The Second Word, Part 5

Understanding life according to the Holy Spirit

05/20/2024

We pick up our fork for a fourth and final time to take a bite of the elephant of chapter two of Pope St. John Paul II's theology of the body. It is no exaggeration to assert that no Christian has understood the teaching of Christ better, interpreted it more faithfully, or applied it more precisely than the intellectual and spiritual giant, Paul of Tarsus. I was pastor of St. Edward’s in Little Rock for five years, from 2000-2005. The interior of that Gothic church has twelve pillars with statues on top of each one. When I gave elementary school students tours of the church, I would ask them a trick question: “There are twelve columns with the twelve apostles on top of each one. Now we know Judas betrayed Jesus, so his statue is not up there. Who, then, is the twelfth apostle?” They had all sort of guesses, but I eventually explained it was St. Paul. St. Paul gives a clue to his impressive credentials in Acts 22:3, where he states: “I am a Jew, born at Tarsus in Cilicea, but brought up in this city [Jersualem] at the feet of Gamaliel,” who incidentally was one of the most renowned rabbis of the day. Paul was practically his prized pupil, or as Will Smith said in the movie “Men in Black,” Paul was “the best of the best of the best.” Indeed, his reputation was so immense that subsequent saints and scholars would refer to St. Paul simply as “the Apostle,” as if he were in that category all by himself. It should not surprise us, therefore, that as Pope St. John Paul II rounds out chapter two and his reflections on Jesus’ second word about “adultery in the heart”, he turns to the Apostle to understand Jesus’ meaning more exactly and completely.

When we began our study of Christ’s second word, we compared the transformation Jesus wants to produce in the human heart with what scientists fictionally did to Steve Austin’s body by building the first bionic man. By rebuilding Austin’s body bionically, the scientists were not content to merely restore his body back to ordinary, average functionality. Rather, they wanted it to be “better, strong, faster.” In the same vein, St. Paul will explain, especially in Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, and 1 Corinthians, that the Holy Spirit will enable man’s heart not only to be healed of concupiscence but to perform actions hitherto entirely unimaginable and indeed humanly impossible. First, the pope will reflect on Paul’s notion of freedom in Galatians 5; second, on the Apostle’s exposition of the virtue of purity in 1 Thessalonians; and finally, how Paul understands the gift of piety in 1 Corinthians 6. Just as Steve Austin’s body was able to perform actions that were “better, stronger, faster,” so the heart healed and helped by the Holy Spirit will be able to act in ways that are “freer, purer, and more pious.” Or, to put it in the words of the Apostle himself: “life according to the Spirit” (cf. Rm 8:5).

The first way the Holy Spirit makes the human heart more bionic is through a more enhanced experience of freedom. We read in Galatians: “For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another” (Gal 5:13). John Paul believes that the point at which such freedom becomes bionic is when it leads to new possibilities of action, new choices. When Fr. Daniel Velasco was associate here at I.C., he gave me tennis lessons. One time during practice I accidentally hit a forehand slice, my racket cutting below the ball to create backspin. He immediately chided me: “You do not have a forehand slice. There is no such thing as a forehand slice. Don’t ever hit a forehand slice.” Later when I was watching a professional tennis match wit Fr. Daniel, someone hit a forehand slice. I complained: “Hey, she just his a forehand slice!” Fr. Daniel calmly answered: “Well, they can, but you can’t.” In other words, professional tennis players enjoy a different level of freedom in their shot selection to which I as a beginner am not privy. WE might say the same “spirit of tennis” that lives and moves in them has not yet been infused in me.

Perhaps a more serious and spiritual example would be St. Damien of Molokai, who ministered to lepers on the Hawaiian island for sixteen years. St. Damien finally died of leprosy on April 15, 1889 at the age of forty-nine. That is, just like I should not attempt to hit a forehand slice until I am more fully imbued with the spirit of tennis, so most Christians should not work in a leper colony until we are more filled with the Holy Spirit. Nonetheless, for those souls in whom the Holy Spirit is strong, a new range of freedom of action becomes possible, namely, in the saints. John Paul expresses it this way: “In fact, Christ realized and showed the freedom that finds its fulness in love, the freedom thanks to which we ‘serve one another’; in other words: the freedom that becomes the source of new ‘works’ and of ‘life’ according to the Spirit.”  In brief, life in the Spirit makes heroic sanctity attainable.

A second way the Holy Spirit makes the heart more bionic is by producing the fruit of “holiness and reverence” which bestows a new power of purity. St. Paul speaks about this new p power in 1 Thessalonians: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and [reverence], not in the passion of lust like heathens, who do not know God” (1 Thess 4:3-5). We might compare this new power of purity to IV fluids. When I was considering different seminaries to attend, I visited Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. One night we ate dinner on the wharf, and I ordered the Captain’s Platter, which was the first and last time I ever ate raw oysters. Without getting into digestive details, I was so dehydrated I ended up in the Emergence Room. They gave me IV fluids, and after the first bag I felt I could jump out of bed and run home! John Paul elaborates: "Paul considers purity not only as an ability (or aptitude) of man’s subjective faculties, but at the same time as a concrete manifestation of life “according to the Spirit” in which human ability is made fruitful from within and enriched by what Paul calls the “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal 5:22). The principal point, of course, is that purity gives man new strength of heart to love others, especially those of the opposite sex, with new enthusiasm and energy that it did not enjoy previously.

The third way “life in the Spirit” makes the human heart bionic is by giving it new eyes as St. Paul describes in 1 Cor 6:19: “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you do not belong to yourselves?” When young couples come to me for marriage preparation I try to encourage them to use Natural Family Planning instead of contraceptives, which usually goes over like a lead balloon. Nonetheless, I tell them that the woman’s body is a walking miracle because in her womb is the “cradle of life” where a new human being will come into the world. And just like Moses removed his sandals before the burning bush, so we must approach the female body with great respect and reverence, removing any contraceptives. The female body is holy ground.

John Paul, however, leaves behind Old Testament analogies and underscores human dignity as it is rooted in Jesus. He writes:

The fact that in Jesus Christ the human body became the body of the God-Man has the effect of a new supernatural elevation in every human being, which every Christian must take into account in his behavior toward “his own” body and obviously also toward another’s body: man toward woman and woman toward man.

By the way, this is one reason I wear my priestly collar everywhere I go. That Roman collar reminds everyone who glances at me of the “supernatural elevation” I received by the sacrament of Holy Orders. But in a broader sense – although not in exactly the same sense – by Jesus’ Incarnation, uniting himself to a human nature, he has extended that “supernatural elevation” to all human beings. Jesus was referring to this new vision in his Sermon on the Mount when he taught: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Pope John Paul II would add, “they shall see God in the human body.” The pope puts this dramatically: “Purity is the glory of the human body before God. It is the glory of God in the human body, through which masculinity and femininity are manifested.”  The Holy Father identifies this new way of seeing by the heart as the gift of piety (in Latin, donum pietatis), one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.

In summary, John Paul II has outlined three ways “life according to the Spirit” (using St. Paul’s profound exposition) enhances the capability of the heart to love. First, the heart becomes bionic through a new level of freedom, which affords new options to express love, sometimes heroic love like we see in the saints. Second, the heart becomes bionic by a new injection of power in the virtue of purity, like IV fluids going through our veins makes us feel like Arnold Schwarzenegger. And third, the heart becomes bionic because it is equipped with new eyes to see “the glory of God in the human body” so that each human being must be treated with the utmost dignity as a child of God. In other words, when the heart has been healed of the cancer of concupiscence and infused with the new powers available through “life in the Spirit,” the human person is properly prepared to marry its divine Bridegroom, Jesus. And now I hope you will agree with me why I tell engaged couples that the heart-work is truly the hard work of marriage preparation. And the pope-saint would add “this is something truly worthy of man.” Indeed, it is indispensable.

Praised be Jesus Christ!