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!