Wedding Words and Works, Part 3

Learning the spousal spirituality of the Song of Songs

06/10/2025

John Paul II completes his treatment of the wedding work by providing a special spousal spirituality reflecting deeply on the unique Old Testament books of Song of Songs and Tobit. Sooner or later, all couples experience dryness, discouragement, and sometimes even face divorce. Husband and wife feel like the unfortunate couple at Cana in John 2, who embarrassingly ran out of wine at their wedding (Jn 2:3).

Symbolically speaking, the initial inebriation of married love (the wine) of the honeymoon gives way to the staid sobriety (the water) of the honey-do list: the daily drudgery, emotional distance, bickering, and who’s turn is it to wake up with the baby? By contrast, John Paul’s analysis of Song of Songs and Tobit seeks to produce the opposite effect: to turn the water of lack-luster love back into the wine of the Lord’s love for us. And ultimately, he wants to raise a cup to the couple’s lips like at a wedding Mass so they can taste again “the best wine” (Jn 2:10), namely, Jesus.

Let me make three quick comments about the pope’s penetrating examination of the Song of Songs. First, he notes that the overall structure is not simply an inspired poem, but more of a duet or a dialogue between a lover and his beloved. John Paul remarks:

What was barely expressed in the second chapter of Genesis (vv 23-25) in just a few simple and essential words is developed here in full dialogue, or rather in a duet, in which the Bridegroom’s words are interwoven with the bride’s, and they complete each other (552).

I will never forget the loving duet by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton called “Islands in the Stream.” They sang in sync: “Islands in the stream / That is what we are / No one in between / How can we be wrong? / Sail away with me / To another world / And we rely on each other, ah, ha / From one lover to another, uh ha.” Now, Kenny and Dolly are clearly not inspired authors of Scripture. Nonetheless, they still capture the same enchanting duet and dialogue of lovers. As such, their song gives us a glimpse into the enduring appeal of the Song of Songs.

Secondly, John Paul calls our attention to the paradoxical titles that the bridegroom and the bride bestow on each other. The bridegroom says: “You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride” (Song 4:9). And for her part, the bride replies: “O that you were a brother to me, who nursed at my mother’s breast!” (Song 8:1).

The Holy Father notes that by addressing the bride as “sister” the bridegroom expresses “a disinterested tenderness” that is filled with respect and reverence for the person of the bride. John Paul recognizes the result of this disinterested love: “From here [the perspective of seeing the bride in familial terms], consequently, arises the peace that the bride speaks of” (566).

I had a professor in the seminary who suggested that whenever we feel lustful thoughts toward a beautiful woman, we should try to visualize her as a family member. How so? Well, if she were older to think of her as our mother; if she were the same age, to see her as our sister, if she were younger then as our daughter. Now I know where he got that idea! In other words, To gaze upon an attractive woman as family effectively extinguishes Cupids’ flaming arrows of eros. Purity, therefore, restores peace in relationships.

Thirdly, the pope-saint turns his attention to the highly suggestive metaphors of “a garden closed” and “a fountain sealed” (Song 4:12). John Paul maintains that these restrictive images reveal that the depths of each spouse’s personality – particularly the bride’s – remain inviolable, in a sense, out of the bridegroom’s reach, until she willingly unlocks the gates to her heart. The pope argues:

The “sister-bride” is for the man the master of her own mystery as a “garden closed” and a “fountain sealed.” The “language of the body” reread in the truth goes hand in hand with the discovery of the inner inviolability of the person (572).

The most moving depiction I have ever seen of the inviolability of the human heart was in the movie “Gandhi”, starring Ben Kingsley. The intrepid liberator of India called his countrymen to non-violent resistance to British rule. He declared:

All Indians must now be fingerprinted, like criminals [but we will not submit to this rule]...We will not strike a blow, but we will resist them…And through our pain we will make them see their injustice, and it will hurt – as all fighting hurts. They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. Then they will have my dead body – not my obedience.

Like citizens freely choose to obey government authority (or not), so spouses freely choose to submit to one another out of love (or not). Obedience and love reside infinitely higher than the ruthless reach of coercion.

John Paul articulates how spouses entrust the hidden depths of their personalities by becoming a gift:

The truth of the increasing closeness of the spouses through love develops in the subjective dimension “of the heart,” of affection and sentiment. In the same dimension, this is equally the discovery within oneself of the gift of the other, in some sense, of “tasting him” within oneself (574).

That is, a “fountain sealed” remains intrinsically inviolable until the person makes a gift of himself, allowing the other person to taste the depths of their love.

And then John Paul adds this concluding corollary. When the spousal gift of self has reached its maximum intensity and truth – when couples have given of themselves down to the last drop – they take a step beyond eros and reach the sublime heights of agape. That is, spouses move beyond the Old Testament world of the Song of Songs, and wade into the New Testament world of St. Paul.

John Paul seems to speak contemplatively:

[I]t seems that love here opens up before us, I would say, in two perspectives, as though that in which human eros closes its own horizon were opened further, through Paul’s words, in another horizon of love that speaks another language, the love that seems to emerge from another dimension of the person, and which calls, invites, to another communion. This love has been called agape (590).

In other words, every human love ultimately leaves the spouses thirsting for more. That is not a criticism of human love, but an important acknowledgement that we are made for divine love, for communion with God himself. As Christopher West once said: “Don’t hang your hat on a hook that cannot bear its weight.” No human spouse can bear the weight of our desire for infinite love.

And perhaps that is the most helpful insight for spousal spirituality: human love, great as it is, finally betrays a fatal flaw: it has an expiration date, but we seek a love that is eternal. Every human married couple inevitably runs out of wine, until they invite Jesus to their wedding feast, and finally realize he is “the best wine” because he alone is the eternal Bridegroom.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Wedding Words and Works, Part 2

Seeing how spouses fulfill the roles of prophets

06/09/2025

If you are just joining us, we we are in the middle of a series of homilies that began last year on Pope St. John Paul II's Theology of the Body. Last year, we reviewed Part One, where the pope-saint taught us Christ's three Words about human love in Eden, on earth, and in eternity.

Now we are following his teaching in Part Two about the sacrament of marriage, the primordial expression of God's love that human persons are privileged to experiences as spouses. More recently, we looked at how marriage is like Mt. Everest in its reach and relevance to Catholic theology. And now we are considering "the wedding work," that is, the brides and groom's words and works as they live this primordial sacrament.

According to the John Paul II, another way spousal body language teaches the do’s and don’t’s of the social intercourse of heaven is by fulfilling the role of a prophet. Just as the prophets of the Old Testament – John Paul highlights the ministry of Isaiah, Hosea, and Ezekiel (pp. 535-37) – taught Israel how they should relate to God, their Bridegroom, so spousal love models how Christians should relate to Christ, our Bridegroom.

This is one sense of what the pope means when he claims that “human life is by its nature ‘co-educational’,” namely, spouses educate each other as prophets educate others, and spouses together become a prophetic team to educate the world. But John Paul insists that the spouse’s bodies fulfill this prophetic mission in a singular way:

On the basis of the “prophetism of the body,” ministers of the sacrament of Marriage perform an act of prophetic character…A “prophet” is one who expresses with human words the truth that comes from God, one who speaks this truth in the place of God, in his name and in some sense with his authority (539).

In other words, just as we must learn the different social mores and etiquette to successfully navigate cultures on earth – burping at the dinner table may be acceptable in Shanghai but not in Shreveport – so the body language of spouses instruct us in the mores and etiquette of eternity; the do’s and don’t’s of heaven. Thus, the bodies of spouses serve as prophets who speak for God.

The Holy Father adds another, and perhaps the most crucial, point about spousal body language, namely, this language can be either true or false; it can be honest or lie. And the best way to measure the truth and falsity of body language is by using the gauge of the wedding vows. In this sense, we might say that spousal body language occurs on two valences or levels, like protons and neutrons revolve at difference valences around an atom.

At one valence, spouses speak the truth by body language that accurately reflects the words they spoke at their wedding, that is, by being loving, attentive, generous, forgiving, cheerful, and so forth. At the other valence, however, the body can communicate falsely by contracting the wedding vows, being egotistical, petty, vain, duplicitous, lazy, etc. John Paul puts it in extreme terms: “[T]he body tells the truth through faithfulness and conjugal love, and, when it commits “adultery” it tells a lie, it commits falsehood” (538).

Let me give you some practical parallels. I’ve noticed that some professional tennis players will in effect “lie” with their body language on the court. Once I saw Carlos Alcaraz playing against a less skilled player, and he turned his gaze toward one side of the court, as if he were about to hit the ball there. His look fooled his opponent who moved in that direction. But Alcaraz actually directed the ball toward the other side of the court and easily won the point. The eyes of his body “said” one thing, but his shot said the opposite.

Basketball players lie with their bodies by doing a no-look pass deceiving the other team. Baseball pitchers lie with their bodies by trying to catch a player leaning off first base by a quick throw to get him out. Football quarterbacks lie by a pump-fake to cause the cornerback to come forward so they can throw a long pass. Lying with the body is helpful in sports, but it is harmful between spouses.

Why would married couples ever engage in such deceptive body language? John Paul recalls his earlier analyses about concupiscence (pp. 282-92) to explain why the spouses’ bodies might speak falsely or lie. In previous miles we discovered that concupiscence is the residual fall out from Original Sin (even after that sin has been forgive by Baptism). That is, concupiscence is a violent rupture in man’s interior experience of Original Solitude, Original Unity, and Original Nakedness, the three syllables of Christ’s First Word.

Whereas in Genesis 2 – before they committed Original Sin – Adam and Eve conversed through their body language truly and genuinely – indeed, effortlessly – and without any hint of dishonesty. Their body language, like their bodies themselves, were truly “naked” and without any pretense or posturing. Adam and Eve would have been “turrible” NBA players as Charles Barkley says. Their bodies were utterly incapable of throwing a no-look pass.

However, beginning in Genesis 3 (with the dawn of Original Sin), their bodies start to send false and deceptive signals, in fact, they learned to lie. The pope describes how Adam and Eve’s legacy of lying – a very apt analogy for concupiscence – continues to plague married couples today:

[W]e realize that the one who rereads this “language” and then expresses it not according to the needs proper to marriage as a covenant and sacrament, is naturally and morally the man of concupiscence: male and female, both [man and woman] understood as the “man of concupiscence” (545).

In other words, couples who are consumed by concupiscence fail to communicate through their bodies the simple truth of their wedding vows but rather speak falsely and contradict those vows. They are no longer holy prophets but unholy prevaricators, like Judas, a false prophet, who betrayed Jesus, the true Prophet, with a kiss.

Learning to read and speak this spousal body language, then, is the real “wedding work” of our third bucket of marriage preparation. When we arrive at our wedding day, we should focus not simply on the externals of whether the bride’s train will be 2 feet or 12 feet long or if you want 2 levels or 4 levels on the wedding cake.

Rather, our attention should absorbed by the internals of the depth of meaning of the wedding vows, and catching the social, spiritual, and sexual cues that create a life-long “consortium vitae” for earth and heaven, that is, a true partnership of life embracing every aspect. And that would not be such a “turrible idea.”

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Wedding Words and Works, Part 1

Looking closer at the “wedding work” of marriage preparation

06/07/2025

Several miles ago in this long walk with Jesus, I shared that when I prepare couples for marriage, I break-down that complex, 6-month process by saying we fill in effect three buckets. The first bucket we call the paperwork, the second bucket is the heart work (the hard work!), and the third bucket I refer to as the wedding work, all the details and drama of the big wedding day.

In a sense, Pope St. John Paul II also directs our attention to the wedding work, more precisely, the wedding vows and subsequent sexual consummation, which he appropriately entitles: “The Dimension of the Sign.” Why? Well, the sacramental sign of marriage consists not only in the union of hearts but also in the union of bodies.

But frequently the bride – or more often the mother of the bride – becomes a bridezilla. That is, she gets so caught up in the externals – the dress, the flowers, the photography, the reception, etc. – that she all but forgets the internals – the meaning of the vows, the life-long commitment, the unspoken language of the body, the witness to divine love, etc.

In this third bucket of the wedding work, then, John Paul II does not want us to miss precisely these internals, or what we might call the spirituality of the wedding day. And he does this by demonstrating how the theology of the body becomes body language.

Incidentally, in chapter two we also find those 31 extra pages that did not form part of the pope’s original material on the Theology of the Body. In the interest of other pressing papal priorities, John Paul decided to excise portions of his rich reflections on the Song of Songs and Tobit.

Michael Waldstein, the pope’s translator, however, supplied both the excluded and the included material in his version of John Paul’s masterwork, Man and Woman He Created Them. Waldstein explains why he enlarged the papal book in this manner:

Pope John Paul II had originally prepared six catecheses [Wednesday audience addresses] on the Song of Songs and three on Tobit…on the basis of the pre-papal book manuscript…For actual delivery [however], John Paul II cut the original text to less than half by marking…which paragraphs were to be read…In this edition, the two versions [the delivered and the undelivered] are printed synoptically on facing pages (732).

So, whereas the pope’s book contained 53 pages on chapter two, Waldstein’s edition contains 84 pages. Who knows, maybe by adding duplicating pages, Waldstein could charge a little more for his editor’s cut edition.

In every culture and civilization, social intercourse is governed not only by written, codified rules of engagement – like the U.S. Constitution, and traffic laws like stop at a red light, go at a green light – but also by unspoken, assumed mores, or etiquette. For example, here in the United States, people would be offended if someone burped while eating supper.

Indeed, parents scold small children who think burping at the table is funny and attention-getting. But in other cultures – China, India, Turkey, and generally in the Middle East – people consider burping, even belching, after eating a compliment to the chef. What is traditional and valuable in Asia is taboo and verboten in America.

Many years ago while I was vocation director I visited Bishop J. Peter Sartain at his episcopal residence in Little Rock. We were having a very engaging discussion and Bishop Sartain is always an attentive and jovial interlocutor. At several points I noticed he made several slight yawns.

But I shrugged it off figuring his was a little tired but I felt fine so I kept talking. Later I learned a polite yawn is a signal that it is time to wrap up the conversation and go home. I completely missed that unspoken social cue, the unwritten but critical rules of social intercourse necessary for healthy and happy relationships.

In chapter two of Part Two, John Paul wants to teach us the highly valuable yet unwritten rules of engagement based on the wedding work. He zeroes in on how the words the couple utters in the wedding vows are later expressed exactly by the language of the body, especially – although not exclusively – through sexual intimacy.

In every true marriage, therefore, a couple has to show evidence of their love by both the words of marriage and the works of marriage. In Latin that is called “ratum et consummatum” – marriage is ratified by the words and sealed by sexual intercourse. In a sense, John Paul does not want married couples to miss these social cues for a healthy and happy marriage like I missed my cue with Archbishop Sartain.

The Holy Father maintains further that when these two essential aspects of married life – the spoken vows and the unspoken body language of intimacy – are seamlessly combined, the married couple stands before the world as a sign of God’s grace operative in the world through the sacrament of marriage.

Don’t forget that John Paul titled this chapter “The Dimension of the Sign.” In other words, their wedding words and work constitute a sign language that speaks loudly not only to each other as spouses but to the world, indeed, to the entire cosmos. Thus, John Paul asserts:

[A]t the moment of contracting marriage, the man and woman, with the suitable words and re-reading the perennial “language of the body” form a sign, an unrepeatable sign, which also has a future-oriented meaning, “all the days of my life,” that is, until death. This is the visible and efficacious sign of the covenant with God in Christ, that is, of grace (533-34).

Put differently, the Theology of the Body helps us interpret or translate the marital language of the body – the couple’s wedding words and works – into a very specific sign language, namely, as the sign of grace that guides the social intercourse of heaven. Thus these words and works of marital love alert us not to the mores prevalent in Manhattan or Milan, but rather to the etiquette pervading the high society of eternity.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

The Case Against Christianity

Living a counter-cultural Christian faith

06/01/2025

Acts 1:1-11 In the first book, Theophilus, I dealt with all that Jesus did and taught until the day he was taken up, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. He presented himself alive to them by many proofs after he had suffered, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While meeting with them, he enjoined them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for “the promise of the Father about which you have heard me speak; for John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

The annual feast of the Ascension of Jesus into heaven always causes confusion and not a little conflict in the Church. Have you seen the funny meme floating around on Facebook about it? It depicts a classical painting of Jesus’ Ascension and has these words from Jesus: “I am now going to my Father…unless you live in certain regions in which case I’ll be around until Sunday.”

In other words, Catholics cannot make up our minds when to celebrate the Ascension. Some diocese – like Little Rock – wait to celebrate the Ascension on Sunday. But other dioceses celebrate it on Thursday. Why the diff? Well, Thursday would be exactly 40 days after Easter, which is when our first reading from Acts 1 said Jesus ascended into heaven. It used to be called “Ascension Thursday.”

But some bishops feel Catholics will not come to another holy day of obligation in the middle of the week, so they move the feast to the following Sunday since we're already coming to Mass. How do you feel about that strategy toward holy days? Personally, I prefer to celebrate the Ascension back on Thursday, like it says in the Bible. Why? Well, I worry that we are slowly caving in to our culture and living our faith only when it is convenient or easy.

I will never forget Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s stern warning to be counter cultural. He thundered from the pulpit: “Dead fish float down-stream! It takes live fish to fight against the current.” In other words, are we willing to suffer even a little for our faith, or are we quick to wave the white flag of surrender, and go with the flow of everyone around us?

One of my favorite books by Henri de Lubac, called The Drama of Atheistic Humanism, renders a similar guilty verdict on modern Catholics. He asks rhetorically: “Do the unbelievers who jostle us at every turn observe on our brows the radiance of that gladness, which twenty centuries ago, captivated the fine flower of the pagan world?”

He continued: “Are our hearts the hearts of men risen with Christ? Do we, in our time, bear witness to the Beatitudes?” (122-23). Let me put the problem a little more personally: when our children go away to college, how many of them still practice the faith? Did we raise them to be live fish who fight the cultural current, or dead fish who go with the flow?

Here are a few strategies to be live fish and swim upstream. For instance, Fort Smith people are funny when a new restaurant opens. For one week everyone rushes to eat there, but a few weeks later we have all but forgotten about it. Instead of following the crowd, cook a meal at home, and eat together as a family. And leave the TV off, and don’t bring phones to the table. Swim against that current.

Many people will take a week or two of vacation this summer. Make it a point to make it to Mass on Sundays. Sometimes parishioners take a selfie at the church where they attended, and send it to me saying, “See, Fr. John, we made it to Mass!” Others bring me a bulletin from the church as a “proof of purchase” for going to Mass. Swim against the current to skip Mass during the summer.

When you move into a new house or apartment, invite the priest or deacon over to bless it (of course you feed him dinner). Hang a crucifix or Sacred Heart of Jesus painting in a prominent place in your home. Participate in our Corpus Christi procession on June 22 walking through the streets of Fort Smith. Be a live fish and show the world you’re not ashamed to be Catholic.

Hang a rosary from your rearview mirror, and pray the rosary while driving so you don’t yell at other crazy drivers. Like the old Christian self-examination: if you were put on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? Only a live fish could be convicted of being a Christian.

By the way, speaking of fish, did you know that the fish was a symbol of Christianity in the early Church? If you lived in the Roman Empire and met a stranger and you didn’t know they were Christian, you might draw an arc in the sand with the toe of your sandal. If the other person were a Christian, they would draw an opposite arc and complete the outline of a fish. That’s where Catholics got the name of “Fish-eaters.”

But the fish symbol meant more than a secret Christian code to identify one another. The letters for fish in Greek are actually an acronym for the whole Christian faith. Fish in Greek is ΙΧΘΥΣ. The letters stand for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior” a perfect summary of the entire faith, all found in a fish. In the Roman Empire Christians were counter-cultural.

Indeed, so counter-cultural that they were put on trial, convicted for their Christianity, and fed to the lions, because there was plenty of proof against them. As we Christian fish swim around in our modern American culture, do we fight the current or just float downstream? Perhaps one place to start building a case against us is by coming to Mass on Ascension Thursday.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

In a Class by Itself, Part 5

Rounding out our reflections on the Mt. Everest of marriage

05/31/2025

In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the fellowship of the ring led by Gandalf decides to burrow into the deep tunnels dug by dwarfs rather than attempting to climb the Misty Mountains exteriorly. Our path on the Mt. Everest of marriage now also turns away from the daunting outside to the dark inside as we follow the lead of Pope St. John Paul II’s theology of the body.

Our papal Sherpa leads us through two tunnels at the end of chapter one of Part Two. First, John Paul explains that marriage is indissoluble, that term expresses the words of the wedding vows that couples say: “Till death do us part.”

And the pope-saint leads us through a second tunnel showing us that every child born from a marriage brings an undying hope to the family. An old Spanish adage says: “Every child is born with a loaf of bread under his arm.” Every baby is born as a beacon of hope.

I help couples understand the importance of indissolubility by joking: “I don’t care how big your biceps are, you cannot tear apart what God puts together.” After all, Jesus declared in Mt 19:6, “Therefore what God has joined let man not separate.” In other words, marriage’s indissolubility flows far more from what God does at a wedding than what the couple does.

The Holy Father goes a step further by connecting this indissolubility to the inner life of God, saying: “To such a unity and such a communion of Persons [Persons of the Holy Trinity], are dedicated Christ’s words referring to marriage as the primordial sacrament” (517).

The root reason marriage is indissoluble, therefore, is because spouses are caught up in a love that is far more than human; God’s grace raptures them up into the eternal love beating in the heart of the Holy Trinity. Consequently, spouses should not divorce because the Holy Trinity does not divorce. This is the deepest meaning of indissolubility.

John Paul will state this with even greater precision:

When Christ…confirms marriage as a sacrament instituted by the Creator “at the beginning” – when he accordingly requires its indissolubility – he thereby opens marriage to the salvific action of God[‘s grace], to the powers…which help to overcome the consequences of sin, and to build the unity of man and woman (518).

God never asks us to do something for which he does not give us the proper tools. God gives every married couple the mission – sometimes it feels like a “mission impossible” – of being an unbreakable mirror of the Holy Trinity.

I have worked with married couples who stay together even after one of them commits adultery because they both draw on those “powers which help them overcome the consequences of sin, and to build the unity of man and woman.” Indissolubility is the “mission impossible” called marriage.

A second tunnel John Paul invites us to explore is the “hope of everyday” that every baby brings by its birth. One of my favorite professors at the University of Dallas was Dr. Janet Smith. She taught philosophy but she had the uncanny knack for making it practical. One day she said very memorably: “Having a baby is like induced maturity.”

She went on to elaborate: “When you are just a couple, it is easy to be selfish and only worry about yourself. But the day you have a baby you start thinking about how safe the playgrounds are, what shows are on television, who is the chief of police, who’s on the school board, etc.” Babies, in other words, grow us adults up.

Michael Waldstein, the translator of the theology of the body, breaks down John Paul often complex language into baby talk that heck even I can understand. He explains how babies give their parents the hope of Christian maturity:

"Life according to the Spirit also expresses itself in mutual knowledge (Genesis 4:1), by which the spouses submit their masculinity and femininity to the blessing of fruitfulness [birthing babies, as we say]. It expresses itself in the deep awareness of the holiness of the new life to which both give rise” (755).

I will never forget my brother’s words when he described how he felt holding his first-born son in the delivery room. First, he felt a wave of love wash over him. He knew he could die for this baby. Then he felt not a wave but a tsunami of responsibility for this baby. He was responsible for the baby's every need. Can you say “induced maturity”? Every baby brings the hope that their parents will grow up.

Of course, this is not an infallible hope – hope intrinsically carries a certain uncertainty – as we can see all around us. Grandparents are raising grandchildren because parents have summarily abdicated their parental duties. And the scourge of abortion has not significantly abated in spite of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

Nonetheless, every baby brings a bright hope from heaven. And that is precisely why they come to earth: to remind us our true hope lies in heaven, that is, in God’s grace, and where, finally, “God will be all in all” (1 Co 15:25).

Perhaps we can now briefly summarize the long mile we have covered in walking around and admiring the magnificent Mt. Everest of marriage. Following our faithful Sherpa, John Paul II, we scaled the sides of marriage by four passes. First, we discovered how marriage helps us see the Church as both the Body and the Bride of Christ.

Second, we learned how divine grace is best understood as a gift, especially in light of the gift of the body spouses exchange in sexual intimacy. Third, we reflected on the similarity between the Father’s creation in the beginning and the Son’s redemption in the end as both reflecting the love of the triune God.

All salvation history is a marital affair from beginning to end. And fourth we saw how marriage shed its lucid light on the other six sacraments, shining on their hidden depths as six aspects of the mystical marriage with Christ. Jesus the Bridegroom loves us “in the spousal way” which is none other than the sacramental way.

But then our fearless Sherpa led us into the darker but no less divine tunnels within the mountain of marriage. He pointed out how marriage is indissoluble and unbreakable, like the love of the indivisible Holy Trinity.

And in a second tunnel John Paul helped us discover the hope that every baby brings to his or her parents, but also to the whole world. Babies make us more human, and their greatest hope is to make us more Christian. The loaf of bread every baby brings may turn out to be the Eucharist.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

In a Class by Itself, Part 4

The third and fourth passes over the Mt. Everest of marriage

05/30/2025

For those who have not been at morning Mass this week, this is the fourth homily in a series on Pope St. John Paul II’s theology of the body. So, good luck keeping up with it. Our spiritual Sherpa John Paul II guides us up a third pass over the Mt. Everest of marriage which turns out to be a dual passage, and transforms the doctrines of creation and redemption.

That is, John Paul proposes that both God the Father’s handiwork in creation as well as God the Son’s sacrifice for redemption are best understood in terms of marriage. The divine apple doesn’t fall far from the divine tree, so Jesus confesses in Jn 5:19: “The Son cannot do anything on his own but only what he sees his Father doing for what he does his son will do also.”

Every artist, author, musician, sculptor, chef, architect, in a word, every creator leaves traces of himself or herself in their works, like you see cameos of Alfred Hitchcock in his movies. Theologians call the traces that God leaves of himself in creation “vestigia Dei” literally “footprints of God.”

Our pope-saint maintains that marriage is the most unmistakable footprint of God in creation; indeed, marriage carries God’s very image and likeness (Gn 1:26). John Paul explains:

The words of Genesis 2:24, “the man will…unite with his wife, and the two will be one flesh,” spoken on the background of this original reality [of creation] in the theological sense, constitute marriage as an integral part and in some sense the central part of the “sacrament of creation” (506).

The key words “integral part” and “central part” make me think not only of footprints but in particular of how DNA functions in living organisms.

Just like DNA provides the biological genetic material that communicates structure and purpose to living organisms – their raison d’être in French – so marriage serves as basic theological genetic material giving structure and purpose to creation as a whole. In other words, marriage reveals why God bothered to create in the first place. Marriage is the DNA of creation.

When I studied at the University of Dallas, I took a class called “Junior Poet.” We chose a famous poet, read all his or her works, as well as their criticism, and were grilled at the end of the semester by three literature professors. So I chose Gerard Manley Hopkins because he wrote the fewest poems at only 74. Maybe I could manage that many.

Gerard Manley Hopkins put this theological genetic code into poetry: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out like shining from shook foil.” Theologically-speaking, therefore, every molecule in the universe carries a spark of God’s grandeur. That is, God’s trinitarian love most clearly seen in marriage was the Big Bang that brought everything into existence.

On the other side of this dual pass, John Paul teaches that the mystical marriage of Christ and the Church carries the theological genetic code for redemption (the sacrifice of the Cross) because by it God the Son brings about “a new creation” (2 Co 5:17). Ponder this papal passage charged with the grandeur of God:

This redemptive gift of self “for” the Church also includes – according to Pauline thought – Christ’s gift of self to the Church, in the image of the spousal relation that unites husband and wife in marriage. In this way, [what Christ accomplished in] the sacrament of redemption clothes itself, so to speak, in the figure and form of the primordial sacrament [of marriage, what the Father accomplished in creation] (508).

In other words, the mystical marriage of Christ and the Church provides new theological language to describe Christ’s saving death, which ushers in nothing short of “a new heavens and a new earth” (Rv 21:1). Like Father, like Son.

John Paul sees these two passes intersecting in every marriage and therefore articulated eloquently in Ephesians. He muses:

In this way the Mystery hidden from all eternity in God [God as triune love] – a mystery that in the beginning in the sacrament of creation became a visible reality through the union of the first man and the first woman in the perspective of marriage – becomes in the sacrament of redemption a visible reality in the indissoluble union of Christ with the Church, which the author of Ephesians presents as the spousal union of the two, husband and wife (509).

In John Paul II’s estimation marriage stands as “the primordial sacrament” because it, more than anything else in creation or redemption, serves as the theological DNA where we detect the vestigia Dei of both Father and the Son.

Our papal Sherpa points us to a fourth and final pass over the Mt. Everest of marriage to reach its summit by seeing marriage as the prototype and pattern for the other six sacraments, even the Eucharist. The pope is not shy about stressing this audacious aspect of marriage:

If we reflect deeply on this dimension [of the whole sacramental order], we have to conclude that all the sacraments of the New Covenant find their prototype in some way in marriage as the primordial sacrament (511).

Let’s look briefly at how marriage gives their marching order to each of the other sacraments.

John Paul immediately notes that Baptism and Eucharist, easily find enormous meaning in the light of marriage. He writes:

This text [of Eph 5:26, “make her holy with the washing of water accompanied by the word”] without any doubt speaks about the sacrament of Baptism…the Eucharist…seems to be indicated by the following words…: everyone nourishes and cares for his body “as Christ does with the Church, because we are members of his body” (Eph 5:29-30) (514).

Beyond Baptism and Eucharist, we likewise observe marriage’s prototypical function in Confirmation as our Lord beautifying his Bride with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Through confession, Jesus forgives his backsliding Bride of her sins.

By the Anointing of the Sick, Jesus purifies and prepares his Bride for the eternal nuptials of heaven. Through the men called to Holy Orders Jesus demonstrates the love of a Bridegroom for his Bride. And this is the root reason why every sacrament without exception begins and ends by invoking the Holy Trinity, whose divine DNA is enshrined in every marriage reflecting God's triune love: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

We have reached, therefore, the summit of the Eucharist seated atop the Mt. Everest of marriage by means of yet a fourth pass: marriage as the model of every sacrament. The pope succinctly summarizes that the seven sacraments are how Christ loves his Bride the Church “in the spousal way” (478). The spousal way simply means the sacramental way. Look around: can you see how majestic this Mt. Everest of marriage is? From its peak you can see everything else better.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

In a Class by Itself, Part 3

Accompanying our papal-Sherpa on two passes over Everest

05/29/2025

Did you see the astounding news on Tuesday, May 27, that Kami Rita a Sherpa in Nepal has reached the summit of Mt. Everest a record 31 times? Most people are overjoyed to do that once in a lifetime. Our papal Sherpa Pope St. John Paul II only wants to crest the sacramental Mt. Everest of marriage a modest 4 times.

In four passes our pope-Sherpa will show us how marriage redefines Catholic theology in four ways: first, in understanding the Church, second in the notion of grace, third in the way God the Father creates, and fourth, in the way God the Son redeems.

The Holy Father’s first pass up Mt. Everest of marriage is to see how marriage redefines the doctrine of the Church both as Christ’s Bride as well as Christ’s Body. John Paul II enlists the letter to the Ephesians to bring out new features of these two spousal aspects of the Church.

For example, John Paul explores how Christ keeps his bride “eternally young,” explaining:

The “glorious” Church is the one “without spot or wrinkle.” “Spot” can be understood as a sign of ugliness, “wrinkle” as a sign of growing old and indicate moral defects, sin. One can add that in St. Paul the “old man” signifies the man of sin (Rom 6:6). Christ, therefore, with his redemptive and spousal love brings it about that the Church not only becomes sinless, but remains “eternally young” (483).

Remember that song by Alphaville, “Forever young, I want to be forever young”? Well, being married to Jesus as his Bride the Church is the true fountain of youth and beauty, meaning being innocent and impeccable. How so? Well, Jesus communicates his own eternal youth (sinlessness and glory) to his Bride, the Church, just like all loving spouses share everything in common.

Secondly, the Holy Father reflects on how Christ becomes “one body” with his Bride. Isn’t this one flesh union of spouses the deepest meaning of the moment of Holy Communion? Our human body becomes one with the divine Body of Christ. The moment of Communion is strikingly similar to the moment of the consummation of newlyweds on their wedding night.

St. Augustine draws out one dramatic implication from this Eucharistic union with Christ in the end, that is, at the “resurrection of the dead.” In the last book of his classic The City of God, the Doctor of Grace suggests:

As for what the apostle said of the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ [Ep 4:13]…if we are to refer it to the resurrection of the body, the meaning is that all shall rise neither beyond nor under youth, but in that vigor and age to which we know that Christ had arrived. For even the world's wisest men have fixed the bloom of youth at about the age of thirty; and when this period has been passed, the man begins to decline towards the defective and duller period of old age (Bk XXII, Ch 15).

That is, our resurrected bodies will enjoy the same age as Jesus’ resurrected body. Back when I was thirty years old, they called me, “Father What-A-Waste.”

Consider how John Paul puts this “bloom of youth”:

There is no doubt that Christ [the Groom] is a subject distinct from the Church [the Bride]; [but] still in virtue of a particular [spousal] relationship, he makes himself one with her in an organic union of head and body; the Church is so strongly, so essentially herself in virtue of a union with the (mystical) Christ (480).

St. Joan of Arc’s response to an illegitimate and vindictive church tribunal that accused of witchcraft is enshrined for our edification in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

A reply of St. Joan of Arc to her judges sums up the faith of the holy doctors and the good sense of the believer: "About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they're just one thing, and we shouldn't complicate the matter" (CCC, 795).

Jesus becomes one with the Church, and makes her “eternally young”, sharing with her the glory of his own resurrected body. Thus, “THE Sacrament” of marriage illuminates ecclesiology (the theology of the Church), and opens up before us the first passage up the mighty mountain of marriage.

John Paul II finds a second approach up the Mt. Everest of marriage by redefining the doctrine of grace under the aspect of gift. In our earlier examination of Original Unity, we learned that “being a gift to someone” was the opposite of “using someone.” If you use someone you cannot claim to love them.

On the other hand, gift and love are interchangeable terms in the Theology of the Body. Whenever my mom writes a letter or note, at the top of the paper she quotes 1 Jn 4:7, which reads: “God is love.” My mom could substitute the word “gift” for “love” and not change in the least the meaning of that passage. She could just as easily write: “God is gift.”

Let me give you a concrete example of how spouses should be a gift to each other and thereby open our eyes to a new meaning of divine grace. When couples come for marriage preparation, one in a battery of questions I ask is this: “Do you agree to give each other the normal rights of marriage necessary to have children?”

That awkwardly articulated question actually implies that each spouse will enjoy “rights” over the body of the other spouse. The wife’s body belongs to the husband and vice versa. More to the point, they can ask for sex – within reason and at reasonable times – because each has relinquished his or her rights over their own body to the other.

Something similar happens sacramentally between Christ and his Bride, the Church, and brightly illuminates the reality of grace. As a priest I not only represent Christ to you, I also represent the Church (Christ’s Bride) to the Lord. And, therefore – I shudder to assert this – I exercise certain “rights” over Christ’s Body. For example, I could hypothetically get out of bed at 3 a.m. and celebrate Mass in the rectory chapel.

When I utter the words of consecration over the bread – “This is my body” – Jesus is obligated (obviously out of love) to wake up and transubstantiate that bread into his own Body and give it to me as the gift of the Eucharist. After all, I just said, “This is my body” (emphasis on the possessive “my” meaning it belongs to Fr. John). At Holy Communion at 3 a.m., therefore, I become sacramentally one body with Jesus, analogous to the one-flesh union of spouses.

Every time our parish community gathers for Mass, the Bride of Christ asks for her “matrimonial rights” over the Body of Christ, and Jesus gives himself to us as a gift, as any good and loving spouse would do. The pope explains how becoming gift – especially like the bodily gift of spouses – casts an almost blinding light on the theology of grace:

The analogy of the love of spouses (or spousal love) seems to emphasize above all the aspect of God’s gift of himself to man who is chosen “from ages” in Christ (literally, his gift of self to “Israel,” to the “Church”); a gift that is in its essential character, or as a gift, total (or rather “radical”) and irrevocable…In this way the analogy of spousal love indicates the “radical” character of grace: of the whole order of created grace (501).

By the way, the word “radical” originates from the Latin word “radix” meaning “root.” Therefore, to say like John Paul that “spousal love indicates the radical character of grace” is to suggest in the strongest possible terms that grace is rooted in giftedness, which itself find its own radix (root) in God who is love, or as my mom might write on her notes “God is gift.” In other words, grace is at root a gift like spouses give each other the gift of their bodies.

Again, we crest the Eucharistic summit of the Mt. Everest of marriage by examining the theology of saving grace (soteriology) in terms of Jesus’ total, unconditional, and radical self-gift of his Body and Blood to his Bride the Church. Is it not becoming breathtakingly clear (it is hard to breathe atop Mt. Everest) how the limpid light of the Theology of the Body is shining on every nook and cranny of Catholic doctrine?

Praised be Jesus Christ!