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!

The Second Voyage, Part 3

Seeing the covenant significance of the bride's price

06/23/2025

We wade across the center aisle of church from the bride’s side to meditate on matters from the groom’s side. Every groom feels he must pass a test to win the hand of his beloved; in point of fact, he longs for the chance. The pop band the Proclaimers sang about this chivalrous sentiment: “I would walk five hundred miles / And I would walk five hundred more / Just to be the man who walked a thousand / Miles, to fall down at your door.”

We find a more classic test of love in Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice. Various eligible bachelors solicit fair Portia’s hand in marriage, but first they must pass the “the casket test.” Portia’s deceased father has left detailed instructions that each supposed suitor must select from three caskets. The test is devised to weed out arrogant, selfish, or vain partners for Portia. You fathers really should read more Shakespeare.

The first casket box is covered in gold and bears the inscription: “Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire” (II, vii, 37). The implied question is: are you like “many men” or do you have a unique strength of character? The second casket of silver states cryptically: “Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves” (II, vii, 23). That is, do you egotistically think you deserve the best, or assess yourself more humbly?

The third casket is coated in unattractive lead and reads: “Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath” (II, vii, 16). Put practically, you must give everything and expect nothing in return - who would choose that? Stop reading if you don’t want to know the test results, but all suitors fail except humble and heroic Bassanio. Let us pause to ponder why Bassanio believes lead best symbolizes love:

So may outward show be least themselves, /

The world is still deceived with ornament /

…

Therefore then, thou gaudy gold /

Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee. /

Nor none of thee, [silver] thou pale and common drudge /

‘Tween man and man. But thou, thou meager lead, /

Which rather threaten’st than does promise ought, /

Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence, /

And here choose I. Joy be the consequence! (III, ii, 75-76, 103-110).

Holding his breath Bassanio opens the leaden casket relieved that Portia’s portrait smiles back. Bassanio graduated from suitor to spouse.

What Shakespeare calls the casket test, Scripture labels the bride’s price. We who live in modern Western culture may not immediately grasp the significance of the bride’s price. Why not? Because today it is the bride who pays the price to marry the man. Her family forks over the funds to pay for the ceremony, music, photography, dress, the venue, etc.

But in the Bible and the ancient near east, the roles were reversed and the groom paid the bride’s price by some heroic feat or personal sacrifice. Consider this extraordinary example: in 1 Samuel 18. King Saul says to David, “[T]he king desires no other the price for the bride [my daughter Mical] than the foreskins of one hundred Philistines” (1 Sm 18:25).

That is, Saul wanted David to add insult to injury by not only conquering the Philistines, but circumcising them. Was David offended by such a request? Quite the contrary, we read two verses later: “David arose and went with his men and slew two hundred Philistines” (1 Sm 18:27). Saul pressed David to walk 500 miles and David eagerly walked 1000 to prove his love for Mical.

Moreover, when the groom in the Bible stands as covenant-mediator, he represents primarily God’s marital interests and not merely his own. Now, is there any other suitor out there seeking humanity’s hand in marriage besides God? As the Church Lady from Saturday Night Live rhetorically reminded us: “Hmmm, could it be…Satan?!”

The bride’s price in salvation history, thenceforth, consists of rescuing her from her Satanic suitor, and returning her to God, her rightful Lover. But more often than not, the unrepentant bride runs back into Satan’s arms. But don’t be too hard on Eve: every time we sin, the modern bride of Christ backslides exactly like the original biblical bride.

Pondering deeply this notion of the bride’s price reveals another crucial aspect of the story of Scripture. How often we hear the words “redemption” and “salvation," and immediately our minds conjure up images of Jonathan Edwards surreal sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”? We unreflectively think, “I want to be redeemed or saved so that I don’t burn in hell for all eternity!”

And that infernal image is certainly an accurate description of some aspects of redemption and salvation. However, it does not exhaust its meaning, nor does it penetrate its true depths which can only be found in the eternal Father’s heart. Rather every time you hear the word “redemption” or “salvation” in the Bible, in the liturgy, or in personal prayer, think of “the bride’s price.”

The bride’s price, then, helps us catch the peculiar trajectory and plot twists of Scripture writ large from the first pages of Genesis to the last verses of Revelation. Tragically such insights escape us modern westerners because the roles of bride and groom are reversed in who pays the price (the dowry) for the wedding. Indeed, it is hard for Christians in our modern milieu to learn many of the lessons the Bible tries to teach us.

Further, we should not forget that each covenant-mediator remains a fallen man, and therefore also forms part of the fickle bride. As such, he must overcome his own inner resistance – remember concupiscence? – to God’s overtures of love. St. Augustine deftly described this double duty, stating: “For you I am a bishop, with you I am a Christian.” That solidarity with sinful humanity proves to be a fatal flaw in every covenant-mediator, save the last, Jesus.

Like Portia’s suitors tempted by the gold and silver caskets, the first five covenant-mediators – Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David – admirably succeed in expanding the bride to her proper proportions, but still finally fail to pay the bride’s price. Only the sixth mediator, Jesus, the God-Man, pays the full price to redeem the bride by paying “the pound of flesh”, that is, his human nature nailed to a tree.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Eucharist and Everybody

Seeing God in our neighbor and the Eucharist

06/22/2025

Luke 9:11b-17 Jesus spoke to the crowds about the kingdom of God, and he healed those who needed to be cured. As the day was drawing to a close, the Twelve approached him and said, "Dismiss the crowd so that they can go to the surrounding villages and farms and find lodging and provisions; for we are in a deserted place here." He said to them, "Give them some food yourselves." They replied, "Five loaves and two fish are all we have, unless we ourselves go and buy food for all these people." Now the men there numbered about five thousand. Then he said to his disciples, "Have them sit down in groups of about fifty." They did so and made them all sit down. Then taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing over them, broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. They all ate and were satisfied. And when the leftover fragments were picked up, they filled twelve wicker baskets.

Today’s feast of Corpus Christi is one of my favorite feasts of the whole year. Why? Well, because it’s all about the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Jesus, which the Catechism calls nothing short of “the source and summit of the Christian life.” It’s like those old commercials used to say, “It doesn’t get any better than this!”

And yet, today is also touched with some sadness because according to the 2019 Pew Research poll, only about 30% of Roman Catholics believe that Jesus is truly present in the Bread and Wine of the Mass. Conversely, we might say: roughly 70% of ya’ll think the Eucharist is a merely a symbol. By the way, believing the Eucharist is a symbol is called “Protestantism.”

So, in order to reinvigorate our Catholic faith in the Real Presence, Virginia Ricketts and her crew have individually baked, iced, and decorated, 2,200 Corpus Christi cookies, which we will hand out to everyone who comes to Mass this weekend. If a Corpus Christi cookie doesn’t restore your faith in the Eucharist, I don’t know what will! What more do you people need?

In the gospel today, Jesus also offers us some food to deepen our faith in the Eucharist. In Luke 9 Jesus multiplies 5 loaves and 2 fish to feed over five thousand hungry people. Now, what does that have to do with Eucharistic faith? Well, the feeding in Luke 9 directly parallels the feeding in Luke 22 at the Last Supper, because Luke describes both feedings with the same four highly charged words: “he took, he blessed, he broke, and he gave.”

That is, there exists a mutually reinforcing faith between believing in the Jesus who feeds us at Mass with Bread and Wine, and believing in the Jesus who feeds the masses with bread and fish. One of the best ways, therefore, to deepen our faith and love for the Eucharist is to strengthen our faith and love for everybody. And that is why Virginia is feeding us with cookies today, like Jesus fed the people in the gospel.

St. Mother Teresa required her sisters to spend 3 hours a day in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, staring at Jesus as Eucharistic Bread. Then they spent the rest of the day taking care of the poor dying in the streets of Why? She explained: “If you cannot see Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor, you will not see him in the Most Blessed Sacrament.” That is, we cannot love the Body of Christ on the altar, while we ignore the Body of Christ in the alleyways.

J.R.R. Tolkien gave similar advice to his sons, saying: “Boys, make your Communion in circumstances that affront your taste: choose a snuffling or gabbling priest or proud or vulgar friar” – by the way, that’s why people love coming to I.C. Church, to see those gabbling priests! – “and a church full of…ill-behaved children – from those who yell to those products of Catholic school who the moment the tabernacle is opened sit back and yawn.”

He continued: “It could not be worse than the mess of the feeding of the Five Thousand – after which our Lord propounded the feeding that was to come.” In other words, faith in Jesus in the Eucharist and faith in everybody rise and fall together. Put differently, blindness to Jesus in your blessed neighbor, causes blindness to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

Here are a couple of things I do to increase my faith in the human species, so that I can better see Jesus in the Eucharistic species. Many Hispanics have a habit of kissing the priest’s hand when they greet him. By now I have learned who this devout Hispanics are. So before they can do that to me, I kiss their hand first. They really hate it when I do that.

The Filipinos have a different custom of taking the priest’s hand when they greet him and touch it to their forehead as a sign of reverence. So, again, I do that same gesture to them in return. Now, do I do that just to bug and irritate them? Well, maybe a little bit. But it is also because if I cannot see Jesus in his humble presence in the mob, I will never see Jesus in his holy presence in the Mass.

My friends, we priests as well as ya’ll people of God can have 30% Catholic faith or 70% Protestant faith in the Eucharist. Why? Well, faith in the Mass and faith in mankind rise and fall together because Jesus is really present in both. And that is why feeding people with Corpus Christi cookies is exactly what the divine Doctor ordered for a lack of faith in the Eucharist.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

The Second Voyage, Part 2

Setting out on the high seas of spousal love

06/20/2025

As we embark on this second voyage of the Theology of the Body through the seas of Sacred Scripture and spousal love, we should define the scope of our journey. Do you remember the scope of the U.S.S. Minnow’s misadventures on Gilligan’s Island?

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale

A tale of a fateful trip

That started from this tropic port

Aboard this tiny ship

The mate was a mighty sailin’ man

The skipper brave and sure

Five passengers set sail that day

For a three hour tour, a three hour tour.

Our skipper is John Paul II, and I will be your “mighty sailin’ man” the first mate. And we will soon discover how choppy the seas of Scripture become as they recount the love story between God and man, specifically, God’s covenant faithfulness and man’s covenant failures. Smooth sailing doesn’t last long for spouses, about five minutes after they get home from the honeymoon.

So, here is our scope: we will narrow our attention to only two distinctive features of the six covenant/marriages of the Bible. First, we will explore how each successive covenant/marriage expands to include all humanity.

And second we will consider how each covenant mediator – Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and finally Jesus – faces a test to prove his love and win the bride. That is, we will look at covenant/marriage first through the eyes of the bride, that is, humanity, and second from the vantage of the Bridegroom, namely, God, represented by each covenant-mediator.

First, a little full disclosure. I will steal most of my material on covenant/marriages from Scott Hahn’s book "A Father Who Keeps His Promises." Hahn provides this helpful overview, a map to plot our course:

As you study Scripture, you’ll see how covenant laws [the requirements to marry God] are not arbitrary stipulations but fixed moral principles which govern the moral order. Moreover, they reflect the inner life of the Blessed Trinity. In short, “covenant” is what God does because “covenant” is what God is (29).

That is, this 3-hour tour is not some sight-seeing joyride to the Bahamas, but a journey to the heart of God, which Hebrews describes as “an all-consuming fire.” Or as St. Augustine memorably put it: “To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him the greatest human achievement.” And the good news is that God is chasing us even more than we are seeking him.

First, let’s consider covenant/marriage from the bride’s point of view, humanity as God’s beloved. When we survey the covenant/marriage landscape of the Bible, it becomes quickly apparent how each successive covenant grows and expands. For example, God’s first covenant was forged with a married couple, Adam and Eve. Only two people were betrothed to each other and to God.

God’s second covenant was established with Noah and his family (3 sons, their wives, and their children). The covenant package had become family-size. The third covenant with Abraham grew to tribal proportions embracing everyone in the patriarch’s household, or as we say today, all of Abraham’s “kith and kin”, both blood and non-blood relations.

God fashions a fourth and far grander covenant with Moses. Now an entire nation gathers at the foot of Mt. Sinai, and swears covenant fidelity to God through the mediation of Moses. And for his last Old Testament covenant, God works through King David, “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Sm 13:14) to rule over a kingdom.

Scott Hahn explains how a kingdom, unlike a nation, is virtually unlimited in size:

As covenant mediator, King David…gradually transformed the national family of Israel [under Moses] to…a dynastic kingdom. The difference [between kingdom and nation] is subtle but crucial. A nation maintains sole sovereignty, whereas a kingdom exercises sovereignty over other states and nations (214).

In other words, finally under David, the bride reaches her proper proportions, that is, the People of God is truly “catholic” a Greek word meaning “present everywhere.”

And lastly, Jesus, the only perfect covenant-mediator, because he is the God-Man, will build on this “catholic conception” of his Bride by commanding his disciples to complete what King David began: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19).

Can you see the concentric circles of God’s covenant plan laid out throughout Scripture? Or, as we gush and sing at weddings, “Here comes the bride, all dressed in white…” That white wedding gown bespeaks not only betrothal but also Baptism, which incorporates us into the Church, the Bride of Christ.

Perhaps a more dramatic way to appreciate the depths of God’s covenant love for humanity is when the north winds blow and the waves crash over the bow submerging the ship of spousal love. Again and again, the prophets used the metaphor of adultery to identify Israel’s covenant/marriage infidelities in their religious observances with God.

John Paul highlights how the prophets treated idolatry (worshiping alien gods) synonymously with adultery (having other lovers):

While Isaiah emphasizes in his texts above all the love of Yahweh, the Bridegroom, who in all circumstances goes to meet the Bride, overlooking all her infidelities. Hosea and Ezekiel abound in comparisons that show above all the ugliness and moral evil of the adultery [idolatry] committed by the Bride, Israel (274).

Ironically, it is exactly Israel’s infidelities that underscore emphatically God’s covenant faithfulness. Or think about it this way: what husband or wife today would stay in a marriage when their spouse commits adultery? Well, that unconditional, unheard-of, devotion is how the prophets described God’s love for his Bride.

Therefore, both positively and negatively, we see how God perfects and purifies his people for an eternal covenant/marriage to him. Again, Scott Hahn states it succinctly:

From a sinful, shameful couple cast out of paradise, to God’s glorious redeemed world-wide family of saints at home forever in heaven – that miraculous transformation is the covenant story of the Scripture…From the beginning the Father planned that Adam and Eve would be the first members of a world-wide family circle, swept up into the eternal love of the Trinity” (36).

“Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of the fateful trip…”

Praised be Jesus Christ!

The Second Voyage

Applying the Theology of the Body to the study of Scripture

06/19/2025

Today we commence our last mile in our “Long Walk with Jesus” by applying Pope St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body to interpreting Sacred Scripture. John Paul had initially used the Theology of the Body to examine and establish the immorality of contraception.

But he acknowledged that application was only the maiden voyage of the Theology of the Body. In his last address, he elaborated on the need for future voyages:

One must immediately observe, in fact, that the term “theology of the body” goes far beyond the content of the reflections here [on contraception]. These reflections do not include many problems belonging, with regard to their object, to the theology of the body (e.g., the problem of suffering and death, so important to the biblical message) (660).

Someone else who had seen this wider application, these further voyages, was Angelo Scola, who accurately predicted:

Virtually every thesis in theology – God, Christ, the Trinity, grace, the Church, the sacraments – could be seen in a new light if theologians explored in depth the rich personalism implied in John Paul II’s theology of the body (George Weigel, Witness to Hope, 343).

In other words, Captain John Paul has now proven that the vessel of the Theology of the Body is sea-worthy. Therefore, we can confidently take her out on open water again for her second voyage to explore Sacred Scripture.

One day a young girl came home from school where her teacher was talking about where people come from. She first went to her father and asked him, “Daddy, where do people come from?” The father answered, “Well, dear, first there were apes and monkeys and all humans eventually descended from them.”

Wanting to fact check her father, she asked her mother: “Mommy, were do people come from?” The mother replied, “Well, sweetie, God created Adam and Eve and all the people eventually descended from them.” Puzzled, the little girl continued: “Well, why did daddy say we came from monkeys?” The mom smiled: “Well, dear, your father was talking about his side of the family and I was talking about my side.”

If the little girl had questioned John Paul II about where people come from, the pope-saint would have agreed with the mother. Why? Well, the central thrust of the Theology of the Body is that man and woman act most like God – and least like apes – when we unite in marriage. Genesis teaches that man was created “in the image and likeness of God” (Gn 1:26).

Difficult as it may be to grasp, the Holy Father nonetheless maintains that the marital communion of human persons imitates – albeit analogously – the eternal Communion of the Holy Trinity, “an inscrutable communion of the three divine Persons” (163). This understanding of the personalist principle – human persons reflect diving Persons – is precisely why Christians assert that man descended from Adam and Eve, not from apes.

I realize such suppositions of the Theology of the Body seem to fly in the face of most – though not all – modern science. But science does not have a monopoly on the truth; indeed, if it is misused, science can, at times, even blind us to the truth. C. S. Lewis warned back in 1949:

[Y]ou and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years. Almost our whole education has been directed to silencing this shy, persistent, inner voice; almost all our modern philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth” (Weight of Glory, 31).

As we embark on this second voyage of the Theology of the Body, on the high seas of Sacred Scripture, bear in mind that modern science will not be our main sextant to guide us. Indeed, science sometimes turns out to be the siren song that shipwrecks unwary sailors.

Many years ago if a child exclaimed on the playground: “Ah, I sure do love the monkey bars!” Another would tease him: “If you love it so much, why don’t you just marry it?!” I would suggest to you that taunt touches the deepest chord of the scriptural narrative, namely, God is so enamored with humanity, the pinnacle of his creation, that he plans to marry us! And therefore the Theology of the Body – concerned chiefly with marriage as well – is an infallible guide to correctly interpret Sacred Scripture as nothing less than God’s marriage proposal to humanity.

When the inspired authors of the Bible talk about marriage to God, they employ the highly charged word “covenant.” Many people confuse a covenant with a contract, but the difference could not be greater. A covenant is an exchange of persons; whereas, a contract is an exchange of goods and services. Put a little crudely, a covenant differs from a contract like marriage differs from prostitution. The former exchanges persons, the latter exchanges services.

When we read Scripture with this meaning of covenant as marriage in mind, we discover that the Bible is in fact punctuated by six successive covenant/marriages that God establishes with humanity. At the beginning of the Bible, we find the paradigmatic passage on marriage that sets the stage for the subsequent drama of salvation history: “Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh” (Gn 2:24).

At the other end of the scriptural timeline, we hear allusions to another betrothal: “And I saw the holy city...prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rv 21:2). In other words, we don’t want to marry a monkey, like the woman in the joke, we want to marry a Lamb, Jesus, the Lamb of God. Rv 19:9 describes this mixed-marriage between God and man: “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”

My parents proudly display the wedding portraits of my brother and sister in their home. And by the way, my ordination picture hangs high above theirs on the wall. Those portraits display how marriages mark the natural milestones of our personal Antony family history.

Covenants, likewise, are the sacred milestones that mark our collective Christian family history. Just as human history is a story of marriages, so salvation history is a story of covenants. That is, Holy Matrimony is the undercurrent surging throughout the Holy Bible. And it is neatly captured in a childish taunt: “If you love it so much, why don’t you just marry it?!”

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Operation Strength of a Lamb

Seeing how Jesus perfects us as his Bride

06/17/2025

Matthew 5:43-48 Jesus said to his disciples: "You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect."

I don’t know about you, but every morning recently when I wake up I say my first prayers – Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be – and then immediately check my phone to see if the world has blown up. That is, I wonder what the next step in the Israel-Iran war is going to be.

One of our parishioners, Philip Stevens, a major in the Air Guard, texted me last Thursday at 8 p.m. to tell me Israel had started an operation known as “Strength of a Lion” to eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapon capability and to kill its top military officers. I texted him back writing: “This is not going to end well.”

And then I added: “By the way, I am sitting in my office writing the last couple of homilies on Pope St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body.” Now, focusing on some abstract, esoteric theology might seem like a waste of time while the world is blowing up. But I believe that is exactly the best use of our time. Why?

Well, we might say while Israel is conducting its military Operation Strength of a Lion, Jesus is conducting his marriage Operation Strength of a Lamb. That is, one way to interpret world is history is in terms of wars, natural disasters, and geo-political events. But that lens is not the only way – or even the best way – to read the signs of the times.

Besides natural, world history, there is also supernatural, salvation history that sort of runs along beside it like on two parallel tracks. Or better yet, salvation history absorbs world history into its own superior matrix. Think of how a human being consumes plants or animals for food – a salad and a cheeseburger for lunch.

Those lower creatures are then digested and subsumed into our higher, human dimension of life. And in a sense, they share our destiny by being part of us. Perhaps that is how Betsy the cow will one day be saved, because I will be saved and Betsy will be part of me after lunch.

So, instead of waking up every morning and being filled with fear over Operation Strength of a Lion, we should wake up every morning filled with faith over Operation Strength of a Lamb. That is, Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, is slowly preparing and perfecting his Bride, the Church for her wedding day to him.

That paradigm of preparation and perfection is the larger matrix of salvation history into which the smaller events of world history must be absorbed and understood. And this larger perspective of Operation Strength of a Lamb is how we should interpret Jesus’ teachings in his Sermon on the Mount today.

He contrasts what he presently expects of his disciples from what was required of them in the past. “You have heard that it was said, but I say to you.” It will be precisely through the Strength of the Lamb – his glorious grace – that we will be “perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect.”

Being perfect is a tall order when you rely solely on self-centered and stupid human beings like me and you. But not when you rely on grace, the divine strength of the Lamb. I got a glimpse of how the Lamb’s grace is slowly preparing and perfecting his bride, the Church.

The Carmelite nuns sent me their quarterly bulletin and shared what has been going on lately in their monastery nestled in the heart of Little Rock. They have two young ladies preparing to take their vows, and one young lady spent a week discerning her vocation. This year they will celebrate their 75th anniversary of their foundation in Little Rock.

And they talked about how a couple of large trees fell in their wooded property, and they prayed for those whose trees fell on homes. That made me wonder: if a tree falls in the forest, does a Carmelite nun hear it? Yes she does, because in the deep silence of contemplation, she hears everything. In other words, even though you and I are far from perfect, there is nonetheless, a limb of the Body of Christ that is close to perfection, even though the humble nuns would vehemently deny it.

Thus, Jesus through Operation Strength of a Lamb patiently carries on his perfecting work upon his Bride, the Church. That invisible work of grace remains hidden from the eyes that only see wars, natural catastrophes, and geo-political upheavals. But that inexorable work of grace is a brilliant and beautiful reality for all who look at the world through the eyes of faith, even seeing how cows can be saved.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Dogs that Don't Bark, Part 3

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!