Summarizing John Paul II's Theology of the Body
06/24/2025
As we pull our ship into shore
after our second voyage on the high seas of covenant/marriage, we are in an
ideal position to summarize our entire journey of studying the Theology of the
Body. Arguably the most famous statement of Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes, which
John Paul made more famous by quote frequently – and which he very likely
himself authored – was: “Christ, the final Adam…fully reveals man to man
himself and makes his supreme calling clear” (no. 22).
And if covenant/marriage has taught
us anything in this second voyage it is that man’s “supreme calling” is
ultimately a covenant/marriage to Christ. This mystical marriage between God
and humanity has already been realized perfectly in the Person of Jesus Christ,
who is both human and divine without confusion or separation. All Scripture
bears witness that this divine-human union individually realized in Christ is
the goal of human history, to be collectively realized when “The Spirit and the
Bride say, ‘Come’ [Lord Jesus]” (Rv 22:17).
This second voyage exploring the
twin seas of Scripture and spousal love was a necessary addendum in order to
demonstrate the utter compatibility between covenant theology and the Theology
of the Body. Why? Both theologies are chiefly concerned with the meaning of marriage
not only for individual Christian couples – indeed for all human persons,
Christian or not – but no less so for the eternal Bride, the Church, and her
eternal Bridegroom, Christ. Marriage unlocks the mystery of both the Holy Bible
and of the human body.
But seeing Christ as
covenant-Mediator par excellence (and therefore as the eternal Bridegroom) not
only summarizes this last mile but likewise encapsulates all our preceding
miles and meditations. How so? After the Introduction, we began to examine Christ’s
three key words that unveil “an integral vision of man” (218-23). The pope in
effect paints a tryptic altarpiece that reflects the human-divine saga of
Scripture in three illuminating panels.
Only after we have fully delved
into the human experience of Eden, earth, and eternity – answering the urgent
and perennial question of “who [woman] will be for [man] and he for her” (301),
that mutual relationship exceedingly exemplified in marriage – can we see the
flag of the human vocation fully unfurled. We might say the Theology of the
Body is the wind – the “ruah” of the Holy Spirit – that causes the flag of
humanity’s “supreme calling” to flutter.
We glimpsed the undiminished glory
of that human vocation shimmering briefly in Genesis 1 and 2 where Adam and Eve
enjoyed the inner harmony of Original Solitude, Unity, and Nakedness, and
expressed it as an earthly icon of the communion of persons, reflecting the
eternal Communion of Persons hidden in the Holy Trinity. The key that unlocked
the mystery of this “communio personarum” was “the hermeneutic of the gift.”
That is, only when we become a gift to one another – especially spouses – do we
achieve the exalted status of an icon of divine love. Christ’s first word,
then, unveiled the first panel of Original Humanity.
Through Christ’s second word, he
taught us how concupiscence causes discord rather than harmony in the heart –
the true culprit for “adultery in the heart” – which in turn destroys the
external harmony between spouses. Unwittingly (and sometimes wittingly) spouses
use one another rather than become an unconditional gift to each other. The
true polar opposite of love, therefore, is not to hate someone, but to use
another human person, because you degrade them below their human dignity.
But thanks to the gifts of the Holy
Spirit – who is Himself the eternal Gift of love between Father and Son – both
harmonies (the interior of the heart and the exterior of the home) are not only
healed but even elevated to new heights of holiness. Redeemed man and woman experience
in their bodies the Spirit’s gifts of reverence, piety, and fear of the Lord.
Only then can marriage and family life become the sturdy building blocks not
only for natural society on earth, but also the bedrock upon which rests the
supernatural society of eternity. Christ’s second word painted the second panel
of Fallen and Redeemed Humanity.
And finally Christ third word
reveals the plentitude of eternal glory waiting for the children of God in
paradise. The blessed will experience a twofold glory in eternity:
spiritualization or a new system of powers flowing between the body and the
soul, and divinization by which human nature partakes of divine nature. We
receive a foretaste of that union of natures every time we receive Holy
Communion. In this way, by painting a three-panel portrait of the epic story of
humanity, “Christ fully reveals man to man himself.”
In Part Two, John Paul narrowed his
focus from the human vocation in general – the universal call to holiness – to
the specifically Christian vocation in the sacrament of marriage. With sublime
eloquence and saintly erudition, the pope-saint described marriage as standing
in a class by itself in relation to the other sacraments. Indeed, the other
sacraments shine even brighter in the brilliant light of marriage.
Then John Paul plumbed the
liturgical depths of marriage by examining the words spoken by spouses at the
wedding and the corresponding significance of the consummation of marriage when
the two become one flesh in the bedroom. He drew a clear and unbreakable
connection between the vows and the consummation welded together by the
language of the body. Thus, he concluded that every act of sexual intimacy
between spouses reiterates (or should reiterate!) the vows of the wedding day.
Spouses should say with their bodies in the bedroom what they said with their
words at the wedding.
One of our parishioners who serves
as an usher told me one day after Mass, “Fr. John, you need to bring it on
home.” He noticed I was losing my hair and encouraged me to shave my head,
“bring it on home.” John Paul brings the Theology of the Body "on
home" (quite literally) by analyzing the Church’s traditional moral
teaching prohibiting contraception.
He argues persuasively and
pastorally how the dignity of the human person – established irrefutably in
Part One, thanks to help from the philosophies of personalism and phenomenology
– and the sacramentality of marriage and its liturgical expression (the thrust
of Part Two) irrefutably mean that the two ends of the sexual act – union and
procreation, or babies and bonding – may never be intentionally separated or
artificially blocked.
With good reason, therefore, the
Holy Father concludes his masterwork – and with which we can conclude our own
reflections – by declaring:
It is in this [biblical and
theological] sphere that one finds the answers to the perennial questions of
the conscience of men and women and also to the difficult question of our
contemporary world concerning marriage and procreation (663).
And that is how you really “bring
it on home” because only at home do man and woman, with God’s grace, forge a
loving family and live out their “supreme calling.”
Praised be Jesus
Christ!
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