Chapter 7
MarriageThe
previous cycle (4th cycle) of the Theology of the Body series
discussed the question of celibacy and virginity in light of the
results of the studies of the human body-person undertaken in the
first three cycles. In those first three cycles, as the reader may
remember, the Holy Father discussed the human person in the Garden
of Eden before sin (1st cycle), the human person after sin, i.e.,
historical man, (2nd cycle), and the human person after the Second
Coming and the final resurrection (3rd cycle). The first three
cycles took their beginnings from the words of Christ: his teaching
that divorce was not allowed “in the beginning” (1st cycle), that
looking lustfully constitutes “adultery in the heart” (2nd cycle),
and that after the final resurrection, there is no giving and taking
in marriage (3rd cycle). In each of these three conditions of the
human person, the human body manifested, revealed and expressed the
human person, but in different ways. The results of these analyses
illuminated the question of virginity and celibacy.
The fifth cycle,
nos. 87-113 applies the results of the first three cycles to
marriage. The Pope begins with reference to St. Paul’s teaching on
marriage from Ephesians 5:21-33. As he writes, “What is contained in
the passage of the Letter to the Ephesians constitutes almost a
‘crowning’ of those other concise key words [i.e., the other “three
words” of Christ about marriage regarding divorce, adultery in the
heart, and marriage in heaven—the material of the first three
cycles]. If there has emerged from them the theology of the body
along its evangelical lines, simple and at the same time
fundamental, it is in a certain sense necessary to presuppose that
theology in interpreting the above-mentioned passage of the Letter
to the Ephesians.”[1] The Pope notes that in Ephesians 5, St. Paul
speaks of the body, both in its concrete reality as masculine and
feminine, i.e., “in its perennial destiny for union in marriage,”[2]
and the body as an image of the Church, i.e., the body of Christ.
The Pope then proposes to examine these two “meanings” of the human
body, most especially in light of Paul’s “great comparison” of
marriage and the Church.
John Paul also
notes that the passage to the Ephesians has always been understood
by the Church in its liturgy to be a reference to the sacrament of
marriage. Given this understanding, the passage in Ephesians 5
points the way towards an analysis of marriage as a sacrament.
However, understanding marriage as a sacrament depends, too, on the
theology of the body because the “great” principle of the theology
of the body is sacramental: the body is the expression of the
person. A sacrament is a sign which makes visible what is invisible
and accomplishes what it signifies, e.g., the pouring of water in
Baptism over a child’s head points to a cleansing of the soul and
the giving of life. This symbol makes visible the hidden reality of
God’s action on the child’s soul. But the sign also is the means by
which God effects the change in the soul: the gift of divine grace.
The human body is
the expression of the person. It makes visible what is hidden in the
mystery of the person, and, at the same time, the visible
manifestation of the person involves experiences which affect and
change the person. “Therefore, in some way, even if in the most
general way, the body enters the definition of a sacrament.”[3]
Clearly, the body also “enters” theology by the “front door” in that
it is the means Christ chose to reveal Himself, the Father, and the
Holy Spirit to us. In Him, the body became par excellence the
visible sign of an invisible reality.
Summarizing what
he proposes to do in this fifth cycle in no. 87 and then outlining
the content of the Letter to the Ephesians in no. 88, John Paul
begins his detailed analysis of Ephesians 5 in no. 89. The Pope
begins with one of the most difficult issues of the New Testament
for modern culture: St. Paul’s admonition to wives to be
“subordinate to their husbands.”[4] This admonition also appears in
other passages of St. Paul’s writings and is sometimes translated
that wives should “be subject to their husbands” or that they should
“submit to their husbands.”[5] To many in our era, such language is
offensive in the extreme and thought to be the product of what is
called the male-dominated culture of Paul’s era. Many would argue
that such passages should never again see the light of day, at least
not in the liturgy. But these texts are in fact inspired and contain
the Word of God. We need to know their meaning. Further, it might be
argued that those passages which are most difficult for us to
understand and to implement in our lives are precisely the ones we
need to try to understand and incorporate into our vocations.
Before his
admonition to the wives, Saint Paul uses the exact same language for
both husbands and wives. He writes in verse 21 that both husbands
and wives are to “be subordinate to one another out of reverence for
Christ.”[6] Clearly, the “subordination” or the “submissiveness”
applies to both husbands and wives, not just to wives. After the
general remark on no. 21, verse 22 addressed to wives follows, and
then in 25 the Apostle addresses the husbands instructing them to
“love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself
over for her.”[7]
The “reverence”
for Christ is not a cowering fear, but rather an awesome respect for
holiness. Christ is God the Son made man. In Him, God is revealed.
In Him, God visited His people. Just as Peter, James and John were
struck almost dumb at the Transfiguration, so should we always be at
the awesome holy mystery of the Incarnation. Since each of the
spouses in a marriage are “other Christs” (Paul is speaking here of
the marriage of the baptized), they should see in one another the
mystery of Christ. The only proper attitude towards that mystery is
a reverence and therefore a mutual subordination as they would both
give to Christ. As the Pope writes, “The mystery of Christ ,
penetrating their hearts, engendering in them that holy ‘reverence
for Christ’ (namely pietas), should lead them to be subject to one
another.”[8] There can be then no domination by one over the other.
In fact, John
Paul sees in verse 21 a partial explanation of St. Paul’s
instruction to wives in verse 22. A further aspect of the
explanation occurs when St. Paul writes that husbands should “love
their wives.”[9] “Love excludes every kind of subjection whereby the
wife might become a servant or a slave of the husband, an object of
unilateral domination. Love makes the husband simultaneously subject
to the wife , and thereby subject to the Lord Himself, just as the
wife to the husband. The community or unity which they should
establish through marriage, is constituted by a reciprocal donation
of self, which is also a mutual subjection.”[10]
Love is of God.
In fact, we name Him by this activity because that IS WHAT HE DOES.
This love was revealed by Christ, most especially in His passion and
death. Analyzing Christ’s passion, we can see five elements: 1. a
decision (not my will, but yours be done), 2. founded on knowledge
in the mind (redemption was necessary, because of original sin and
all the other sins of the human race, if we were to fulfill what God
had intended for us “from the beginning”); 3. Christ decided to give
Himself (what more could Christ have given than what He gave on the
cross); 4. His gift is permanent (He always is our Redeemer who
bears the wounds of His death); 5. and His gift is life-giving (it
gives us the life of grace).
We are created in
God’s image to love as He loves. Our love must have these five
characteristics or it is not love. Our love then must be the result
of a union of wills. Those who love another say to the other: “I
give myself to you. I will what you will. I choose what you choose.”
This gift is done in full freedom because the one who loves WANTS to
give himself or herself to the other. If it is not done in full
freedom, it is not a gift and therefore is not love. Coercion has no
part in a loving relationship. Husbands and wives, at the time they
say their vows—at the time of the marriage ceremony--freely with
full knowledge choose to donate themselves to each other. They
choose in effect to say to one another: I choose what you choose. I
wish to do what you ask. I wish to be “subject” to you and
vice-versa. Therefore, the marital union is one of mutual donation,
mutual “subjection.”
Another way of
expressing the same truth is that husbands and wives have chosen in
full freedom to do what the other asks—to obey their spouse.
Obedience is often understood in our culture as what “good” little
children do when their parents ask them to do something, e.g., to go
to bed. If the children are “obedient,” they do what their parents
ask when the parents ask them to do it. But this is not the
obedience of the Gospel because the children who “obey,” if they are
“little,” i.e., under the age of reason, have not yet learned to
love, i.e., to make their own choice in full freedom, with the
knowledge necessary to such a choice, to give themselves in a
self-donation to their parents and then to do what the parents ask
because they have chosen to do what the parents ask. No, the
children are not yet capable of such mature behavior. They learn and
imitate their parents’ love and affection and gradually as they
mature, they will be able to truly obey, i.e., to respond to another
because they have given themselves to that person in love. If they
do not obey in the sense of the Gospel, what are they doing? They
are responding out of a sense of trust that the parents have their
best interests at heart—because the parents have always taken care
of them or, in some cases, unfortunately, simply out of fear.
As a society, if
we have the sense that obedience means what “good” little children
do, then it is highly offensive to ask adults to “obey.” But it is
our limited sense of “obedience” that is the problem. For husbands
and wives to obey each other or to “submit” to one another is not
offensive to either. It is only to ask them to do what they promised
to do when they said their marriage vows: to love each other by
giving themselves freely to each other in a union of wills—to choose
in full freedom to do what the other wills. Even obedience towards
the precepts of God must be preceded by love. In one of his
writings, Saint Augustine asked, “Does love bring about the keeping
of the commandments, or does the keeping of the commandments bring
about love?” His response was, “But who can doubt that love comes
first? For the one who does not love has no reason for keeping the
commandments.”[11]
Without love,
without a mutual self-donation, i.e., the mutual union of wills,
doing the bidding of another would be unworthy of a human person.
Machines and animals do what we will (if the machines are working
right and the animals are trained properly), but they have no
choice, no free will. We dare not offend human dignity and value by
reducing another to an object, a thing, a machine or an animal,
which does not possess the power of choosing. Human dignity and
value rest on the foundation of human personhood and the powers
which make us persons are our minds and wills. A human person,
sufficiently mature to use the powers of mind and will, to be acting
in accord with his or her very being, with his or her dignity, must
choose to do what another asks before he or she does it. This choice
must be founded on some knowledge, e.g., a superior officer is
asking this or that of me for the good of the country. But we dare
not, cannot, ask others simply to do our bidding without granting
them the dignity of choosing on the basis of some knowledge. In a
word, we must treat others as persons.
In this context,
marriage involves a mutual “subjection,” a mutual “obedience.”
Clearly, this is Paul’s intent because he asks that both husbands
and wives to “reverence” one another. He then specifies that wives
should love their husbands and husbands should love their wives.
These admonitions are founded on the entire Bible, especially on how
the reality of marriage was created by the Father “in the
beginning.”
After commenting
on the question of mutual subjection and obedience, John Paul takes
up the “great analogy” between marriage and the Church which Paul
sketches in Ephesians 5:22-25: “Wives should be subordinate to their
husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as
Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As
the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate
to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as
Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her.” There are
actually four components in Paul’s structuring of the analogy.
First, Paul instructs wives to be subordinate to their husbands. The
next component provides the motive for the wife: the husband is
Christ. As Christ is the head of the Church, so the husband is the
head of his wife. The third component turns the elements of the
second around. The second began with the husband and stated that he
was Christ. The third component begins with the Church as subject to
Christ and ends with the wife as subordinate to their husbands. The
fourth component turns the first one around. The first one began
with wives as subordinate to their husbands. The fourth one speaks
of husbands as loving their wives as Christ loved the Church. The
structure in these four lines is complicated. It is ABB1A1 where B1
and A1 turn the terms of A and B around.
It is also vital
to notice, as the Pope does, that not only is Christ compared to
husbands and wives to the Church and vice-versa, the relationship of
Christ to the Church is compared to a marriage and a marriage is
compared to the relationship of Christ to the Church. Of course, in
comparing husbands to Christ and wives to the Church, it would be
impossible to avoid the further image of the union of Christ and the
Church as a marriage. Nevertheless, this is a further element in the
“great analogy.” It is also important to notice that the spousal
image of the relationship of Christ to the Church exists in St.
Paul’s analogy simultaneously and together with the image of the
Church as the body of Christ since St. Paul speaks of Christ as the
“head” of the Church. “It seems . . . that this [spousal] analogy
[of the relationship between Christ and the Church] serves as a
complement to that of the Mystical Body.”[12]
The comparison of
marriage to the relationship of Christ to the Church moves in both
directions. In other words, marriage is illumined and better
understood through the relationship of Christ to the Church.
However, the comparison also works the other way: the relationship
of Christ to the Church can be better understood through marriage.
John Paul insists that the analogy of Ephesians 5 moves from the
Christ-Church relationship to the husband-wife relationship. In this
sense, the Christ-Church relationship is a model for the
husband-wife relationship. “The call of the author of the Letter to
the Ephesians, directed to spouses, [is] that they model their
reciprocal relationship on the relationship of Christ to the Church
. . .” [13] Most often, Paul’s words have been read as teaching that
the Church’s relationship with Christ was illumined by the
husband-wife relationship. John Paul insists that the analogy works
in the other direction as well. “Christ’s “love is an image and
above all a model of the love which the husband should show to his
wife in marriage, when the two are subject to each other ‘out of
reverence for Christ’.”[14]
One of the
profound mysteries of marriage is that they “become one flesh.” Yet,
they remain individuals. Saint Paul in his Letter to the Ephesians
seems to acknowledge the “one flesh” aspect of marriage when he
speaks of the husband as the head of the wife. The same aspect is
applied to Christ who is “head of the Church,” but he is also a
“husband.” These two characteristics (“one flesh” and still
bride-bridegroom) must always be kept in mind when studying St.
Paul’s analogy. “In a certain sense, love makes the ‘I’ of the other
person his own ‘I’: the ‘I’ of the wife, I would say, becomes
through love the ‘I” of the husband. The body is the expression of
that ‘I’.”[15] “The wife, being the object of the spousal love of
the husband, becomes ‘one flesh’ with him: in a certain sense, his
‘own’ flesh.”[16] In a startling insight, the Pope even suggests
that the a wife’s “submissiveness” to the husband “signifies above
all the ‘experiencing of love’ “ in the conjugal embrace.”[17]
Obviously, if this interpretation is accepted, the “submission” of
the wife is even more the result of the commitment of love made in
the marriage vows!
“Husbands should
love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves
himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and
cherishes it, even as Christ does the church” (Ephesians 5:28-29).
In this passage, of course, St. Paul again emphasizes the “one
flesh” union, but in this context, the emphasis is on how the
husband is to “care for” “his own flesh,” i.e., the body of his
wife. These lines help us “to understand, at least in a general way,
the dignity of the body and the moral imperative to care for its
good.”[18] In the “one flesh” union of marriage, love is expressed
in part by the care of the spouse’s body, i.e., the care of his or
her flesh.
After the
emphasis on the care of the body, St. Paul in verse 5:31 quotes
Genesis 2:24: “For this reason a man shall leave [his] father and
[his] mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one
flesh." John Paul sees in this phrase a linkage between the
revelation of God in Genesis through Adam and Eve and the definitive
revelation of God in Christ. Since marriage, established by God at
the dawn of creation, revealed something of the love of the Trinity
(because as images of God united in marriage, Adam and Eve
manifested something of divine love) and marriage can be compared to
the union of Christ and the Church, then there is obviously a link
between the revelation of God’s love through marriage and the
definitive revelation of God in Christ. “St. Paul sets in relief the
continuity between the most ancient covenant which God established
by constituting marriage in the very work of creation, and the
definitive covenant in which Christ, after having loved the Church
and given Himself up for her, is united to her in a spousal way,
corresponding to the images of spouses. This continuity of God’s
salvific initiative constitutes the essential basis of the great
analogy contained in the Letter to the Ephesians.”[19] God
manifested Himself through Adam and Eve, individually, (since they
were each images of God) and through their marriage, a reflection of
the Trinity. God completed this revelation in Christ who is also
“married” to the Church. (Although we can never lose sight of the
other “image” of the Church, also taught by St. Paul: that Christ
and the Church are one and form one “mystical” body, i.e., one
mystical person.[20])
The image of the
marriage of Christ and the Church in Ephesians takes up an analogy
present in Isaiah:[21] “Fear not, you shall not be put to shame; you
need not blush, for you shall not be disgraced. The shame of your
youth you shall forget, the reproach of your widowhood no longer
remember. For he who has become your husband is your Maker; his name
is the LORD of hosts; Your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel,
called God of all the earth. The LORD calls you back, like a wife
forsaken and grieved in spirit, A wife married in youth and then
cast off, says your God. For a brief moment I abandoned you, but
with great tenderness I will take you back. In an outburst of wrath,
for a moment I hid my face from you; But with enduring love I take
pity on you, says the LORD, your redeemer. This is for me like the
days of Noah, when I swore that the waters of Noah should never
again deluge the earth; So I have sworn not to be angry with you, or
to rebuke you. Though the mountains leave their place and the hills
be shaken, My love shall never leave you nor my covenant of peace be
shaken, says the LORD, who has mercy on you.” In this passage, God
refers to Israel as wife and Himself as husband. However, writes the
Pope, “the analogy of spousal love and of marriage appears only when
the ‘Creator’ and the ‘Holy One of Israel’ of the text of Isaiah is
manifested as ‘Redeemer.”[22] And the Redeemer, as revealed by the
New Testament, is Christ. John Paul notes that the beginning of the
St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians speaks of God’s love for humanity
in a paternal way. Paul begins his letter to the Ephesians in verse
1:3 with the acknowledgement that God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, “has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in
the heavens.” In the beginning, God’s love was paternal, the love of
a Father. But then, in Christ, in the Redeemer, it has a spousal
character because the love is revealed in and through a human body,
in and through Christ’s body. Just as Adam and Eve revealed
something of God’s love, so in the incarnate Son, we see God’s love
revealed in the flesh and so paternal love is in a way transformed
and completed by the “spousal,” i.e., revealed in and through a
human body, love of Christ. In the full understanding of the Trinity
revealed in the New Testament, the image of Isaiah is deepened and
made clearer. Only in Christ the Redeemer can the “spousal” love of
God be seen clearly. He, Christ, makes visible what has been in
hidden in God. His body is a sign revealing the invisible, as were
the bodies of Adam and Eve. A sign which reveals an invisible
reality is in a generic sense a sacrament.
But the “spousal”
character of Christ’s love has its source not just in the
“continuity” between the visible sign of the human body (in Christ
and in Adam and Eve) expressing the hidden reality of God, but also
because Christ’s love confers grace, sanctifying grace, or holiness.
Adam and Eve were “elected” in Christ Jesus before the world began.
Adam and Eve as the first spouses were “graced” before original sin
and Christ restores grace to us living after sin. “To the marriage
of the first husband and wife, as a sign of the supernatural gracing
of man in the sacrament of creation, there corresponds the marriage,
or rather the analogy of the marriage, of Christ with the Church, as
the fundamental ‘great’ sign of the supernatural gracing of man in
the sacrament of redemption.”[23] Further, John Paul writes “So the
mystery hidden in God from all eternity – the mystery that ‘in the
beginning,’ in the sacrament of creation, became a visible reality
through the union of the first man and woman in the perspective of
marriage – becomes in the sacrament of redemption a visible reality
of the indissoluble union of Christ with the Church, which the
author of the Letter to the Ephesians presents as the nuptial union
of spouses, husband and wife.”[24] The “spousal” character of
Christ’s love is fundamentally on the foundation of making the
mystery hidden in God from all eternity visible in and through a
human body and, secondarily, on the gracing which Christ
accomplished as compared with the gracing of our first parents. We
might say that making visible in and through a human body what has
been hidden from all eternity in God is the “means” of the sacrament
of Creation (the marriage of Adam and Eve) and the sacrament of the
Redemption (Christ). The effect of the sacrament of Creation and the
effect of the sacrament of Redemption is the gracing of humanity.
Marriage then is,
as the Pope writes, the primordial sacrament because its method and
its effect were renewed and taken up in the sacrament of Redemption
and in its continued presence through the Church. Founded on the
analogy with the sacrament of Creation (the marriage of Adam and
Eve), the Church can be said to be the bride of Christ because as
“one flesh” with Christ, the Church reveals God and confers grace on
humanity. Marriage, the sacrament of Creation, was the foundation of
how God works in the world.
But marriage is
also one of the seven sacraments because Christ raised this blessing
“not forfeited by original sin”[25] to the level of one of the seven
sacraments in order to make it possible for all human beings to live
marriage in the way it was “from the beginning.” The graces of the
sacrament of marriage help couples to overcome the wounds of sin and
love each other as Adam and Eve loved each other in the Garden of
Eden before sin entered their world. “As much as ‘concupiscence’
darkens the horizon of the inward vision and deprives the heart of
the clarity of desires and aspirations, so much does ‘life according
to the spirit’ (that is, the grace of the sacrament of marriage)
permit man and woman to find again the true liberty of the gift,
united to the awareness of the spousal meaning of the body in its
masculinity and femininity.”[26] Living according to the spirit,
i.e., in the life of grace, spouses are capable of loving as they
should and through that same grace have the hope of heaven in and
through Christ. They also, by the generous will of God, have the
possibility of granting new life to new persons who will populate
both this world on earth and eventually, God willing, the Kingdom of
Heaven. Marriage, because it is a sacrament, engenders joy (because
spouses love each other and are loved in return), and hope for
eternity with God in heaven. Parents also find joy in the earthly
life of children, and hope for them to live with God (and with the
parents) for all eternity.
The sign of the
sacrament of marriage is constituted by the intention of the
spouses, indicated by their vows, to give themselves to each other
in and through their masculinity and femininity. The “material”
element of the sacrament of marriage are the bodies of the two
spouses. Their flesh and blood, as a gift to one another, can be
compared to the water in Baptism or the bread and wine of the
Eucharist.
Their bodies speak a language—the language of mutual self-donation
to one another. If this language is expressing truth—if they give
themselves to one another in and through their bodies—the husband
and wife are living out the sacrament: their bodies become the
visible sign of an interior reality. If the language of their bodies
expresses a falsehood, they are “lying.” One lie spouses sometimes
speak with their bodies is adultery where one or both of the spouses
tries to “speak” a self-donation through his or her body with
someone who is not his or her spouse. Conjugal fidelity is truth and
adultery is non-truth, “a falsity of the ‘language of the body.’ . .
. We can then say that the essential element for marriage as a
sacrament is the ‘language of the body’ in its aspects of truth. It
is precisely by means of that that the sacramental sign is, in fact,
constituted.”[27]
After a pause for over fifteen months (occasioned by the 1983 Holy
Year of the Redemption) John Paul continued the fifth cycle of the
Theology of the Body on May 23, 1984. In nos. 109, 110 and 111, the
Pope comments on the Song of Songs. In no. 112, he takes up the
story in the of Sarah and Tobiah in the Book of Tobit. No. 113
constitutes the conclusion of the fifth cycle. He writes at the very
beginning of no. 109, “What I intend to explain in the coming weeks
constitutes as it were the crowning of what I have illustrated.”[28]
John Paul’s three
addresses on the Song of Songs is almost poetry in itself. The Pope
uses all of his poetic and dramatic skill (and, of course, in the
Pope this talent is substantial because John Paul is an accomplished
poet and playwright) to demonstrate that the bride and the groom in
the Song of Songs are depicted as they speak the “language of the
body” according to the truth of their mutual love. The bride, the
Pope writes, speaks to the groom “through every feminine trait,
giving rise to that state of mind that can be defined as
fascination, enchantment. This female ‘I’ is expressed almost
without words; nevertheless, the ‘language of the body’ expressed
wordlessly finds a rich echo in the groom’s words, in his speaking
that is full of poetic transport and metaphors, which attest to the
experience of beauty, a love of satisfaction.”[29] No other Pope has
ever spoken this way!
In no. 110, the
John Paul reminds his readers (and listeners at the time the
audience was given) that the bride and the groom are both responding
to a set of values, the values pertaining to human personhood in all
the truth of an individual’s masculinity or femininity. He insists
that the values the bride and groom see in one another are
constituted not just by the body, but by the personhood of both.
Each responds to the person revealed in and through their
bodies---not just to the body itself. The groom calls his beloved,
“sister” and this term connotes a shared history, as though both
were of the same family. “The groom’s words, through the name
‘sister,’ tend to reproduce, I would say, the history of the
femininity of the person loved. They see her still in the time of
girlhood and they embrace her entire ‘I,’ soul and body, with a
disinterested tenderness.”[30] The term ‘sister’ also connotes a
certain responsibility which both have for one another. This
responsibility to a brother or sister reminds us that the Pope has
previously taught that spouses have entrusted themselves, their
entire beings, to one another and that their human dignity is in a
certain sense “assigned” as a responsibility to their spouse. Each
spouse is to insure that the dignity of the other is not violated or
harmed, most particularly in their marital life.
In an interesting
interpretation of the words, “You are an enclosed garden, my sister,
my bride, an enclosed garden, a fountain sealed,”[31] the Pope sees
an affirmation that the bride is “master of her own mystery.” “The
‘language of the body’ reread in truth keeps pace with the discovery
of the interior inviolability of the person.”[32] The Pope reminds
us in this passage that even in the intimate “belonging” of spouses,
the individual person which is at its deepest point incommunicable,
remains. Although spouses belong to one another through their mutual
self-donation, their own personhood never disappears in the other.
Their own individual mysteries as images of God always remain. The
inviolability of the person leads to a continual and constant mutual
discovery and re-discovery. If there were not always something new,
something fascinating, about the other, i.e., if everything about
the other could be known and “possessed” in the first week or year,
marriage would be agony. But even after decades, spouses still
discover and re-discover each other because each of them retains
(and cannot help but retain) his or own personhood which can never
be fully communicated. John Paul re-iterates this point in his next
address when he writes, in the dynamic of love painted in the Song
of Songs, “there is indirectly revealed the near impossibility of
one person’s being appropriated and mastered by the other. The
person is someone who surpasses all measures of appropriation and
domination, of possession and gratification.”[33] Since the
‘language of the body’ spoken in the Song of Songs seems, on the one
hand, to tend towards possession, but, also, on the other hand,
recognizes the impossibility of such possession, there is a tension
not entirely resolved in this text. John Paul sees the resolution of
the tension in St. Paul’s words about love: “Love is patient, love
is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not
inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is
not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not
rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all
things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails.”[34] The “language of the body” recognizing the
personal dignity and inviolability of the other person, requires
that romantic (the Pope uses the term “eros”) love be taken up into
the selfless love which was clearly revealed to us by Christ. Only
in that refined love, characterized by purity, can the “assignment”
of the dignity of each spouse to the other be fulfilled.
This “assignment”
of each spouse’s dignified personhood to the other means that love
has objective requirements which each “lover” must subjectively
embrace. Love is as the Holy Father mentions “stern” as death. This
point is explicitly made in the Book of Tobit where Tobiah faces
death on his wedding night. Tobiah married Sarah whose previous
seven husbands had all died before consummating their marriages with
her. Therefore, Tobiah and Sarah, before speaking the “language of
the body” in the marital embrace ask God’s blessing on their union.
They pray together. “They see with the glance of faith the sanctity
of this vocation in which – through the unity of the two, built upon
the mutual truth of the ‘language of the body’—they must respond to
the call of God himself . . . .”[35] There is an objective content
of love which must be spoken by spouses. Otherwise the “language of
the body” does not correspond to the truth of the dignity of the
spouses. Further, this “objective” content is set by God Himself. Of
course, the spouses must make this “objective” content part of each
of their subjective attitudes towards themselves and one another. In
other words, the romantic aspects of the “language of the body”
revealed in the Song of Songs must be merged with the objective
“givens” of human dignity in each of the spouses’ attitudes towards
themselves and the other.
In the final
address of this fifth cycle, John Paul integrates Paul’s vision of
marriage in Ephesians 5 with his analysis of the Song of Songs and
of Tobit. He also links both of these with the sacrament of marriage
as a renewal of the sacrament of creation. The liturgical language
of the sacrament of marriage “assigns to both, the man and the
woman, love, fidelity and conjugal honesty through the ‘language of
the body.’ It assigns them the unity and indissolubility of marriage
in the ‘language of the body.” It assgins them as a duty all the
‘sacrum’ (holy) of the person.”[36] The holiness, the mystery of
each person, is the result of God’s creative action because each of
us is created in the image and likeness of God. Each of us reflects
an infinitesmal aspect of the mystery of God Himself. Each of us is
an image of God, a “spark of the divine.” “The ‘language of the
body,’ as an uninterrupted continuity of liturgical language, is
expressed not only as the mutual attraction and mutual pleasure of
the Song of Songs, but also as a profound experience of the ‘sacrum’
(the holy), which seems to be infused in the very masculinity and
femininity through the dimension of the ‘mysterium’ (mystery): the
‘mysterium magnum’ [the great mystery] of the Letter to the
Ephesians, which sinks its roots precisely in the ‘beginning,’ that
is, in the mystery of the creation of man: male and female in the
image of God, called from ‘the beginning’ to be the visible sign of
God’s creative love.”[37]
The “language of the body” is liturgical because liturgy is the
language of sacraments. The “language of the body” is the language
of the sacrament (in the generic sense) of the body, i.e., of the
body’s capability of making visible what has been hidden for all
eternity in God. Thus, the Pope can teach that the “language of the
body” is an “uninterrupted continuity of liturgical language.” This
“language of the body,” the language of the sacrament of the body,
is spoken in the romantic “words” of the Song of Songs, but it also
must speak the dignity and mystery of the human person, of the human
spouses. The profound mystery of each human person, the source of
his or her dignity, is inscribed into each human person when God
created him or her in the image and likeness of Himself.
But in order for
spouses to speak the “language of the body” in truth, not just
through its “romantic words,” but also and more importantly by
incorporating the dignity and value of both of them into their
“language of the body,” they need to be purified from the effects of
sin, from concupiscence. They are made able to speak the “language
of the body,” affirming in their mutual mysteries, the ‘great
mystery’ of the Letter to the Ephesians, through the gift of grace
given in the sacrament of Matrimony.
As one can see,
the Pope’s conclusion to his fifth cycle of the Theology of the Body
addresses, set in prose, is almost poetry. The “word painting” is
more descriptive then discursive. Yet, we grasp his main line of
thought. There can be no doubt that the Church has never given such
a vision of marriage. The union of romance and true love in the
“language of the body,” essential to marriage, is a call to all
spouses to live their marriages as Adam and Eve lived theirs before
sin. Spouses are asked by the Pope to make the objective content of
love part of their subjective “language of the body,” and so to
express truth through their bodies. Part of this truth is that life
is always part of love. Since the life-giving characteristic of love
is under attack in our culture, the Pope devotes the last cycle, the
sixth one, to this one characteristic of the truth of love.
(Rev.) Richard M. Hogan
January 12, 2004.
For
Chapter 8
Posted April 12, 2004 ---- Fr. Richard Hogan
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