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Advent and Christmas
Advent and Christmas both contain readings in which the
plan of God rests on the abandonment of his chosen ones
to divine providence and their openness to
life/children. The fiat of Mary in the annunciation—and
to a lesser extent, that of Elizabeth—exemplify the
unfolding of God’s plan through the parents’ openness to
children. How many of us could rule out the possibility
that a prophet might be born to us, someone who will
help heal the world in extraordinary ways? How would the
world have been different if Mary and Elizabeth, or
Abraham and Sarah, or Adam and Eve had not accepted
God’s invitation to children? What would have become of
the poor and indigent people of Calcutta if Mother
Teresa’s parents had refused their gift of fertility?
Easter
The Easter Season is all about new life and rebirth.
Easter reveals to us a new humanity definitively
redeemed—children of God and heirs to God’s eternal
life. Christ’s resurrection is the consummate sharing of
life, the transference of humanity from the state of
servitude to the state of "children of God" (Rom
8:14-17). The Resurrection elevates humanity to divine
filiation, that is, it makes us children of God and
brothers and sisters in Christ. There is, perhaps, no
better catechesis on the value and nature of childhood,
therefore, than the Easter mystery, for children are the
fruit of love. In the same way that our spiritual
childhood is the fruit of Christ’s love for His bride,
the Church, children are the visible fruit of marriage.
Love is always life giving and fruitful. This is why
Christ’s offering of love on the Cross did not end in
death but in glorified life. If marriage is the visible
sign of Christ’s laying down His life for the Church (E
ph 5:25-32), then it, too, must be oriented to giving
life.
Trinitarian communion was revealed in the glorification
of the Son in the Resurrection. The Resurrection is the
sign, par excellence, of the life-giving power of God.
The family, reflecting the Trinity, is a communion of
persons that more effectively witnesses to God when it,
too, gives life. Christ’s resurrection applies God’s
life-giving power to humanity, creating the family of
God. We, in turn imitate, or rather, participate in this
act when by our transmission of life, we create a
family.
The family motif is carried on in The Feast of the
Ascension, which anticipates our coming of age as
children of God, and our consequent reception of the
inheritance of the Father, the beatific vision. Trinity
Sunday would likewise pertain to the Trinitarian
significance of procreation and family as well as The
Feast of Pentecost, because, just as children proceed
from the mutual love of parents, the Holy Spirit
proceeds as the personification of the mutual love of
the Divine Persons. Our human relationships (communion
among persons) naturally reflect the essence of God
written into the creation. All creation bears the mark
of its creator.
Preaching on NFP during Christmas and Easter has the
added advantage of reaching Catholics who might not
attend Mass regularly, but come out for special feasts.
Pastors and parishioners alike are well aware of how
much pew count swells during these two holy days. It may
well be that this group of parishioners is the one most
in need of catechesis on fertility and NFP, and what a
brilliant opportunity to lend significance and solemnity
to the message.
Lent
Lent is a time to accept our call to examine our
consciences and repent from sin. Advent, too, with its
emphasis on judgment and the bold preaching of John the
Baptist to repentance in preparation for the coming of
Christ, is a time to clean house spiritually. We must be
ready to admit that, in light of the scandalously high
number of Catholics who practice contraception and
sterilization, we have distorted God’s design for
marital sexuality. Since Lent and Advent emphasize new
beginnings, both might be occasions to introduce the
subject of sterilization reversal, a real possibility
for most sterilized couples
Prominent Feasts/Solemnities
Presentation of the Lord (Feb. 2)—Jesus is portrayed
by the prophet Simeon as a sign that will be opposed, a
sign of contradiction. Jesus is the quintessential
symbol of standing against the prevailing sentiment of
the age, of rising up against bondage to sin and error
without counting the cost. The Presentation of the Lord,
traditionally associated with the virtue of obedience so
well modeled by Joseph and Mary’s keeping of the Law, is
well suited to the message that Christ has designed
marriage to be fruitful despite the contraceptive
mentality that so characterizes modern culture. We see
in this feast a twofold offensive against a sinful
culture: (1) Mary and Joseph’s acceptance of a mission
that would require radical self denial, and (2) an
instance of parents redeeming the culture surrendering
their parenthood to divine providence. Generous openness
to children in marriage is an exercise in both of these
virtues. Accepting parenthood can change the world; Mary
and Joseph are a testament to that.
St. Joseph, Husband of Mary (Mar. 19)—Husbands
are often a stumbling block to the use of NFP in
marriages. Saint Joseph cooperated with Mary’s call to
parenthood, accepting God’s will with complete docility.
Husbands must guard the purity of their wives, just as
St. Joseph guarded Mary’s purity. Joseph admirably
fulfills the ideal established by St. Paul in his letter
to the Ephesians: "Husbands, love your wives, even as
Christ loved the Church and handed himself over for her
to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with
the word, that he might present to himself the Church in
splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing,
that she might be holy and without blemish" (5:25-27).
Husbands should not allow the purity and holiness of
their wives to be compromised by supporting or coercing
the use of contraception. This goes for sterilization as
well, even to the male, for both spouses hereby
participate in an act of coition that has been
sterilized.
The Immaculate Conception (Dec. 8), The
Annunciation (Mar. 25) & The Assumption (Aug.
15)—Mary, along with Abraham, is held up by the Church
as an exemplar of the obedience of faith (CCC 148). Her
will was wholeheartedly aligned with God’s will, that
is, she willed only what God willed, consenting even to
the death of her beloved son, a horror spared Abraham.
Disobedience to the plan of God was foreign to Mary, who
surrendered her maternal rights in order to give her son
as a sheep to slaughter. Likewise, disobedience to God’s
design for marriage, and the teaching of the Church He
commissioned as our shepherd, should be equally foreign
to us. Dissent was not an issue for Mary—she did not
pursue loopholes; she was not concerned with whether
Christ’s will for her life was infallible or not—she
gave herself without reservation because she loved Him
truly: "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord" (The
Annunciation, Lk 1:38). Than ks be to God for such love
that brought us eternal redemption. Rebellion against
the Church’s clear and unwavering teaching on
contraception, and the attendant desire of this
rebellion to dominate and subvert our fertility, opposes
the very archetype of redeemed humanity and deprives us
of the divine life realized in her Assumption.
The Birth of John the Baptist (June 24)—John the
Baptist is known for his passionate and hard-hitting
preaching in preparation -for the New Covenant. He
called the world to repentance, urging it to make way
for the Christ by making amends for its wrongdoing. His
life was devoted to the circumcision of the heart (cf.
Rm. 2:29) that would universalize salvation, making it
possible for anyone, Jew or gentile, to be justified.
His death came about as the result of his public
condemnation of Herod’s unlawful marriage to his
brother’s wife. The issue over which John gave up his
life was the sanctity and right ordering of marriage.
Can we not call ourselves to account for the disordering
of marriage in our use of contraception and in our self-mutilative
practice of sterilization? John the Baptist was no wild
man, but a man of extraordinary conviction who deeply
loved his people. His challenge, like that of the
Church, is to clear the w ay for Christ by removing
obstacles to full reception of His grace. Contraception
is such an obstacle and until it is removed we cannot
fully receive the gifts with which Christ has endowed
marriage.
Saints Peter and Paul (June 29)—Out of the heroic
sacrifice of saints Peter and Paul emerges a
confirmation of the Christological ethic of leadership
and service. Like Jesus before them, Peter and Paul laid
down their lives to lead the Church, validating their
commission as Apostolic fathers. Though this leadership
exists today in the successors of the Apostles, rank and
file Catholics too commonly dismiss Apostolic Succession
by disobeying the teaching authority of the magisterium.
Dissent from the Church’s teaching on contraception,
because this teaching has been the clear and continuous
exercise of the apostolic office that resides in the
Pope and the College of Bishops, is an implicit
repudiation of the apostolicity of the Church. To reject
the teaching authority of the Church on this matter is
to reject the apostolic office sustained by Peter and
Paul at so great a cost.
Body and Blood ; Triumph of the Cross (Sept.
14)—Although we may not be proficient in the theology of
redemptive suffering, most of us are familiar with the
expression, "offer it up." Most of us are vaguely
cognizant of the value of suffering for ourselves and
others, though we do not like to suffer. The Triumph of
the Cross opens up for us the mystery that our suffering
can be united to that of Christ, not in such a way that
Christ’s offering on the Cross was insufficient and
needs to be supplemented by our own suffering. Rather,
it teaches us that our suffering is made efficacious
because it is a participation in Christ’s suffering:
"Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which
comes upon you to prove you, as though something strange
were happening to you. But rejoice in so far as you
share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and
be glad when his glory is revealed" (1 Pt 4:12-13).
Indeed, because Christ to ok upon Himself all human
affliction on the Cross, he has already realized our
suffering and offered it to God.
Our suffering has been, as it were, nailed to the Cross.
Our personal self-sacrifices become one with Christ’s
self-sacrifice. We express this connection in the Mass
during the offertory when we say, "May the Lord accept
this sacrifice at your hands, for the praise and glory
of God, for our good and the good of all of His Church."
This shared sacrifice is redemptive to us and to the
rest of the Church ("for our good and the good of all
His Church"). Jesus does not offer Himself apart from
us, exclusively. On the contrary, He offers Himself in
union with humanity, incorporating us into His
once-for-all sacrifice. He is our corporate
representative, allowing all of the merit he earned to
be applied to us, not juridically as if God simply
demanded a pound of flesh for the wrongdoing of
humanity, but communally, drawing his brothers and
sisters (us) into an offering of love. Our every trial
and our every act of love has meaning to the extent that
it proceeds from the self-offering of Christ.
So what does this all have to do with contraception? We
live in a hedonistic culture that tells us to pursue
only what feels good, and to avoid all that feels bad by
any means necessary. Parenthood and children have been
assailed by this self-serving ethic. In the pursuit of
sexual pleasure, material gain, and personal
gratification, contraception has become the means of
thwarting our fertility. Children are perceived by too
many as an inconvenience—too costly, too time consuming,
too needy. Yet, in keeping with the tenet that pleasure
must be pursued at all costs, hedonism is not willing to
let go of the sexual act that is designed to produce
children. Modern culture is practically obsessed with
the refinement of methods and gadgets that could
"liberate" our sexuality from the threat and demands of
parenthood. The result has been the objectification of
persons: the turning of human beings into objects of
sexual gratification. Love, which is the foundation an d
goal of romantic interaction, is replaced by infatuation
and lust, creating counterfeit relationships that often
end in separation and divorce.
Contraception, because it is aimed at mutual
self-gratification instead of mutual self-gift, fuels
this decline. Couples are trained to say with their
bodies, "I give my whole self to you," while in truth
withholding part of themselves from their partners.
Standing against this degradation is the Triumph of the
Cross, in which Jesus’ heart matched perfectly His
action. When He said, "This is my body given up for
you," he enacted this promise bodily on the Cross. In
His sacrifice is the very definition of love: the
complete offering of self in recognition and service of
another’s God-given dignity. Jesus put the definition
more simply: "No one has greater love than this, to lay
down one’s life for one’s friends" (Jn 15:13).
Holy Family — What feast could be more suited to
the message of the blessings of children and the harm of
contraception? Mary and Joseph, despite the most
difficult of circumstances, devoted themselves to the
Christ child. Their openness to life was not hindered by
the inconvenience of God’s call for them, nor by the
interruption of their plans for the future. Unlike the
contracepting couple that says "no" to God’s call to
parenthood, Mary and Joseph said "yes." The faithfulness
of the Holy Family in service to life, brought life to
us all in the person of Christ. In the same way that
Mary and Joseph found themselves in the vocation of
parenthood, so too do we discover ourselves in our
acceptance of this holy calling. The marriage of Joseph
and Mary reveals to us that the raising of a child
enhances the love of spouses for one another and deepens
their shared sense of meaning in life. Theirs is a
shining example of a sentiment common among parents:
"It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it’s worth
it!"
Anniversaries/Commemorations
Anniversary of Humanae Vitae (July
25)—Pope Paul VI’s Encyclical Humanae Vitae is a
concise summation of the Church’s teaching on
contraception. It defines the duties and
responsibilities of conjugal love, the unitive and
procreative aspects of sex, the morally impermissible
methods of regulating birth, the morality of Natural
Family Planning, and the consequences of artificial
birth control for the world. There are, in fact, three
consequences outlined by Pope Paul VI that have
unfortunately been confirmed:
(1) marital infidelity, (2) a general decline in
morality, and (3) the abuse of contraceptive methods by
public authorities. The high divorce rates we have
experienced, the scandalous rate of out-of-wedlock
pregnancies and fatherless families, and the coercive
contraception and abortion policies that have emerged
around the globe all prove Humanae Vitae right. The
encyclical goes on to explain pastoral directives that
emphasize self-mastery, and the creation of a climate of
chastity. Appeals are made to public authorities,
scientists, spouses, medical personnel, priests, and
bishops, to uphold the truth about contraception and
support openness to the blessings of children. It is a
timeless document that, contrary to popular
misconception, did not invent a new doctrine on
fertility in marriage, but reiterated and clarified what
the Church had always and universally taught.
Anniversary of Roe v. Wade (Jan. 22) & Respect
Life Sunday (first Sun. in Oct.)—Since 1973, nearly
42 million babies have been killed in the U.S.—a rate of
approximately 1.5 million every year. While there is
widespread agreement among Christians that abortion is
an evil that must be eradicated (though agreement is not
universal), there is much less awareness and agreement
that contraception has fueled the demand for abortion.
Beyond the fact that the birth control pill is an
abortifacient, contraception is based on intolerance of
new life. Contraception assumes that fertility is a
disease of sorts that must be treated with medication
and which must be avoided by the use of prophylactics.
The belief that we can artificially sterilize sex acts
so as to avoid children implies a lack of appreciation
for their value and opens the floodgates for a spectrum
of other artificial measures that seek to achieve the
same end through similarly illicit means. When we accept
the use of contraception, we play into the hands of
those who conspire against life: "It may be that many
people use contraception with a view to excluding the
subsequent temptation of abortion. But the negative
values inherent in the ‘contraceptive mentality’—which
is very different from responsible parenthood, lived in
respect for the full truth of the conjugal act—are such
that they in fact strengthen this temptation when an
unwanted life is conceived. Indeed, the pro-abortion
culture is especially strong precisely where the
Church’s teaching on contraception is rejected" (EV 13).
For this reason Pope John Paul II has described
contraception and abortion as "fruits of the same tree"
(EV 13). In an audience with the Austrian bishops, June
19, 1987 he was equally direct: "It is ever more
clear that it is absurd, for instance, to want to
overcome abortion through the promotion of
contraception. The invitation to contraception as a
supposedly ‘harmless’ manner of the relation between the
sexes is not only an insidious denial of man’s moral
freedom. It fosters a depersonalized understanding of
sexuality which is directed merely to the moment and
promotes in the last analysis that mentality out of
which abortion arises and from which it is continuously
nourished. Furthermore, it is certainly not unknown to
you that in more recent methods the transition from
contraception to abortion has become extremely easy"
(L’Osservatore Romano, July 13, 1987).
Used by
permission from
Called to Give Life
A Sourcebook on the Blessings of Children and
the Harm of Contraception
Jason T. Adams
One More Soul
1846 N. Main Street
Dayton, Ohio 45405-3832
Phone: 1-800-307-7685
E-mail: omsoul@omsoul.com
www.OMSoul.com |
