brokenness. Not only that, but he left us with a rather useful and sound map and compass (the Church) to lead us ever-more away from the brokenness and into his marvelous light.
So our good is to be fulfilled, to become who and what we were meant to be, to discover the glory that dwells within ourselves that we may have been unaware of. For us to pursue this, we need the tools given to us by the Church. We need the Sacraments. We need Baptism to irradicate the stain of original sin from our souls. We need the Eucharist to purify and sustain us, to transform us, that we would be made "holy by the power of your Spirit" and that our humanity may paritcipate in the glory of the Word made flesh. We need Confirmation, that our lives will be under the counsel and love and guidance of the Holy Spirit. We need daily prayer and communal prayer to lift us up beyond the darkness of this world. We need Confession that we can be healed of our many sins and discover the mercy and grace that God so abundantly lavishes on his children when they ask.
To learn habits of good, to develop virtues in place of vice - this is the ever-present task. Every action and thought and word we participate in will lead us further down the path of wholeness or further down the path of division. We are either fulfilling some potential for good in us or rejecting some potential for good in us. Certainly there are many things which in and of themselves are rather neutral (picking up the phone, eating an apple, smelling some cookies, going to the bathroom...) but when one begins to really examine this life, everything truly does take on some level of meaning in the greater picture. The battle is a life-long struggle. Every smaller battle trains us and strengthens us so that the greater challenges are not impossible to face. If I eat my apple and I'm enjoying it and I am grateful for its existence and then for its new existence in my stomach, I am certainly appreciating the gifts of one who loves me (God) and I am a happier person because I have received that which I did not deserve. Meanwhile, if I am eating out of functionality, or even bitterness because I would rather eat a cookie but I'm dieting, I am not finding praise or worship or gratitude in my heart but self-righteousness and maybe pride. Now certainly we can't go crazy being scrupulous about every little detail, but the idea is important because it does imply that we acknowledge God as Lord of our entire lives and our whole selves and not just a God who we visit on Sundays or think of occassionally.
For our persons to every be united as we are meant to be, to really understand our souls and bodies as a whole, as the true one being that each individual is, than we need to recognize both the divisive effects of sin on our lives and the unitive effects of virtue and grace on our lives. They stand in stark contrast...to discover oneself in an even deeper way it is required that we live (to our best ability, which can be very great with the aid of grace) in harmony with God's laws, and the natural law, which is given by God. We must understand that we are more free and more able to be who we are called to be when we not only obey the laws given to us but love them. They bring peace. They stir up a sense of self that is profound. They allow us to know our hearts, to see our inner selves, and yet to love and respect our bodies and how all of our person is intrinsically and intimately united. Just in the same way, every sin taps a wedge into the bedrock of our person. Every sin, whether purposeful or omission, leads us out of love and into darkness. Every minute spent thinking over the offenses of another is a minute not spent loving in this world. Where we might have forgiven and found healing, we are wasting ourselves on bitterness or malice. There are so many things that can lead to our bedrock breaking into pieces!
Sexual sins, or sins with our bodies, are perhaps the most dangerous. If we are willing to treat our very selves as a tool or function for accomplishing some good feeling or "act of freedom" or proof of our self-control or self-possession, what we are truly doing is proving how lost and blind we have become. No one who loves himself would harm himself. No one who is proud (in the good sense) would abuse himself. No one should seek what they think is "good" when it isn't good for them! But how often we are subject to that! How often we think that if we can only impress some person, we will have a better life. And so we wear things we would not normally wear, or say things we would not normally say. Or how often do we believe that the person we are is simply not good enough for whatever we secretly yearn for in the depths of our hearts, and so we settle for far lesser dreams and far more tragic treatment because we have forgotten who we are and who we were made to be. Just for the record, God never ceases to call us to be the beautiful and resplendent children he has made us. Never. We can spit in his face and the next moment he is still holding his arms out. Certainly it takes time and great effort (and most of all, real humility) for us to be reconciled if we have developed habits of sin that control our lives, but we are never outside of his mercy and love. Never!
St. Claude de Colombiere wrote this most beautiful prayer:
"Lord, I am in this world to show Your mercy to others.
Other people will glofiry You by making visible the power of Your grace by their fidelity and constancy to You.
For my part I will glorify You by making known how good You are to sinners,
that Your mercy is boundless and that no sinner no matter how great his offences should have reason to despair of pardon.
If I have grieviously offended You, My Redeemer, let me not offend You even more by thinking that You are not kind enough to pardon Me.
Amen."
That is something to chew on.
So this is our hope and our task - to desire the good (which is our being-in-love with the One who has first loved us!!!) and to pursue it with all of our selves, even in the tiniest of ways, every day, come what may. If we can strive to avoid sin, and beg for the grace to avoid it even more, and beg for the grace to be sorry when we do sin and for the grace to recognize the things which lead us to sin or our inclinations to sin, we will slowly begin to weed out those things that so deeply wound us and allow ourselves to begin the weight lifting and strength training that we need for this war!
(If you would like to read more on the Church's teaching on the beauty and truth of the gift man has been given in sexual love and its right-ordering, I highly suggest reading Humanae Vitae http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html and The Theology of the Body http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/jp2tbind.htm.)
Say it with me now,
"I'm a survivor
I'm not gonna give up
I'm not gon' stop
I'm gonna work harder..."
Yeah... :)
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
God's Vision of Love VI, Living in Freedom
Last part of the four-part series covering some of the major themes of the Theology of the Body by Pope John Paul II. Again, please see the previous presentations for a full context of this post. All of the information is drawn from the Theology of the Body, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Scripture (RSV) and other Church documents.
Recap: Context from the past three weeks –
o Original states of innocence, solitude, unity and nakedness, how God sees us and invites us into a relationship/knows us personally
o Being created in the Image of the Son means this new covenant, a new call to us
o Christ reveals to us what true freedom is, Christ reveals to us our gifted-nature, how God is Father and we receive all from him
o Christ gives us the Beatitudes as guides for how to participate in this new life, specifically purity of heart that enables us to understand the interior gaze of man and what it is meant to be between man and woman
o To return to our original innocence and purity but in a “new way” in light of Christ, we must learn to practice virtues and build habits of virtue (these are our remedies for concupiscence and sin)
o We want to learn to know ourselves and one another in the same authentic freedom and gift that Christ reveals to us
o The interior gaze and the language of the body are tied together, as we see how what we do and say expresses the inner parts of our hearts and what we desire and will are made real in our actions – the embodied soul – is understood here
o Christ’s whole life is a testament of love, laying down of his body and soul for the sake of the “other,” for his bride the Church and for each of us – this is authentic freedom and the nature of “gift” – being for another.
o Virginity or continence for the Kingdom is a revelation for us of the very special nature of God’s invitation to be in this personal relationship – a way of witnessing to us of what it will be like to be wholly God’s, in heaven, to know him fully
o Today we want to talk about marriage, family and the Church
"Living in Freedom"
Ephesians 5:21-33
o This call is very specific to real life and has practical applications and implications for us no matter what our state of life. The context Paul gives us in Ephesians is the perfect analogy that sheds light on all that Christ reveals to us about the truth and dignity of our personhood and especially our sexuality.
Sacrament
o A sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible reality – the body itself is a sacrament (small “s”) for it reveals the interior truth of the whole person, as we have discussed
o The Sacrament in the Church (big “S”) is a sign of grace, efficacious grace, transforming grace. They truly conform us more into the image of Christ and are specific gifts for our path to salvation
o As Gaudium et Spes (joy and hope) says, not only does Christ reveal “man” to himself, what we are called to be, our most perfect hope and fulfillment, but in that he makes clear his supreme vocation (this life of holiness)
o We are learning about the eternal plan of man’s salvation in Jesus, from our Creation in His image to our final hope through his passion, death and resurrection. We are invited into his Body, as members of the Church. (This is the historical context of the whole mystery of the plan of salvation initiated in our creation in Christ and revealed in the Incarnation)
o What St. Paul says in Ephesians and John Paul wants to emphasize is that the mystery of Christ realized in the Church is the expression of the divine plan for man’s salvation, and that the Christian vocation is thus a life baptized and part of this Church
o Our humanity, our anthropology (and therefore, our sexuality) will only be brought to fulfillment in this context
o Remember at the beginning we said this is theology/anthropology/theology of the body – this is the context – Christ, and the Church.
o The two great goods of human sexuality expressed in its proper context are fidelity and fruitfulness or fecundity. The gift of self to another in sexual or conjugal union is meant to be free, total and fruitful. The beauty of such total trust, vulnerability and commitment is vital. The grace of the sacrament supports the husband and wife in their promise for fidelity throughout their lives and for the total love for the other, especially as it bears fruit in the gift of a new life.
Husband and Wife
o Proper context for man and woman bound together in love (and sexual union) is a lifelong commitment before God in the Church in the Sacrament of matrimony
o It is therefore their common relation with Christ that should unite them
o We are first and foremost brothers and sisters, adopted children of God, and in light of this we approach a holy love for one another knowing our respective value and dignity comes from God as a gift and that we belong to God first and foremost
o St. Paul speaks about subordination to one another – this is in love of Christ – just as virginity makes sense for the Kingdom, so mutual sacrifice, service and surrender to one another makes sense only in the context of Christ. It is a pious and holy call, to live a life of service, love and fidelity.
o We need to draw our energy, mercy and love from the only inexhaustible source of love, God himself. Our love for one another must be fed from his eternal and perfect love poured out into our hearts. Only then can we see one another with a purity and holy interior gaze, and love authentically. The efficacious graces of the Sacraments fundamentally make this possible, both the grace of the Sacrament of Marriage and then the continual graces of Eucharist and Confession.
o Marriage is this vocation for Christians to holiness directly as it corresponds to Christ’s love for the Church, the Bridegroom with his Bride, who laid down his life for her. St. Paul says that husbands are to love their wives even as Christ loved the Church, and that wives are to be subordinate as the Church is to Christ. It is the entrustment of the whole self to God in the context of the full, free and total giving of oneself over to the other in marriage.
o Reveals that the deepest essence of marriage emerges from the mystery of God’s eternal love for mankind, from the salvific mystery of Christ’s spousal love for the Church!!!
o Tobit 8:4-9
o The purposeful fruitfulness of marriage, the gift of self being so total that it brings about another total gift, a new human life, is also founded in this mystery, for as Christ is head of the body, so the body (the Church) bears fruit of his love in the salvation of souls won by his sacrifice on the cross.
o The spousal meaning of the body is inscribed in our sexuality, in manhood and womanhood, masculinity and femininity, the beautiful unity formed through two mutual self-gifts, receiving the other person in love.
o The unity of Adam and Eve at the very beginning of our history where “this one is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” is now made more clear in the context of the unity of Christ and the Church – esp. in light of the Eucharist.
o The new creation that is made in the sacrament of marriage for man and woman is indissoluble precisely in this unity and therefore the covenant they enter into is both a grace and an ethos, a directive for a holy life.
o St. John Chrysostom – CCC 2365 - St. John Chrysostom suggests that young husbands should say to their wives: I have taken you in my arms, and I love you, and I prefer you to my life itself. For the present life is nothing, and my most ardent dream is to spend it with you in such a way that we may be assured of not being separated in the life reserved for us. . . . I place your love above all things, and nothing would be more bitter or painful to me than to be of a different mind than you.
Fatherhood and Motherhood
o Fatherhood and Motherhood are also inscribed into the person and into our bodies in our masculinity and femininity, within the spousal meaning of the body. Man and woman assist one another in becoming more fully themselves in seeing the other in light of fatherhood and motherhood, in willing the other to be in some way even more alive in the gift of a child. There is a fulfillment of what it means to be a man and to be a woman in being a father and mother.
o Masculinity has within its nature the gift that, imaged after Christ, is an initiator and protector, the Bridegroom who seeks to see his Bride pure and holy. Femininity has within its nature the gift, imaged after Christ’s body, seen in the Church, of receiving the goodness and love of the Bridegroom and welcoming his assistance is her holiness even as she is the one for whom he will lay down his life. It is a beautiful interplay of giving and receiving, and together they form an unity that is the foundation for new life to come forth and thrive within.
Family
o Therefore, the family can never be removed from the Church, and should always be intimately connected with her, esp. in the Sacramental life.
o The goal of Christ’s love for the Church is her sanctification – so the goal is for the family, for the mutual love of husband and wife and thus for their children too (which begins with Baptism and continues throughout life formed in Christ)
o Husband and wife are called to live in a holy unity of love, and therefore to raise their children with this understanding. As St. Paul directs us, husband and wife are to love one another as their own body, as Christ loves the Church, and to therefore seek the highest good for the other person and aid them on their journey to heaven. John Paul says, “The bridegroom (meaning Christ) examines his bride (Church) attentively, as though in a creative loving restlessness, whether he will find the good and the beauty he desires in her and for her.” This kind of moral and holy scrutiny needs to be present in our family life!
o Prayer must permeate the life of man and woman in the Sacrament of Marriage and their families. The Christian life is one of constant communication, constant dialogue with the Father, Son and Spirit, seeking to be made anew in the image of perfect love.
o Prayer together as a family is vital. Reading from Scripture, reading from the Catechism, reflecting on the teachings of the Church especially in the encyclicals and writings of recent Church history, as well as the many various devotions such as the Rosary and novenas are essential. Cultural Challenges/Issues to Faceo Concupiscence unfortunately does not disappear with the Sacrament of marriage (nor with religious vows or Ordination) – therefore it is so vital for us to be sensitive to the temptations and trials we face and to rely on Christ in his mercy and frequent the sacraments of Eucharist and Confession, and to pray daily.
o As we have said, the prayer for purity of heart and chastity aids us in seeing ourselves and one another with God’s vision, and assists us in healing the wounds inflicted by our sins.
o Chastity is not only a virtue for religious or priests but for married couples as well, for there are times when it is good for couples to abstain and a life of prayer and sacraments deeply aids couples in understanding this and living it out.
o A life of prayer and “in the Holy Spirit” enables couples to best understand their temptations and when they are truly loving one another in purity and wholeness and when they are falling short of this goal.
o There are many temptations outside of the inner self that are presented in our culture, everything from magazine covers to casual sex in TV and movies to the common acceptance of pornography, masturbation, contraception, cheating, hook ups, even just immodest dress – the world is not friendly to our desire for holiness so it is important for us to continually pray and seek purity and truth so that we do not fall into these sins, and if we do, to seek the healing and grace of confession.
o We want to always “speak the truth” with our bodies – concerning our own dignity, the dignity of another
* So once again, the entire context from beginning to end is that God has created us His Image, and we are invited into this personal relationship, the interior life, into a love and service of the Holy Trinity. In Christ we have the perfect Image of our humanity-as-holy. Without sin, He is perfect beyond our capabilities. But by the efficacious grace of the Sacraments of the Church and by his continual Mercy and Love, we are given the assistance to be transformed and "divinized" and to learn to live virtues of purity and chastity. We have a hope that cannot be disappointed, because of the promise of the eternally faithful God, who is all Truth and Love. We strive to deepen our understanding of the goodness that God has given us, the depth and breadth of his Gift, and we pray daily to allow this knowledge to fill us and transform our lives.
Once again, let us end with Guadiem et Spes,
“The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear. It is not surprising, then, that in Him all the aforementioned truths find their root and attain their crown.” – G et S, 22
Recap: Context from the past three weeks –
o Original states of innocence, solitude, unity and nakedness, how God sees us and invites us into a relationship/knows us personally
o Being created in the Image of the Son means this new covenant, a new call to us
o Christ reveals to us what true freedom is, Christ reveals to us our gifted-nature, how God is Father and we receive all from him
o Christ gives us the Beatitudes as guides for how to participate in this new life, specifically purity of heart that enables us to understand the interior gaze of man and what it is meant to be between man and woman
o To return to our original innocence and purity but in a “new way” in light of Christ, we must learn to practice virtues and build habits of virtue (these are our remedies for concupiscence and sin)
o We want to learn to know ourselves and one another in the same authentic freedom and gift that Christ reveals to us
o The interior gaze and the language of the body are tied together, as we see how what we do and say expresses the inner parts of our hearts and what we desire and will are made real in our actions – the embodied soul – is understood here
o Christ’s whole life is a testament of love, laying down of his body and soul for the sake of the “other,” for his bride the Church and for each of us – this is authentic freedom and the nature of “gift” – being for another.
o Virginity or continence for the Kingdom is a revelation for us of the very special nature of God’s invitation to be in this personal relationship – a way of witnessing to us of what it will be like to be wholly God’s, in heaven, to know him fully
o Today we want to talk about marriage, family and the Church
"Living in Freedom"
Ephesians 5:21-33
o This call is very specific to real life and has practical applications and implications for us no matter what our state of life. The context Paul gives us in Ephesians is the perfect analogy that sheds light on all that Christ reveals to us about the truth and dignity of our personhood and especially our sexuality.
Sacrament
o A sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible reality – the body itself is a sacrament (small “s”) for it reveals the interior truth of the whole person, as we have discussed
o The Sacrament in the Church (big “S”) is a sign of grace, efficacious grace, transforming grace. They truly conform us more into the image of Christ and are specific gifts for our path to salvation
o As Gaudium et Spes (joy and hope) says, not only does Christ reveal “man” to himself, what we are called to be, our most perfect hope and fulfillment, but in that he makes clear his supreme vocation (this life of holiness)
o We are learning about the eternal plan of man’s salvation in Jesus, from our Creation in His image to our final hope through his passion, death and resurrection. We are invited into his Body, as members of the Church. (This is the historical context of the whole mystery of the plan of salvation initiated in our creation in Christ and revealed in the Incarnation)
o What St. Paul says in Ephesians and John Paul wants to emphasize is that the mystery of Christ realized in the Church is the expression of the divine plan for man’s salvation, and that the Christian vocation is thus a life baptized and part of this Church
o Our humanity, our anthropology (and therefore, our sexuality) will only be brought to fulfillment in this context
o Remember at the beginning we said this is theology/anthropology/theology of the body – this is the context – Christ, and the Church.
o The two great goods of human sexuality expressed in its proper context are fidelity and fruitfulness or fecundity. The gift of self to another in sexual or conjugal union is meant to be free, total and fruitful. The beauty of such total trust, vulnerability and commitment is vital. The grace of the sacrament supports the husband and wife in their promise for fidelity throughout their lives and for the total love for the other, especially as it bears fruit in the gift of a new life.
Husband and Wife
o Proper context for man and woman bound together in love (and sexual union) is a lifelong commitment before God in the Church in the Sacrament of matrimony
o It is therefore their common relation with Christ that should unite them
o We are first and foremost brothers and sisters, adopted children of God, and in light of this we approach a holy love for one another knowing our respective value and dignity comes from God as a gift and that we belong to God first and foremost
o St. Paul speaks about subordination to one another – this is in love of Christ – just as virginity makes sense for the Kingdom, so mutual sacrifice, service and surrender to one another makes sense only in the context of Christ. It is a pious and holy call, to live a life of service, love and fidelity.
o We need to draw our energy, mercy and love from the only inexhaustible source of love, God himself. Our love for one another must be fed from his eternal and perfect love poured out into our hearts. Only then can we see one another with a purity and holy interior gaze, and love authentically. The efficacious graces of the Sacraments fundamentally make this possible, both the grace of the Sacrament of Marriage and then the continual graces of Eucharist and Confession.
o Marriage is this vocation for Christians to holiness directly as it corresponds to Christ’s love for the Church, the Bridegroom with his Bride, who laid down his life for her. St. Paul says that husbands are to love their wives even as Christ loved the Church, and that wives are to be subordinate as the Church is to Christ. It is the entrustment of the whole self to God in the context of the full, free and total giving of oneself over to the other in marriage.
o Reveals that the deepest essence of marriage emerges from the mystery of God’s eternal love for mankind, from the salvific mystery of Christ’s spousal love for the Church!!!
o Tobit 8:4-9
o The purposeful fruitfulness of marriage, the gift of self being so total that it brings about another total gift, a new human life, is also founded in this mystery, for as Christ is head of the body, so the body (the Church) bears fruit of his love in the salvation of souls won by his sacrifice on the cross.
o The spousal meaning of the body is inscribed in our sexuality, in manhood and womanhood, masculinity and femininity, the beautiful unity formed through two mutual self-gifts, receiving the other person in love.
o The unity of Adam and Eve at the very beginning of our history where “this one is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” is now made more clear in the context of the unity of Christ and the Church – esp. in light of the Eucharist.
o The new creation that is made in the sacrament of marriage for man and woman is indissoluble precisely in this unity and therefore the covenant they enter into is both a grace and an ethos, a directive for a holy life.
o St. John Chrysostom – CCC 2365 - St. John Chrysostom suggests that young husbands should say to their wives: I have taken you in my arms, and I love you, and I prefer you to my life itself. For the present life is nothing, and my most ardent dream is to spend it with you in such a way that we may be assured of not being separated in the life reserved for us. . . . I place your love above all things, and nothing would be more bitter or painful to me than to be of a different mind than you.
Fatherhood and Motherhood
o Fatherhood and Motherhood are also inscribed into the person and into our bodies in our masculinity and femininity, within the spousal meaning of the body. Man and woman assist one another in becoming more fully themselves in seeing the other in light of fatherhood and motherhood, in willing the other to be in some way even more alive in the gift of a child. There is a fulfillment of what it means to be a man and to be a woman in being a father and mother.
o Masculinity has within its nature the gift that, imaged after Christ, is an initiator and protector, the Bridegroom who seeks to see his Bride pure and holy. Femininity has within its nature the gift, imaged after Christ’s body, seen in the Church, of receiving the goodness and love of the Bridegroom and welcoming his assistance is her holiness even as she is the one for whom he will lay down his life. It is a beautiful interplay of giving and receiving, and together they form an unity that is the foundation for new life to come forth and thrive within.
Family
o Therefore, the family can never be removed from the Church, and should always be intimately connected with her, esp. in the Sacramental life.
o The goal of Christ’s love for the Church is her sanctification – so the goal is for the family, for the mutual love of husband and wife and thus for their children too (which begins with Baptism and continues throughout life formed in Christ)
o Husband and wife are called to live in a holy unity of love, and therefore to raise their children with this understanding. As St. Paul directs us, husband and wife are to love one another as their own body, as Christ loves the Church, and to therefore seek the highest good for the other person and aid them on their journey to heaven. John Paul says, “The bridegroom (meaning Christ) examines his bride (Church) attentively, as though in a creative loving restlessness, whether he will find the good and the beauty he desires in her and for her.” This kind of moral and holy scrutiny needs to be present in our family life!
o Prayer must permeate the life of man and woman in the Sacrament of Marriage and their families. The Christian life is one of constant communication, constant dialogue with the Father, Son and Spirit, seeking to be made anew in the image of perfect love.
o Prayer together as a family is vital. Reading from Scripture, reading from the Catechism, reflecting on the teachings of the Church especially in the encyclicals and writings of recent Church history, as well as the many various devotions such as the Rosary and novenas are essential. Cultural Challenges/Issues to Faceo Concupiscence unfortunately does not disappear with the Sacrament of marriage (nor with religious vows or Ordination) – therefore it is so vital for us to be sensitive to the temptations and trials we face and to rely on Christ in his mercy and frequent the sacraments of Eucharist and Confession, and to pray daily.
o As we have said, the prayer for purity of heart and chastity aids us in seeing ourselves and one another with God’s vision, and assists us in healing the wounds inflicted by our sins.
o Chastity is not only a virtue for religious or priests but for married couples as well, for there are times when it is good for couples to abstain and a life of prayer and sacraments deeply aids couples in understanding this and living it out.
o A life of prayer and “in the Holy Spirit” enables couples to best understand their temptations and when they are truly loving one another in purity and wholeness and when they are falling short of this goal.
o There are many temptations outside of the inner self that are presented in our culture, everything from magazine covers to casual sex in TV and movies to the common acceptance of pornography, masturbation, contraception, cheating, hook ups, even just immodest dress – the world is not friendly to our desire for holiness so it is important for us to continually pray and seek purity and truth so that we do not fall into these sins, and if we do, to seek the healing and grace of confession.
o We want to always “speak the truth” with our bodies – concerning our own dignity, the dignity of another
* So once again, the entire context from beginning to end is that God has created us His Image, and we are invited into this personal relationship, the interior life, into a love and service of the Holy Trinity. In Christ we have the perfect Image of our humanity-as-holy. Without sin, He is perfect beyond our capabilities. But by the efficacious grace of the Sacraments of the Church and by his continual Mercy and Love, we are given the assistance to be transformed and "divinized" and to learn to live virtues of purity and chastity. We have a hope that cannot be disappointed, because of the promise of the eternally faithful God, who is all Truth and Love. We strive to deepen our understanding of the goodness that God has given us, the depth and breadth of his Gift, and we pray daily to allow this knowledge to fill us and transform our lives.
Once again, let us end with Guadiem et Spes,
“The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear. It is not surprising, then, that in Him all the aforementioned truths find their root and attain their crown.” – G et S, 22
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Adequate Anthropology II
Integration.
"When you see this your heart shall rejoice, and your bodies flourish like the grass." - Isaiah 66:14
Looking at this verse, one might ask, "why will my body flourish, if my heart is rejoicing?" It seems as if the reference to "heart shall rejoice" is an interior effect, and that the body flourishing is an essentially disconnected consequence.
This is, however, not at all the case.
Maybe it is an obvious point to say that we are one, a whole person, a unified being, a body and soul that are integrally of the same being, are the same person. Can I say it in any other ways?
This idea, however, seems to typically be treated just as such: "an idea." Yet, it is a truth. The truth. The truth of being. It is also overlooked, misunderstood, flat out ignored or even laughed at. It is habitually taken as a "nice thing" people say, somewhat akin to refernces to "peace and love."
This is a serious problem. Society has been raised on dualism. That is, we are spoon fed the "compartmentalization" mentality from our infancy. Now, sometimes this is a very effective tool for understanding life and its array of complicated aspects. It would be hard to further understand many of the biological systems if we could not separate out each piece/area/section and further observe its processes before going back to the whole. The chip in the paint is that we often do not return to the whole. The tool of reduction-for-the-sake-of-learning has become the habititual-reduction-just-because. This has infiltrated far beyond the realm of the lab, and we find ourselves focusing on someone's kankles instead of the person, or not even hearing the hour conversation we had with our mother because we were also watching television and investigating on facebook.
Once again, let me reiterate that there are many good things that come from this system of study! The problem remains when we leave something separated from its whole. It effectively loses its meaning. What is an acorn if not a future-tree? It is then a round nut that is kicked when walking. But is that really what the seed is? Is that all we would want to claim for its being? It has the potential to produce hundreds of its own kind, given the right circumstances. It can one day be a home for birds and squirrels, or perhaps provide heat, shelter and paper for people. It can be that secret fort for a child, or a couple's favorite place to relax in the summer. None of this is possible to see if we leave the object as an object, and refuse to look for a bigger picture.
Therefore, when we consider the human body, this is the same challenge we are faced with. Will my arm be nothing but an arm. Are these fingers which are flying around on this keyboard (ok, I don't type that fast) really just fingers moving at random? Of course not! They are effectively (that is the word of the day) stating the thoughts that are coming from my brain. Moreover, the thoughts coming from my brain are being fed through the emotions stirring in my heart. And above that, my heart would not be working if I was not receiving adequate amounts of oxygen into my lungs, and my lungs would not be working if my heart was not pumping blood through them to be oxidized, and my brain would not be working if either of those organs failed... I'm not a biology major but I think that's close enough, and you get the point. These are integrated systems we are talking about here! We are so much more than just a torso with some mobile appendages that happens to be able to speak.
To top all of that off, this body-full-of-integrated-systems would be nothing without its soul. I must be both-and. My soul would be non-human if it was not in a human body! And the point remains that my body isn't just filled with a soul and my soul isn't just in a body! I am an embodied soul. That is what I am, who I am, how I am. The mode of existence I possess is an embodied soul. The person I am is an embodied soul. If you were to describe how I exist, what I am, you would say I am an embodied soul.
The dualistic perception we are raised with, again, has its advantages, but most especially when we are dealing with a topic that is so personal (and that is a pun), we need to overcome it. We do not need to throw it out, but if we do not primarily see with a wholistic worldview, we will distinctively sell ourselves and others short. Wholistic, not dualistic. Unified. One person, with a complex existence that is both corporal, finite and mortal, as well as spiritual, infinite and eternal. Complicated? Sure. Impossible? Not at all.
Perhaps it is easier to accept this personalism if you are Christian, since you have hopefully frist accepted that Christ was both God and man, fully human and fully divine. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, "the Incarnation of the Son of God does not mean that Jesus Christ is part God and part man, nor does it imply that he is the result of a confused mixture of the divine and the human. He became truly man while remaining truly God" (CCC 464) and restates it as "Jesus Christ possesses two natures, one divine and the other human, not confused, but united in the one person of God's Son" (CCC 481). If, in faith, you will hold this paradox to be true (which it is), then it should follow that humanity being made up of such an integrated immortal soul and finite body is not hard to accept.
There are perhaps, many reasons why this is so important to discuss, first among them being all of the consequences that suffer the "trickle-down-effect" when we do not understand man in this unity. For example, if an embryo before 4 weeks old does not look much like a "person" and is therefore allowed to be destroyed for embryonic stem cell research, a large part of that decision is probably coming from a failure to see this act as the death of a person and not just a scientific sacrifice for the greater good. Another obvious example is pornography and the voilence to oneself which often accompanies this evil. Clearly no one is pondering what that young lady's name is, who her parents are, what are her likes or dislikes, what her favorite color is, what she studied in college, if she is afraid of spiders or if she loves to swim or if she's actually very good at playing the flute, etc... Nope, she's not a "person" in that sense. She is a body. Or not even a body. She is a part of her body, akin to if I took a picture of my elbow for you and put it here. Wow...you really understand me now. There's my elbow. I mean, seriously? Of course you aren't looking at this woman as a woman, as a person, because those types of images are designed to remove the attention from the whole and focus it on a reduced part. In essence, you reduce not only the fullness of the person in a visual sense but simultaneously you reduce the person in a realistic sense. She is not a "she," but an image.
(And don't give me crap excuses about images that aren't real people, that's nearly worse. Then you're just sanctioning an ongoing habitual mentality that refuses persons their full dignity. Live, real or cartoon, you are still being formed into a habit, into the mentality, that will always look at a person in her reduced, objective and usury sense, and not in her full, subjective and loving sense.)
Ok, sorry, I get heated on the "real life examples." This is exactly why it is so necessary that we "un-train" our minds from our dualistic and reductionist worldviews! C'mon. We've heard that term, "cafeteria catholic," which means that someone picks and chooses the aspects of religion without fully committing to the whole truth of the faith and the lifestyle that inherently comes with it. This is the same with every part of life, every circumstance of the world. Cheesecake to children's education, we will be faced with opportunities to see the world for the fullness that it has been endowed with as a gift from God (and such goodness that is further revealed in Christ's Incarnation, passion, death, ressurection and ascension), or to see it as the world has decided is "easiest" for us to encounter it, which is reduced to its smallest, most empty of meaning aspect. We don't want "empty of meaning"! We reduce not only the physical but the interior as well.
I'll never forget in the movie "Kate and Leopold" when Hugh Jackman is outraged at how Meg Ryan eats her food. There is no enjoyment, no time taken, no real effort. I understand "Kate" completely, since too often I am scarfing down food in between one business and the next, and barely caring what it is I'm eating. Yet, Leopold's character is right on the money! He works hard to perfect the "fixing" of Kate's toaster so that the timer can be set to toast the bread to exactly the desired amount of cooked. He sees an interior, an innate good, in what the bread can be. Objectively, it is bread. Flour, water, all that other stuff (I'm no baker). Subjectively, we're looking at the opportunity to feel full, to feel good, to feel cared for, to receive nourishment, to receive happiness, to experience gratitude. Bread can give gratitude, but it can't give if you won't receive, and you can't receive if you won't allow it to give. Yes? Hope that makes sense.
Ok, long post (what did you expect from me), but let's hit it home one more time - integration!!!!!! Take time to think about this, please. Consider the unity of your person, and of the many things around you. What you do, what you say, the activities that define you, the habits you have formed, the people you care for, the way you live, the passion you hold, the food you eat, the songs you sing - everything effects who you are. Your soul is directly related to all of the world via your body, and your body is inseparable from your soul for all of life. All of the stimuli you receive everyday forms the interior person. Embodied soul.
Let us pray to grow in awareness, in sensitivity, to this truth. Mary, Mother of God, pray for us.
"When you see this your heart shall rejoice, and your bodies flourish like the grass." - Isaiah 66:14
Looking at this verse, one might ask, "why will my body flourish, if my heart is rejoicing?" It seems as if the reference to "heart shall rejoice" is an interior effect, and that the body flourishing is an essentially disconnected consequence.
This is, however, not at all the case.
Maybe it is an obvious point to say that we are one, a whole person, a unified being, a body and soul that are integrally of the same being, are the same person. Can I say it in any other ways?
This idea, however, seems to typically be treated just as such: "an idea." Yet, it is a truth. The truth. The truth of being. It is also overlooked, misunderstood, flat out ignored or even laughed at. It is habitually taken as a "nice thing" people say, somewhat akin to refernces to "peace and love."
This is a serious problem. Society has been raised on dualism. That is, we are spoon fed the "compartmentalization" mentality from our infancy. Now, sometimes this is a very effective tool for understanding life and its array of complicated aspects. It would be hard to further understand many of the biological systems if we could not separate out each piece/area/section and further observe its processes before going back to the whole. The chip in the paint is that we often do not return to the whole. The tool of reduction-for-the-sake-of-learning has become the habititual-reduction-just-because. This has infiltrated far beyond the realm of the lab, and we find ourselves focusing on someone's kankles instead of the person, or not even hearing the hour conversation we had with our mother because we were also watching television and investigating on facebook.
Once again, let me reiterate that there are many good things that come from this system of study! The problem remains when we leave something separated from its whole. It effectively loses its meaning. What is an acorn if not a future-tree? It is then a round nut that is kicked when walking. But is that really what the seed is? Is that all we would want to claim for its being? It has the potential to produce hundreds of its own kind, given the right circumstances. It can one day be a home for birds and squirrels, or perhaps provide heat, shelter and paper for people. It can be that secret fort for a child, or a couple's favorite place to relax in the summer. None of this is possible to see if we leave the object as an object, and refuse to look for a bigger picture.
Therefore, when we consider the human body, this is the same challenge we are faced with. Will my arm be nothing but an arm. Are these fingers which are flying around on this keyboard (ok, I don't type that fast) really just fingers moving at random? Of course not! They are effectively (that is the word of the day) stating the thoughts that are coming from my brain. Moreover, the thoughts coming from my brain are being fed through the emotions stirring in my heart. And above that, my heart would not be working if I was not receiving adequate amounts of oxygen into my lungs, and my lungs would not be working if my heart was not pumping blood through them to be oxidized, and my brain would not be working if either of those organs failed... I'm not a biology major but I think that's close enough, and you get the point. These are integrated systems we are talking about here! We are so much more than just a torso with some mobile appendages that happens to be able to speak.
To top all of that off, this body-full-of-integrated-systems would be nothing without its soul. I must be both-and. My soul would be non-human if it was not in a human body! And the point remains that my body isn't just filled with a soul and my soul isn't just in a body! I am an embodied soul. That is what I am, who I am, how I am. The mode of existence I possess is an embodied soul. The person I am is an embodied soul. If you were to describe how I exist, what I am, you would say I am an embodied soul.
The dualistic perception we are raised with, again, has its advantages, but most especially when we are dealing with a topic that is so personal (and that is a pun), we need to overcome it. We do not need to throw it out, but if we do not primarily see with a wholistic worldview, we will distinctively sell ourselves and others short. Wholistic, not dualistic. Unified. One person, with a complex existence that is both corporal, finite and mortal, as well as spiritual, infinite and eternal. Complicated? Sure. Impossible? Not at all.
Perhaps it is easier to accept this personalism if you are Christian, since you have hopefully frist accepted that Christ was both God and man, fully human and fully divine. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, "the Incarnation of the Son of God does not mean that Jesus Christ is part God and part man, nor does it imply that he is the result of a confused mixture of the divine and the human. He became truly man while remaining truly God" (CCC 464) and restates it as "Jesus Christ possesses two natures, one divine and the other human, not confused, but united in the one person of God's Son" (CCC 481). If, in faith, you will hold this paradox to be true (which it is), then it should follow that humanity being made up of such an integrated immortal soul and finite body is not hard to accept.
There are perhaps, many reasons why this is so important to discuss, first among them being all of the consequences that suffer the "trickle-down-effect" when we do not understand man in this unity. For example, if an embryo before 4 weeks old does not look much like a "person" and is therefore allowed to be destroyed for embryonic stem cell research, a large part of that decision is probably coming from a failure to see this act as the death of a person and not just a scientific sacrifice for the greater good. Another obvious example is pornography and the voilence to oneself which often accompanies this evil. Clearly no one is pondering what that young lady's name is, who her parents are, what are her likes or dislikes, what her favorite color is, what she studied in college, if she is afraid of spiders or if she loves to swim or if she's actually very good at playing the flute, etc... Nope, she's not a "person" in that sense. She is a body. Or not even a body. She is a part of her body, akin to if I took a picture of my elbow for you and put it here. Wow...you really understand me now. There's my elbow. I mean, seriously? Of course you aren't looking at this woman as a woman, as a person, because those types of images are designed to remove the attention from the whole and focus it on a reduced part. In essence, you reduce not only the fullness of the person in a visual sense but simultaneously you reduce the person in a realistic sense. She is not a "she," but an image.
(And don't give me crap excuses about images that aren't real people, that's nearly worse. Then you're just sanctioning an ongoing habitual mentality that refuses persons their full dignity. Live, real or cartoon, you are still being formed into a habit, into the mentality, that will always look at a person in her reduced, objective and usury sense, and not in her full, subjective and loving sense.)
Ok, sorry, I get heated on the "real life examples." This is exactly why it is so necessary that we "un-train" our minds from our dualistic and reductionist worldviews! C'mon. We've heard that term, "cafeteria catholic," which means that someone picks and chooses the aspects of religion without fully committing to the whole truth of the faith and the lifestyle that inherently comes with it. This is the same with every part of life, every circumstance of the world. Cheesecake to children's education, we will be faced with opportunities to see the world for the fullness that it has been endowed with as a gift from God (and such goodness that is further revealed in Christ's Incarnation, passion, death, ressurection and ascension), or to see it as the world has decided is "easiest" for us to encounter it, which is reduced to its smallest, most empty of meaning aspect. We don't want "empty of meaning"! We reduce not only the physical but the interior as well.
I'll never forget in the movie "Kate and Leopold" when Hugh Jackman is outraged at how Meg Ryan eats her food. There is no enjoyment, no time taken, no real effort. I understand "Kate" completely, since too often I am scarfing down food in between one business and the next, and barely caring what it is I'm eating. Yet, Leopold's character is right on the money! He works hard to perfect the "fixing" of Kate's toaster so that the timer can be set to toast the bread to exactly the desired amount of cooked. He sees an interior, an innate good, in what the bread can be. Objectively, it is bread. Flour, water, all that other stuff (I'm no baker). Subjectively, we're looking at the opportunity to feel full, to feel good, to feel cared for, to receive nourishment, to receive happiness, to experience gratitude. Bread can give gratitude, but it can't give if you won't receive, and you can't receive if you won't allow it to give. Yes? Hope that makes sense.
Ok, long post (what did you expect from me), but let's hit it home one more time - integration!!!!!! Take time to think about this, please. Consider the unity of your person, and of the many things around you. What you do, what you say, the activities that define you, the habits you have formed, the people you care for, the way you live, the passion you hold, the food you eat, the songs you sing - everything effects who you are. Your soul is directly related to all of the world via your body, and your body is inseparable from your soul for all of life. All of the stimuli you receive everyday forms the interior person. Embodied soul.
Let us pray to grow in awareness, in sensitivity, to this truth. Mary, Mother of God, pray for us.
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