Getting onboard the Barque of St. Peter
06/16/2025
John Paul II titles the second
section of the third chapter of Part Two an “Outline of Conjugal Spirituality”
(639-63), where three distinct systems of powers converge. I am reminded of the
1985 hit by Huey Lewis and the News called “The Power of Love.” The opening
lines go: “The power of love is a curious thing / Make one man weep, make
another man sing / Change a hawk into a little white dove / More than a
feeling, that’s the power of love.”
John Paul concludes his entire
Theology of the Body by examining this “curious thing” of human love down to
its divine depths, especially as couples experience it in marriage. The
intersection of these three powers of love constitutes the heart of “conjugal
spirituality.”
First, the pope points out that the
sacrament of marriage endows spouses with a new spiritual/sacramental power. He
explains:
This, then, is the essential and
fundamental “power”: the love [of God] planted in the heart (“poured out in our
hearts”) by the Holy Spirit…[S]pouses must implore [God] for such “power” and
for every other “divine help” through prayer;…from the ever-living fountain of
the Eucharist;…[and] must overcome their own faults and sins in the sacrament
of penance (641).
Therefore, married couples can
always avail themselves of two kinds of power: natural powers called virtues
and supernatural powers called sacramental graces and gifts of the Holy Spirit.
We might compare these two marital
powers to two maritime engines, that is, how ships are propelled over the
water. A ship possesses internal sources of power like oars or an engine. But a
ship can also utilize external sources of power when it unfurls its sails is
carried along effortlessly by the wind.
First of all, the enormous exertion
of rowing with oars in order to move a ship is similar to the virtue of
chastity or continence helping couples cross the rough seas of sexuality. The
Holy Father elaborates:
“Continence”…consists in the
ability to master, control, and orient the sexual drives (concupiscence of the
flesh) and their consequences in the psycho-somatic subjectivity of human
persons (644).
By the way, the word “virtue” comes
from the Latin word “vir” which means man or manliness. Being manly, therefore,
means completing hard tasks through sustained effort. Continence is for men,
not for wimps.
But there is a second – and easier!
– power to move the ship of spousal spirituality, namely, by unfurling the
sails and catching the graces and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Here the Holy
Father highlights the gift of reverence, in Latin donum pietatis. The pope
describes reverence in these terms:
Reverence for the two meanings of
the conjugal act – Janet Smith memorably labelled these two meanings “babies
and bonding” – can fully develop only on the basis of a deep orientation to the
personal dignity of what is intrinsic to masculinity and femininity in the
human person, and inseparably in reference to the personal dignity of the new
life that can spring from the conjugal union of man and woman (654).
That is, the gift of reverence
instills in spouses a holy and healthy fear of how spousal sexuality (bonding)
brings a new life (babies) into the world. Reverence trains them to see that
babies and bonding both share a mutual and inseparable divine dignity. How so?
Think of how hard it is for a child
to learn he or she was adopted. Why is such a discovery so unsettling – even
traumatic – for a child, even if the adoptive parents genuinely love and care
for her? Because it matters where we come from, where we are conceived. In
every child’s deepest sense of self, they know they should come from the loving
embrace of a mother and father. Anything less – rape, IVF, even contracepted
sex – deeply offends a baby’s inherent sense of its own divine dignity. In
other words, reverence empowers couples to catch the shared dignity of babies
and bonding.
Don’t misunderstand: I am not
criticizing adoption. I only intend to illustrate how the child’s visceral
reaction to the news of her adoption points to the fact that her biological
parents failed to avail themselves of the gift – the power – of reverence. That
is, in the storm of their unfettered passions, the biological parents ran the
ship of their spousal spirituality aground, by separating their baby from their
bonding.
We might recall how Moses felt a
similar intense donum pietatis in Exodus 3 when he approached the “burning
bush.” He removed his sandals as a gesture of awareness that he was walking on
holy ground. So, too, married couples, feeling the power of the same donum
pietatis, remove all forms of artificial contraceptives – their proverbial
sandals – as they become intensely aware they are treading the holy ground of
spousal intimacy.
Third, the pope considers why
married couples need both natural and supernatural sources of the power of
love. Simple: they are constantly buffeted by the evil power of concupiscence,
the wind and waves of this world whisking couples away from arriving at their
divine destination.
John Paul employs his typical
technical language to describe this third power concupiscence as it erodes
conjugal spirituality:
[T]he concupiscence of the flesh –
and the corresponding sexual “desire” aroused by it – expresses itself in the
sphere of somatic reactivity and further with a psycho-emotive arousal of the
sexual impulse (644).
In simpler terms: the contrary
current of their sexual passions blind husband and wife to their spouse’s
dignity as children of God, and tempts them to use the other as a mere object
for sexual pleasure.
Therefore, the only way for spouses
to overcome this powerful undertow of concupiscence is by faithfully using the
oars of the virtues and the sails of the grace of the sacraments and the gifts
of the Spirit. That is how these three powers of love converge at the
crossroads of spousal spirituality, and how spouses must make their way through
this world.
In a sense, John Paul’s last “bark”
ends up being an invitation to board the “Barque” of St. Peter, the perennial
motif for the Church as a ship weathering the storms of this world. I once
heard Scott Hahn offer a maritime analogy for the Christian life that seem
eminently appropriate for spousal spirituality. He said: Imagine everyone in
the world is in the ocean and we are competing in a swimming race. Everyone is
swimming as hard as they can confronting the currents and the waves. The only
difference is, Catholics are in a speed boat.
Similarly, everyone onboard the
Barque of St. Peter, which for 26 years was steered by Peter’s successor, the
holy helmsman, Pope St. John Paul II, called married couples to climb onboard
so they could be empowered by the virtues and graces and gifts. And John Paul
II has installed a new navigation system for the Barque of the Fisherman, the
Theology of the Body, so all passengers can arrive safely at their heavenly
port of call.
Praised be Jesus
Christ!
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