Theology of the Body

Growing up, any talk of sex from my parents was more or less, “Don’t do it.” “No sex before marriage,” was the mantra. My mom told my older brother and I once (after a senior found out she was pregnant), that if we got pregnant, we were on our own. That fear of having to take off myself, regardless of another person, terrified me at age 13. So I never let myself get in situations that could lead to that in high school. 

But that’s as far as it got. It was never explained why, except that as Catholics, that is what we believe. And that idea lasted for a while on me. Not forever, unfortunately. I fell into the thoughts of being with him before marriage was fine, since we were going to be married. And lo and behold, I was nearly 5 months pregnant at our wedding.

I wish I would have had more of an idea of the why. Why should I hold myself higher? Why did God want me to wait? What was so special about that first night? 

Fast forward 12 years, and my children are being taught Theology of the Body with their religion at their Catholic School. I haven’t heard much about this until we moved here, so I wanted to get a better understanding. John Paul II wrote a series of homilies in the 1980’s that lead to these books. His homilies that developed Theology of the Body brought about so many points of why our bodies are “capable of making visible what is invisible.” (TOB 19:4)  I am starting with a beginners guide, and am only on chapter 1, but I am already thoroughly invested. 

God made us man and woman. He created us to love as he loves us. He created man and woman to be a sincere gift to each other. “For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” (Ephesians 5:31-32) Where we unite sacramentally with Christ through the Eucharist and partaking in his gift of flesh, God created male and female from the beginning to live in a holy communion with each other, to becoming one flesh in holy unity and matrimony. 

It’s so easy to say that sex is just two people’s wants and needs being met. And that is where great confusion lies. The body and sex are meant to “proclaim our union with God,” and just like anything that brings us closer to God, there is always something just as equal trying to take us apart. The devil is trying to also use our bodies to distort our view of sex. The devil wants to keep us from seeing the mystery of God in our bodies. And he is doing a great way of this! People want to have unrestricted sex without consequences, people want to have ungodly relationships with others of the same sex, people want to distort their own bodies because they don’t see God’s work as good. 

Pope JPII was not a condemning man. He didn’t bring this study of the body about to wag fingers at others. He was one of the most compassionate leaders of our church. He believed “that if what the Church teaches is objectively true, then human experience-subjective as it is- should offer confirmation of that truth.” (Pg 14, TOBFB). So we can think about our own experience and see if it agrees with what he has brought up. That is one of the most appealing things about JPII. He often reminds us of Jesus’s love and Grace, offered for our healing and redemption of our wrongdoings. 

I invite you to obtain a copy of Theology of the Body for Beginners. I got mine on Ascension Press, and it is written by Christopher West. Here is a question to ponder in the mean time from Pope John Paul II: “What is the truth about sex that sets me free to love?” and “Why did God make is male and female in the first place?”