Revelation and Discovery of the Nuptial Meaning of the Body

by Pope John Paul II from this General Audience on 9 January 1980. Read text via EWTN.

Transcription of Commentary starting at ~14:25 of recording.
In these conferences which Pope John Paul II gave on Man and Women He created them, a Theology of the Body. We’ve seen so many different important things like Adam. Did he really live the world as if it was a gift. You and I were called to live as if we have received a great gift. Not only a gift of our existence, the gift of our life, our health, but also the gift of the world. How beautiful to see the mountains and rivers of Tennessee. Do we appreciate the gift of God and not just the gift of life or being, of sight, but also God’s gift of self? God gives Himself to us in Holy Baptism, in Holy Eucharist, in Holy Scripture. In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to us, has given us His word to us. And Christ Jesus is the Word made flesh who gives us His very flesh and blood, soul, and divinity in the Sacrament of the Altar. As Pope John Paul II looked back at “the beginning” he asked the question, “Did Adam live the world truly as a gift. And that question is not just for Adam but for us his descendants. We are reminded of “original solitude”, so important, unlike any other creature on the face of the Earth is the human creature, the human being, the human person. How majestic are the eagles which soar high above. How majestic are the orca traversing the oceans, but none more majestic than the human person made to the image of God. A rational animal unlike any other and then, “this one at last, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.” Adam recognizes another self. But then even they recognize that they are unlike all others and they’re still alone although still yet in communion with God before the Fall.
Pope John Paul II is analyzing Sacred Scripture in these 133 presentations on the Theology of the Body. He applies his natural understanding. All his many years of experience, all his many years of study. all his many years of prayer he brings to bear on the sacred text of Genesis. Both the first and second accounts of creation are complementary accounts. The Holy Father reminds us of the “complete consciousness of solitude.” There is a passing consciousness of solitude when you are alone, “I am all alone.” But there is a great sense of consciousness which is possible. To be possible, to be conscious is a great aspect of human being, self awareness. But even when we are sleeping and not self aware or conscious we are who we are. We are just awaiting our rising even if it is an unconscious awaiting. Pope John Paul II points out that there was a complete consciousness of solitude in respect with the other living beings, the animalia. The human being is a living being, is a living being amongst living beings, and while the Holy Father doesn’t point it out here, God is a living being. God is the origin of all life, all living beings. The Holy Father doesn’t point out Aristotelian, philosophical distinctions between vegetative life, sensitive life, spiritual life, not spiritual life in the sense of bended knee and folded hand but the rational spiritual soul.
When the Pope speaks about there being no possible “existence with animals in a relation of reciprocal gift”, he is highlighting the fact that we are made for each other. man for woman, woman for man. Husband for wife, wife for husband. He doesn’t talk about bestiality but this is verboten, forbidden, foreign to our makeup, our nature, and similarly other arrangements.
Pope John Paul II talks about gift and mystery and this is a precursor to the book which he authors some years later celebrating the anniversary of his ordination. The gift of ordination and the ministry of ordination. But even before those great gifts there is the gift and mystery of our very being; the gift and mystery of life; the gift and mystery of original unity of man and woman; the original unity between Heaven and Earth, God and us; a gift, a mystery to be naked without shame is part of the gift, part of the mystery; the spousal meaning of the body; the gift of the spousal meaning, the mystery of the spousal meaning.
In our day and age how many people say “oh we know everything there is to know about marital relations. about interpersonal relations.” The Holy Father didn’t use the word phooey. But if we say there is no mystery, how sad. God is a mystery of Three Divine Persons, One God. And the human person is made in the image of God made for communion and mysterious no less.
Pope John Paul II shows his philological background by focusing on two words: alone and help. Alone as an adjective and help as a noun. Words do matter. Words have meaning. to be alone there is no one else. Amongst all the other animals amongst all the other creatures on the face of the earth man is distinct. And there’s no loneness there. Adam recognized in Eve help, another likened to himself. Our ability to understand that essence of the gift the Pope wants us to focus on: the being of the gift; the being of the gift of being; the being of the gift of life; the being of the relationship between the giver and the gift and the one who receives.
These things can be understood even in our fallen state where it is difficult to know the truth but nonetheless possible. If we are made to the image of God, and we are, God understands His own being. God understands the gifts He’s given. And the more we understand and seek to understand then the more we are in the image of God. Male and female, man and woman. this is our personal existence. We do not exist as cats or dogs or flowers or fish. We exist as human persons. mirroring the Divine Persons.
The essence of the person, the being of the person is something which Pope John Paul II is analyzing throughout these 133 talks. The essence of the person is a gift, the being of the person is a gift. The being, the essence of the person is likewise a mystery. While a mystery, it is not entirely unknowable. Remember your Agatha Christie. Remember Sherlock Holmes. What were the names of the mysteries? Who were the characters? Where did they occur? Things can be known even about mystery, even if they are not exhaustively known.
Pope John Paul II emphasizes two different ways of existing helping us appreciate the mystery of the essence of the person: existing with someone side by side, together, and existing for someone. When a husband and wife exchange their marital vows they exist for the other and in giving life to their children they exist for the children. All of us, we exist for God, to give glory to God who has made us for Himself. God who exists as a Trinity of Persons has made us to exist as human persons, body and soul composite. I am not just my body and I am not just my soul. This is part of how I exist as a person in relation with others, in relation with God, and even in relation with myself. When I get enough sleep it is good for me, it’s also good for those around me. When I get enough to eat it’s good for me but it is also for those around me. When I am diligent in my labors it is good for me because I enjoy the fruit of my labor but it is also good for those for whom I labor. This is part of my existence as a person but my existence as a person is not limited to the here and now. Sure, my human being, my existence began in a certain year on a certain day, when I was conceived. But though my body and soul will be separated at my death, the soul remains and awaits the resurrection. We pray in God’s mercy that it will be on high with Christ Jesus and all the Holy Angels and Saints. There is another destination, however where we do not want to go or should not want to go.
To exist as a person points out a fundamental and a constitutive relationship and communion of persons. The foundation is the basis, the constitutive, the parts which make the whole. The relationship between us and ourselves, us and our neighbors, us and God ,and God and us and God and our neighbors. The communion of persons together with con unium, union, con with, to be with each other and not just bodily presence. also a union of wills. The communion of persons means a reciprocal ‘living for.”
Reciprocity is very important in the understanding of our Holy Father: mutuality, reciprocity. If it’s just the husband turning cart wheels, standing on his head and the wife sits back that is not reciprocity. Or on the other hand, if the wife is standing on her head doing cartwheels and the husband is picking lint out of his belly button this is not reciprocity, this is not mutuality.
“Communion of persons” means reciprocal “living for.” Remember the Holy Father spoke to us about the difference between “existing with” someone and “existing for” someone. The communion of persons is living for the other, to whom we have given ourselves.
The gift of self is so central, so key to holy marriage. And these 133 lectures which go to make the Theology of the Body are used throughout the world at the various locations where the Pope John Paul II Institute for Marriage and the Family are established. The students spread throughout the world spreading the truth about God and about ourselves revealed by Jesus Christ who spoke to us about the beginning, the original intentions, the original plan of almighty God for His creation.
This male, female, communion of persons living a relationship of reciprocal gift is, for Pope John Paul II and in fact, the fulfillment of man’s original solitude. We have been made for communion. This is part of the mystery of creation: male and female He has created us. Pope John Paul II has undertaken this Theology of the Body program so as to get down to the very essence, the very being of what is creative giving.
God has given us being in creation. Picasso gave being to his works of art, Michelangelo no less. And then gifts are given further. The creation having been made is given, entrusted to another. This time she’s “flesh from my flesh and bone from my bone.” These are words but they are not “just words.” They express the reality of our very being, our being from the beginning, our blessed beginning. beatified being. our existence-in-the-world. Pope John Paul II doesn’t mention Martin Heidegger or other philosophers in these passages, but when there is reference to existence-in-the-world one could hyphenate it because that is the experience of existence which we have. I do not have experience of existing on Mars. I do not have experience of existing in outer space. I have an experience of existing-in-the-world and this is how God made me for Himself in the here and now and I look forward to existence in eternity but I am not entirely there yet and neither are you.
Because of our bodies we are individuated. We are distinct from other human beings and from the other visible realities on the face of the Earth. Part of Pope John Paul II’s intentions here is to present an “adequate anthropology”, an anthropology that corresponds to the reality of our very being. And part of that is the essentialness of simultaneity: the topic of person and the topic of the body and sex. Without these two it’s not an adequate anthropology. I am not just a person I am not just my body I am a composite. There will be more on this in the coming programs. To deal with sex without the person would destroy the whole adequacy of the anthropology found in Genesis. until next time God bless you.