The Second Voyage, Part 4

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!