For several weeks recently the Church read week by week from St. John’s Gospel chapter 6. Over and over again through parable, through example, and through clear words our divine Lord has detailed to us the precious gift of the Eucharist that is given to the Church.
Love’s Plan
For weeks we were immersed in a teaching one finds in complete form only in the Catholic Church, the teaching that at Holy Mass we receive, when we are in a worthy state to do so, the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ.
“This saying is hard; who can accept it?”
When some of our Lord’s disciples heard this teaching expressed “many of His disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied Him.” Our Lord didn’t rush to change their minds by “watering down” the teaching — even if He could have! But then why would He want to? He was telling them of the greatest gift, of His saving sacrifice which would come to be re-presented in the Holy Mass, and His presence therein perpetuated in the Holy Eucharist. Nevertheless, they walked away. Still today, regrettably many Catholics too, walk away. The Son of God gives to us the mystery that is the Eucharist. But there is another mystery into which all of this is “poured.”
“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. This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the Church.”
What is this great mystery? The late, great Pope John Paul II wrote in his Letter to Families that “the great mystery, which is the Church and humanity in Christ, does not exist apart from the ‘great mystery’ expressed in the ‘one flesh’…reality of marriage and the family.
You see the great mystery which St. Paul spoke about is so often missed in our own world. And yet this mystery is written precisely in our own bodies.
The Church’s teaching on sex and marriage is good news. This truth must be emphasized from the start. It’s good news because it’s the truth about love, and true love is the fulfillment of the human person. But the Church’s teaching on sex and marriage is also challenging news. This is so because the truth about love is always challenging. (Christopher West, Good News about Sex & Marriage, 17)
So many have missed both the truth of this teaching, and the love that is involved in it, simply because the teaching is precisely that: a challenge. The Church’s teaching on sex and marriage isn’t easy, it requires us to change, to alter our world view — the view that the world revolves around me.
Or in other words, “Decide today whom you will serve.”
At the center of God’s loving plan is marriage and sexual intercourse. Many people miss that. Sometimes, perhaps because we see priests and religious sisters as sort of “religious professionals,” we miss the fact that God’s plan is most revealed to us not in celibacy but in marriage.
Pope John Paul, in his Theology of the Body, called marriage the “primordial sacrament.” God is a life-giving communion of persons. The Father, from all eternity, gives Himself by making a gift of the Son. And the Son, eternally receiving the Father’s gift, gives Himself back to the Father. The love that is between them is so real, so concrete, that it is actually another Person — the Holy Spirit.
We are called to love as God loves — as a communion of persons. We have this love-plan actually inscribed in us, in our bodies. We are made male and female. The man is disposed to make a gift of himself to a woman, of his entire body and soul, and the woman is disposed to receive that gift and to give herself, and we call the sharing of this gift marriage — of which obviously sexual intercourse is an important part.
But wait, there is more!
Love Creates Life
Sexual intercourse within marriage actually images the life-giving love of the Trinity in a real and wonderful way. When the husband and wife give themselves to each other, not holding back anything, their love becomes so real, that it can create a “third,” a new life. And that new life is a person. Sexual intercourse itself reveals something of the invisible mystery of God.
And there is more!
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. Now, where do we become “one flesh” with Christ?
That’s right, in the Eucharist.
Now obviously the Eucharist is not a ‘sexual encounter.’ But, applying the analogy, the Eucharist is the sacramental consummation of the mystical marriage between Christ and the Church. And, continuing with the analogy, when we receive the heavenly Bridegroom into our own bodies, we conceive new life in us — God’s very own life. (West, 18)
It is because the one-flesh union of man and wife foreshadowed the Eucharistic communion of Christ and the Church that Pope John Paul in his Theology of the Body described marriage as the primordial sacrament because it represents, if you will, in the flesh how God relates to His people. So often the Scriptures speak of God “marrying” us, of God being a faithful spouse to His people, even despite infidelity. It is marriage that in a real way prepares us to understand the love of Christ.
The Church never ceases to proclaim that Christ came into the world not only to show us the meaning of life, but also to give us the grace to overcome our fears, wounds, selfishness and sins. True love is possible. That’s the Church’s teaching. The Church holds this out to us in her teachings too on sex and marriage. This is good news!
But for many who fail to understand the stakes, the Church’s teaching is just an invasion of people’s private lives. Take the Church’s teaching on contraception. When I used to prepare couples for marriage talked about this. I would point out to them how sexual intercourse within marriage is an imaging of the relationship of the Trinity. In their marriage they would come before the priest and make their vows, saying, “I give all of myself to you until death.” Those promises however, remain just words. But just as the “Word became flesh” for us, so too those vows become flesh in the one-flesh union of marriage.
What does contraception do to this picture? It takes those words, those vows and it changes them: “I take you, but not your fertility.” And when that happens, the vows are not made flesh.
This is an enormous challenge in our modern times. Contraception is so widespread. Many Cahtolics think the problem is that the Church needs to become up-to-date. But because they ignore the Church’s teaching they never allow themselves to be challenged by it, rationalizing to themselves that it is outdated and/or impossible.
Contraception mars the image of God in us. Contraception alters the divine plan of love imaged in the Eucharist and in the sexual union within marriage. Contraception doesn’t just cut out life, it cuts God out of your marriage. Little wonder, then, that our churches are emptying, our Catholic children are diminishing in numbers, and adultery is on the rise.
Me and My Household
“This teaching is hard; who can accept it?”
The disciples of Jesus also found difficulty with the Lord’s teaching, and we are told “as a result of this, many of His disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied Him.”
Our Lord turns to the Twelve: “Do you also want to leave?”
It is St. Peter, impetuous St. Peter, here still referred to by his old name of Simon, who responds, not only on his own behalf, but on behalf of every believer who will come after him, words which we should know by heart: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that “ou are the Holy One of God.”
There are many, many ideas and belief systems out there, many temptations, many ways of life. Jesus Christ is calling us to only one: the way of love that is the life of the Christian, A tough love that should challenge us every day to love, not as we ourselves would love, but as God loves, imaging His love in everything, and most importantly in the loving plan that is marriage.
“Decide today whom you will serve,” Joshua challenged the Chosen People. May we, like Joshua, despite all the difficulties, despite all the doubts, despite all the perceived problems, respond in the full light of Christian truth with a resounding: “As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”
