Theology of the Body: A into the Fullness of Love By Father José Granados, a Member of the Disciples of the Hearts of and Mary

Assistant Professor of Patrology and Systematic Theology, Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on and Family at the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.

“To defraud oneself of love is the most deception. It teaches how to “believe terrible, is an eternal loss, for which in love” (see 1 Jn 4:16), the love with there is no compensation, either in which loved us first, brought us time or in eternity” (Sören into existence, and called us to build a Kierkegaard, The Works of Love fruitful life. [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University In order for catechesis to introduce us Press 1995], 5‐6). With these words, into the mystery of God’s love, it is the philosopher Sören Kierkegaard necessary to understand its spoke of the worst deception that can connection to human love. It is here happen in life: “to defraud oneself of that the theology of the body finds its love.” place: its task is to show the place of This temptation is very strong today. human love in the divine plan. The In fact, we can ask two questions: Is it theology of the body is an education possible to believe in love? Can we about love; it shows the path of love discover in love a path that, if between man and woman, who are followed, leads to ? We are called to form a family and become in the middle of a crisis that affects the fruitful. It teaches the meaning of credibility of love. To our culture, love being a child, a spouse, a father or certainly seems funny, interesting, mother, and a sibling, and it shows necessary—but not worthy of trust. It how our identity as human beings does not seem to be solid enough that depends on these relationships. one can build one’s entire life on it. Why is this connection between These questions are very important human love and divine love so for Christian catechesis, because its important? First, it is precisely task is precisely to avoid this through love that human life opens up to the divine mystery. The Greeks had But there is more. This language, the a play on words between “love” (eros) language of love, is the one used by and “wing” (pteros). They so indicated God to reveal his mystery in that love has power to make us fly, to Christianity. He loves his people like transport us toward heaven. Is it not the bridegroom loves the bride, like true that, when we love and are loved, the mother her child, like the father we experience in our life a glimpse of his child. The theology of the body, by the divine? Every true lover talks teaching us what it means to be a about eternity: “I will love you child, a spouse, a father, a mother, forever; it seems that we were prepares us to understand the words intended to meet from forever.” The God himself uses in his Revelation: the Spanish poet Bécquer wrote a Father sends his Son, and the Son romantic poem that expressed this gives himself up for his Bride, the connection between love and the Church. sacred: At this point we could ask, Isn’t there a Today earth and heaven smile huge distance between God’s pure upon me; love and the desires and affections Today the sun reaches the that move our hearts? The answer is depth of my soul; yes; and precisely because this is so, Today I saw her . . . I saw her the theology of the body is a long and she looked at me . . . process, like every true catechesis. Today I believe in God! The theology of the body is a true (Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, pedagogy of the body. Love, even if it Rimas [San Francisco: The seems to be from the beginning sheer History Company, 1891], 40) fulfillment (as Bécquer’s poem says, “Today, I believe in God”), is actually a We may smile at the sudden path to be walked. We need time to enthusiasm of the poet, for whom the mature in our love, to become true gaze of the beloved leads directly to artists in its expression, to reach our belief in God’s existence. But there is final goal. some in these verses. To fall in love, even if it sometimes runs the risk Using a different image, we can say of infatuation, is one of the few ways that we are like alchemists in search in which people today understand the of a formula, the recipe for happiness, presence of grace (in the form of which consists in the fullness of love. surprise, gift, gratuitousness, or even In order to find the formula, it is not fulfillment) in their lives. enough to have all the ingredients at our disposal (for example, sexual From this viewpoint, the theology of desire, sentiments and emotions, love the body, by explaining the meaning of for the person and God). We need to human love, performs a crucial task of put them together in their correct catechesis. If we want to speak of order and measure; we need to God’s love, we need to recover again patiently mix them with one another. this place in life—human love—that The theology of the body shows us opens us up to his presence. how to achieve the perfect formula.

Our formula has four ingredients. finger.” To make of sexual desire an They are necessary elements in the absolute is to keep looking at the lives of the people we catechize. They finger, without allowing it to point are valid for each single stage of the beyond itself, toward the moon, that human journey: childhood, is, toward the greatness of true love. adolescence, youth, adulthood, and old In talking about sexuality, a age. It is never too soon or too late to clarification is important for our teach the theology of the body, catechesis. Our culture has broken all because it runs along the entire the so‐called sexuality taboos. Today journey of humanity. Let us consider we feel the need to talk openly about now these four ingredients. everything that has to do with sex. In so doing, however, we are losing Sensuality or Sexual something essential: precisely the Attraction respect due to the personal mystery of The first element is physical or sexual love toward which sexuality points. In attraction between man and woman, fact, there is nothing wrong in dealing which awakens at puberty. This with these topics with reverence and attraction is embedded in the nature modesty, because this is the only way of the human person. God has created of approaching them truly. This does it and given it to us, so that we not mean that we are suspicious of the understand that our happiness does goodness of sexual desire, but that we not lie in us alone. This desire contains want to respect the treasure it hides: a call to go out of our self‐sufficiency, sexuality opens up the path toward breaking the circle of our own the beauty of true love. isolation. Through this desire, we discover that life starts with a call to Affectivity and Sentiments love. “It is not good for the man to be Sexual desire is able to guide us alone,” says God to in the Book toward freedom when we combine it of Genesis (Gn 2:18). Sexuality with a second ingredient of our promises us a glimpse of happiness formula of true love: affectivity, or the beyond ourselves, toward true love. feelings that unite us to the beloved Because in this love we glimpse a person. promise of fulfillment, sexual attraction is a strong and powerful We fall in love when we encounter a force in human life. person who touches our heart and fills it with sudden happiness. This person The power of sexual attraction is why becomes for us unique, irreplaceable. this attraction is so easy to corrupt. His or her presence makes our life This happens when we make of it an shine with light; our world suddenly absolute, instead of letting it point to takes on a different color. What is key its true goal. If this corruption takes to the emotions is that they allow us to place, our interest stays centered on enter into the world of the beloved our own pleasure and does not allow person and to share in it. We seem to us to find happiness. A Chinese saying live in the sphere of our beloved, to goes, “If someone points you to the enter into a shared universe. moon, do not keep looking at the Emotions are crucial ingredients of world. Now they know that their love love. They enable man and woman to can be stable, beyond their feelings— integrate their sexual attraction, that it can be fruitful, beyond their without permitting it to become the own little world. center of their relationship. Man and At this moment, the miracle of love woman develop a sense of respect and takes place: the lovers become a new reverence for each other. Sexuality being, in which each of them places starts to serve its true purpose, that of the other at the center of his or her making the gift of self possible. happiness. John Paul II has But the lovers need to understand that explained this point by referring to this feeling is not the whole truth of Adam’s sentence in Paradise when he love. Again, as it happens with sexual encounters : “This one, at last, is desire, we find the danger of making bone of my bones and of my an absolute of what is not—in this flesh; this one shall be called ‘woman,’ case, our emotions. For feelings also for out of ‘her man’ this one has been hide a risk of egoism, the temptation taken” (Gn 2:23).1 The Hebrew text of measuring everything according to plays with the words “man” (ish) and our own sentiments. But love is not “woman” (ishah). Only when God only a matter of feeling; otherwise it creates woman does the word “man” would extinguish at the first change of appear in the biblical narrative. Up to mood. It would then be like fireworks: this moment he was Adam, the one beautiful, yes, but unable to illumine who comes from the earth (adamah). one’s path during the night. Feelings The point is that man is not really are not enough. Another ingredient is himself until he encounters someone necessary, one to which feelings point who loves him and to whom he and which they help discover: returns love, until he discovers Eve’s affirmation of the person. Thou. We know of the individualism of our The Affirmation of the Person society. It is built on the value of the Feeling only survives and acquires “I,” of one’s privacy and self‐ maturity when integrated into a realization. The theology of the body higher sphere, that of personal love. At assures us, however, that this “I” finds this point, the lovers are able to affirm itself only in relationship with a each other as persons. They “Thou.” As a consequence, our understand that there is something catechetical work has to foster the greater than their own sentiments: the relationships in which each person good of the beloved, who is worthy of lives. “No man is an island,” says the being respected for his or her own poet John Donne—no one is a land of sake. They learn to love the other for the “I.” Each person is always who he or she is, and not only because of their own feelings toward him or 1 See Pope John Paul II, Man and her. Only when the lovers find this Woman He Created Them: A Theology dimension of their love do they avoid of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein the risk of creating their own bubble (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, that isolates them from the rest of the 2006), 159‐160. someone’s child, someone’s spouse, yes for always in marriage, because someone’s father or mother. When we they have found the rock on which to understand that, our life receives new build their communion. Feelings, no purpose and meaning. We are matter how strong they are, are not ourselves only when we receive enough. The affections have to ourselves and give ourselves back to mature—through suffering and the other. We possess only what we forgiveness, through common work, learn to receive and to give in our through patience, and through joy. turn. In order for this to be possible, The of marriage will be a another ingredient remains in our point of arrival in their love’s formula: God’s presence. maturation. It will also establish a new departure point. Catechists are called God’s Presence in Human Love to accompany the spouses after the celebration of the sacrament, helping Loving our beloved is impossible them to see each stage of their life as a without seeing him or her in path toward God. relationship to God. In his theology of the body, Pope John Paul II showed An ancient king, so goes the tale, how Adam, in order to receive Eve, wanted to show to his people the needs to see her as God’s gift to him, importance of unity in the kingdom. to learn to look at her in the light of He asked a servant to bring him four God’s love.2 Adam and Eve have been ropes and to break them one by one entrusted to each other by their before him. This the servant did with common Father. This is the meaning great ease, because the ropes were not of the adequate help Eve becomes for very strong. Then the king asked for Adam: a help in their common path four more ropes. This time, he toward God, the Source of love. intertwined them with one another and offered them again for the servant An important moment of God’s action to break. In this case, no matter how in human love is the birth of a child in hard he tried, the servant was unable the family. The spouses understand to do so. In the same way, the success that this gift cannot come from their of love is possible when the four own strength or capacity: no human ingredients we have talked about are being can create by himself another integrated into a unity. We are always human life. They grasp then that God striving for wholeness: among our was from the beginning present to desires, affections, personal love, their love. This is what Eve exclaims in relationship with God. To educate in Genesis: “I have produced a man with love is to bring forward the the help of the LORD” (Gn 4:1). integration of these dimensions, a task Only when the spouses grasp that that takes our entire life. their desire and affection need to This task is impossible without grow toward personal love, a love Christ’s help. With his Incarnation, anchored in God, can they give their Christ became flesh and opened up for us the way of love. The theology of the 2 See Man and Woman He Created body is to be always a catechesis on Them, 178‐191. Jesus Christ, from beginning to end, for he is the Son of God who, in order The two Hebrew words for man and to redeem us, became Spouse of the woman (ish and ishah) are different Church, gave his life for her, and thus only in the last two letters. An ancient brought forth the new life of the rabbinic tradition notes that these two children of God. To live out of this love letters are precisely those used to of Christ in order to make it visible write the name of God. It is an (sacramental) in the Church is the task eloquent coincidence. In the sexual of married couples. With Jesus, they difference between man and woman, go together along this way. Like him, God writes his own mystery. For God they are the children who become united man and woman—not so that spouses in order to be fruitful in their they would be able to look at each love, accepting the gift and task of other, but to allow them to walk fatherhood and motherhood. The goal together, being fruitful in the Church of catechesis in the theology of the and in society until they reach their body is to educate the faithful in the ultimate goal: the embrace with the right way of being children, spouses, heavenly Father, source and and parents. (See Carl A. Anderson fulfillment of love. and José Granados, Called to Love. Approaching John Paul II’s Theology of the Body [New York: Doubleday, 2009].)

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