Theology of the Body Stations of the Cross by Fr. Vincent Gulikers. [email protected] THEOLOGY OF THE BODY from Theology of the Body by Christopher West: Chpt. 2 God wants to marry us. The entire biblical revelation unfolds between the marriage of the first Adam and Eve and the marriage of the final Adam and Eve, Christ and the Church. God’s mysterious and eternal plan is to espouse us to himself forever. Christ left his Father in heaven; he left the home of his mother on earth – to give up his body for his bride, so that we might become one flesh with him. We consummate our marriage with Christ ultimately in Heaven, but here on earth we consummate it sacramentally in the Eucharist. The deepest truth of human sexuality is revealed through the Eucharist. The holy communion of man and woman in “one flesh” is a great mystery that is meant to signify the holy communion of Christ and his Church consummated in the Eucharist. MALE CIRCUMCISION Why? Every time a man descended from Abraham consummated his marriage, he and his wife would be reminded of God’s promise of fruitful love. Circumcision foreshadows Christ’s ultimate sacrifice of flesh and blood. God’s generous love involved the sacrifice of one’s own flesh (right where it hurts). Spousal love indicates a total self-giving, a total self-donation. It is our bodies that make visible the call to self-giving love. Love involves the gift of self. The relationship of spouses is the context in which self- giving love is experienced. The relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the source and model of all self-giving love. WE ARE IN A SPIRITUAL BATTLE In the beginning everything was created through the Word. All of creation echoed this Word. God willed that man remain under the control of his own decisions. If we are created for ‘our own sake’ then we are not meant ‘to live’ for ‘our own sake’. In their nakedness Adam and Eve loved each other as God loved because they lived the truth of their sexual giftedness at least initially. Satan is the “anti-Word”. Unfortunately many Christians consider Satan to be a mere symbol. If there is an enemy who wants to keep us from heaven, and if the union of man and woman is the foundational way God reveals his plan, what and where is the enemy going to attack? Satan seeks to counter God’s plan by plagiarizing the Sacraments. It is through the Sacraments that God accomplishes his plan for man. In them we find the meaning of life and true happiness. In the beginning there was only one sacrament – the union of man and woman in marriage. This is where Satan attacks. God revealed himself to the first man and woman as the God of love; the God of the covenant. God’s Word was inscribed in the sacrament of their bodies, and their call was to become one flesh. Satan’s goal is to have man deny God. He shot straight at the covenant relationship trying to convince man that God is not to be trusted, and is not a loving Father. All that Satan can do is take what God has created and twist it. So if we are looking for what is most sacred in our world, all we need do is look for what is most often profaned. The gift of the body and sexuality is under violent and unrelenting attack. SYMBOLIC AND DEMONIC Symbolism: means to bring together, gather up, and unite. Diabolic: means to scatter, break apart, and rupture. The Devil’s plan is to diabolize us through our body and bring us death. God created the body and the mystery of sexuality with a sacramental language that speaks his own Word. Satan twists this holy ground to scramble the body’s language so that it contradicts the Divine Word. We face the threat of spiritualism today. We are disembodying our call to holiness. The body and spirit together proclaims the Word. Angels are spiritual persons, but they are not bodies, and hence, are not sexually differentiated. Animals are bodies and are sexually differentiated, but they are not persons who think outside of themselves. Humans are beings with a combination of the two. This means that we can neither be reduced to the material world, not divorced from it. The original harmony of body and soul, sexuality and spirituality was lived in the original harmony of man and woman. When man accepted the anti-Word his sin shattered these harmonies. A fallen world is a world of estranged spouses; estrangement between divinity and humanity, heaven and earth, soul and body, spirituality and sexuality, sacredness and sensuality, masculinity and femininity. Such alienation leads to a culture of death. When we lack an integration of spirit and flesh we inevitably lean toward one side of the divide or the other: Angelism or Animalism. Angelism promotes a spiritual life divorced from the body. It denies the body’s personal dignity and tends toward prudishness and Puritanism. It considers anything to do with the body as unspiritual. It sees sexuality as impure. Animalism springs from a materialistic world. It views and promotes a carnal life divorced from the spirit. It tends toward the indecent and shameful. It encourages man and woman to indulge in their fallen sexual impulses without restraint. It is pure permissiveness and condemns temperance as a way to freedom. INCARNATIONAL INTEGRATION There is no pure angelist, nor a pure animalist. Each suffocates the other. The Incarnation teaches us another way. We are created to be integrated incarnationally. We are in pressing times. Our tendency to separate spirit and flesh, coupled with the modern will to power, leads us to the gas chamber, to the abortion mill, and to a culture of death. Pope John Paul II notes the signs of the times. It seems the ancient clash between the symbolic and diabolic is coming to a head. We may be experiencing the highest level of tension between the Word and the anti-Word in the whole of human history. The deceiver has worked in stages since the first fall till now. He seeks to induce man to an ultimate denial of God. The denial of God is at the heart of all the man-made hells of this twentieth century. STATIONS OF THE BODY PREFACE These passion stations have taken several years to develop and be formed as you see them today. Through my priesthood I have constantly reflected on who I am as priest, and on our relationship with Christ in and through our flesh, our sexuality. I have been praying these stations daily since they began to be formed that April of 2008. These stations started with my reading Christopher West’s commentary on Pope John Paul II’s reflections on the theology of the body. While on retreat my spiritual director led me to reflect on the Stations of the Cross. To the retreat I brought in my heart the brokenness of the people who came to me in confession that year. Oh, how I felt the burden of their hearts as they struggled with their flesh. The few stations I prayed on that week came out in a poor poetic form. It was my desire in my writing to help others come to healing and peace with their broken flesh and addiction issues. Reflecting daily on these stations helps me tremendously as well. These stations are a love journey, of falling in love with Christ and embracing him in his suffering love for us. It is in and through this embrace that we truly find our healing. The Stations of the Cross have become so much more now. The Lord only reveals in small pieces, or pictures so we can grasp, after our reflection, all he has to offer us. These stations are a journey of surrendering our broken flesh to Christ’s broken flesh so that we can be filled with his perfect spousal love and resurrect in him with a new heart, a new spirit and a renewed flesh. These stations are truly a bridal relationship that ends with our wedded promises given to our God. In the embrace of this marital love Christ sends us out to bring that love to the world. I must admit in my early years it was not easy for me to pray the Stations of the Cross. They are now for me a delight and joy to pray. They have allowed me to understand suffering love more deeply. They have given me strength and a deep deep peace in my body, mind and heart. It is when we surrender everything to our beloved, whoever that may be, especially our beloved Lord, that we find the deepest freedom. These stations make a perfect retreat and mission format. Having made a 30 day retreat I see so many parallels in these stations to the Ignatian retreat format. It parallels the journey of surrender in the Alcohol Anonymous 12 step program. It is also a perfect reflection format for marriage preparation. I pray you too may find many treasures in reflecting on these stations. The Divine Mercy Chaplet is perfect to pray along-side each station. Pray a decade after each station. You can choose to take one station each day and pray the entire Chaplet of Divine Mercy over that one station. You may decide to take all week on a singular station by using the adjoining scripture passages that are footnoted in the poetry and following reflection.