Post by szarno on May 24, 2014 3:21:00 GMT -5
The mystery of Love extending from the Trinity
In his momentous teaching, on the bodily dimension of human personhood, sexuality, marriage, and celibacy, “Man and Woman He Created Them”, John Paul II presents an integral image of the human person rooted in Sacred Scripture and the Church’s living tradition in a vision focused on the mystery of love extending from the Trinity, through Christ’s spousal relation with the Church, to the concrete bodies of men and women. Cardinal Wojtyla originally gave it the title Male and Female He Created Them (Gen 1:27). God’s designs for the person, the design of divine love for human love – this is the reality the theology of the body attempts to unfold on the basis of the teachings of Jesus.
The term “biological order,” Wojtyla argues, “does indeed mean the same as the order of nature, but only insofar as this is accessible to the methods of empirical and descriptive natural science, and not as a specific order of existence with an obvious relationship to the First Cause, to God the Creator (“Love and Responsibility”, 1960, 56 – 57). Biology “has man for its immediate author” since man abstracts certain elements from a larger and richer reality. The order of nature, by contrast, includes all these richer relationships among real beings. If one replaces the order of nature with the biological order, the consequences are devastating. “My soul had for a long time now been used to seeing in nature nothing but a dead desert covered by a veil of beauty, worn by nature like a mask that deceives”(Sergei Bulgakov). The problem of this split between person and nature was addressed in John Paul’s 1994 statement:
“The philosopher who formulated the principle of “cogito, ergo sum” – I think, therefore I am – also gave the modern concept of man its distinctive dualistic character. It is typical of rationalism to make a radical contrast in man between spirit and body, between body and spirit. The body can never be reduced to mere matter…. The human family is facing the challenge of a new Manichaeism, in which body and spirit are put in radical opposition; the body does not receive life from the spirit, and the spirit does not give life to the body. Man thus ceases to live as a person and a subject. Regardless of all intentions and declarations to the contrary, he becomes merely an object. This neo-Manichaean culture had led, for example, to human sexuality being regarded more as an area for manipulation and exploitation than as the basis of that primordial wonder which led Adam on the morning of creation to exclaim before Eve: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2: 23). This same wonder is echoed in the words of the Song of Solomon: “You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride, you have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes (Song 4:9).” (John Paul II, Letter to Families, 19).
Those who instruct the Christian people by sacred preaching must show the highest degree of prudence. They are to give first place to solid doctrine, keeping in mind the admonition of St. Paul: “Take heed to yourself and to your teaching, be earnest in them. For in so doing you will save both yourself and those who hear you.” … When they discuss biblical events, they are not to add fictitious details which hardly fit in with the truth. [“Instruction of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Historicity Of The Gospels – Sancta Mater Ecclesia”, 1964, p.10].
One of the major concerns of classical philosophy was to purify human notions of God of mythological elements. We know that Greek religion, like most cosmic religions, was polytheistic, even to the point of divinizing natural things and phenomena. Human attempts to understand the origin of the gods and hence the origin of the universe find their earliest expression in poetry, and the theogonies remain the first evidence of this human search. But it was the task of the fathers of philosophy to bring to light the link between reason and religion. As they broadened their view to include universal principles, they no longer rested content with the ancient myths, but wanted to provide a rational foundation for their belief in the divinity. This opened a path which took its rise from ancient traditions but allowed a development satisfying the demands of universal reason. This development sought to acquire a critical awareness of what they believed in, and the concept of divinity was the prime beneficiary of this. Superstitions were recognized for what they were and religion was, at least in part, purified by rational analysis. It was on this basis that the Fathers of the Church entered into fruitful dialogue with ancient philosophy, which offered new ways of proclaiming and understanding the God of Jesus Christ… . St. Paul has in mind (other elements of the cultural world of paganism cautiously regarded in Christianity’s adoption of philosophy – understood as practical wisdom and an education for life – easily confused with “philosophy” as a higher esoteric kind of knowledge, the kind of esoteric speculation reserved to those few who were perfect) when he puts the Colossians on their guard: “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe and not according to Christ” (2:8). The Apostle’s words seem all too pertinent now if we apply them to the various kinds of esoteric superstitions widespread today, even among some believers who lack a proper critical sense. [Encyclical Letter of John Paul II, Fides Et Ratio – On the relationship between Faith and Reason, 1998, p.50-51.]
Perfection demands that maturity in self-giving to which human freedom is called. …The follower of Christ knows that his vocation is to freedom. “You were called to freedom, brethren” (Gal 5:13), proclaims the Apostle Paul with joy and pride. …The firmness with which the Apostle opposes those who believe that they are justified by the Law has nothing to do with man’s “liberation” from precepts. On the contrary, the latter are at the service of the practice of love: “For he who loves his neighbour has fulfilled the Law. The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’” (Rom 13:8-9). … Saint Augustine, after speaking of the observance of the commandments as being a kind of incipient, imperfect freedom, goes on to say: “Why, someone will ask, it is not yet perfect? Because ‘I see in my members another law at war with the law of my reason ….’ In part freedom, in part slavery: not yet complete freedom, not yet pure, not yet whole, because we are not yet in eternity. In part we retain our weakness and in part we have attained freedom. All our sins were destroyed in Baptism, but does it follow that no weakness remained after iniquity was destroyed? Had none remained, we would live without sin in this life. But who would dare to say this except someone who is proud, someone unworthy of the mercy of our deliverer…? Therefore, since some weakness has remained in us, I dare to say that to the extent to which we serve God we are free, while to the extent that we follow the law of sin, we are still slaves.” [Encyclical Letter of John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth – Veritatis Splendor, pp. 30-31].
Hence the Psalmist prays: “Let the light of your face shine on us, O Lord” (Ps 4:6). …“If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments” (Mt 19:17). … Love and life according to the Gospel cannot be thought of first and foremost as a kind of precept, because what they demand is beyond man’s abilities. They are possible only as a result of*gift of God who heals, restores and transforms the human heart by his graces: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (Jn 1:17) … [Encyclical Letter of John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth – Veritatis Splendor, pp. 9; 22; 37].
“You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus makes even clearer the meaning of this perfection: “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:36). …Following Christ is thus the essential and primordial foundation of Christian morality: just as the people of Israel followed God who led them through the desert towards the Promised Land (cf. Ex 13:21), so every disciple must follow Jesus, towards whom he is drawn by the Father himself (cf. Jn 6:44). …”A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:34-35). …As the Lord Jesus receives the love of his Father, so he in turn freely communicates that love to his disciples: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love” (Jn 15:9). Christ’s gift is his Spirit, whose first “fruit” (cf. Gal 5:22) is charity: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). Saint Augustine asks: “Does love bring about the keeping of the commandments, or does the keeping of the commandments bring about love?” And he answers” “But who can doubt that love comes first? For the one who does not love has no reason for keeping the commandments.” [Encyclical Letter of John Paul II, Fides Et Ratio – On the relationship between Faith and Reason, 1998, pp. 32-33;36].
Faith is in a sense an “exercise of thought”: and human reason is neither annulled nor debased in assenting to the contents of faith, which are in any case attained by way of free and informed choice. [John Paul II, Address to the Participants at the IX International Thomistic Congress, (September 29, 1990): Insegnamenti, XIII, 2 (1990), 770-771]. Illumined by faith, reason is set free from the fragility and limitations deriving from the disobedience of sin and finds the strength required to rise to the knowledge of the Triune God. … Just as the Virgin was called to offer herself entirely as human being and as woman that God’s Word might take flesh and come among us, so too philosophy is called to offer its rational and critical resources that theology, as the understanding of faith, may be fruitful and creative. And just as in giving her assent to Gabriel’s word, Mary lost nothing of her true humanity and freedom, so too when philosophy heeds the summons of the Gospel’s truth its autonomy is in no way impaired. Indeed, it is then that philosophy sees all its enquiries rise to their highest expression. This was a truth which the holy monks of Christian antiquity understood well when they called Mary “the table at which faith sits in thought.” In her they saw a lucid image of true philosophy and they were convinced of the need to philosophari in Maria. [Encyclical Letter of John Paul II, Fides Et Ratio – On the relationship between Faith and Reason, 1998, pp. 58; 130].
The light of God’s face shines in all its beauty on the countenance of Jesus Christ, “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), the “reflection of God’s glory” (Heb 1:3), “full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14). Christ is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6). Consequently the decisive answer to every one of man’s questions, his religious and moral questions in particular, is given by Jesus Christ, or rather is Jesus Christ himself, as the Second Vatican Council recalls: “In fact, it is only in the mystery of the Word incarnate that light is shed on the mystery of man. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of the future man, namely, of Christ the Lord. It is Christ, the last Adam, who fully discloses man to himself and unfolds his noble calling by revealing the mystery of the Father and the Father’s love.” [Encyclical Letter of John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth – Veritatis Splendor, pp. 10-11].
In God’s design, the spousal union of man and woman is the original effective sign through which holiness entered the world (TOB 9:3). This visible sign of marriage “in the beginning” is connected with the visible sign of Christ’s spousal love for the Church and is thus the foundation of the whole sacramental order (TOB 95b:7).
“Someone came to him….” (Mt 19:16) …” In the young man whom Matthew’s Gospel does not name, we can recognize every person who, consciously or not, approaches Christ the redeemer of man and questions him about morality. For the young man, the question is not so much about rules to be followed, but about the full meaning of life. This is in fact the aspiration at the heart of every human decision and action, the quiet searching and interior prompting which sets freedom in motion. This question is ultimately an appeal to the absolute Good which attracts us and beckons us; it is the echo of a call from God who is the origin and goal of man’s life. Precisely in this perspective the Second Vatican Council called for a renewal of moral theology, so that its teaching would display the lofty vocation which the faithful have received in Christ, the only response fully capable of satisfying the desire of the human heart.
In order to make this “encounter” with Christ possible, God willed his Church. Indeed, the Church “wishes to serve this single end: that each person may be able to find Christ, in order that Christ may walk with each person the path of life.” [Encyclical Letter of John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth – Veritatis Splendor, pp. 16-17].
“The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light…. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and his love, fully reveal man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear.” This familiar teaching of the Second Vatican Council was John Paul II’s anthem. [John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them – A Theology of the Body, Preface by Christopher West April 19, 2006, xxx].
Wojtyla unfolds the formation of the believer’s consciousness in five steps.
1. The consciousness of creation;
2. The revelation of the Trinity and the consciousness of salvation;
3. Christ and the consciousness of redemption;
4. The consciousness of the Church as the People of God;
5. The historical and eschatological consciousness of the Church.
… Wojtyla comments:
Man’s resemblance to God finds its basis, as it were, in the mystery of the most holy Trinity. Man resembles God not only because of the spiritual nature of his immortal soul but also by reason of his social nature, if by this we understand the fact that he “cannot fully realize himself except in an act of pure self-giving” [Gaudium et Spes, 24:3]. In this way, “union in truth and charity” is the ultimate expression of the community of individuals. This union merits the name of communion (communio), which signifies more than community (communitas). The Latin word communio denotes a relationship between persons that is proper to them alone; and it indicates the good that they do to one another, giving and receiving within the mutual relationship.
… The essential point to note is that Wojtyla sees the heart of the Council in the call to deeper personal awareness of love as self-gift rooted in the Trinity. … The concept of “communion,” he argues, is the key defining concept in light of which one can understand what it means that the Church is the “People of God”:
If we want to follow the main thread of the Council’s thought, all that it says concerning the hierarchy, the laity and the religious orders in the Church should be re-read in the light of the reality of communion for the community of the People of God. “For the members of the People of God are called upon to share their goods, and the words of the apostle apply to each of the Churches, ‘according to the gift that each has received, administer it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God’ (1 Pet 5:10).”
Thus we have the communio ecclesiarum [communion of churches] and the communio munerum [the communion of gifts, tasks, or offices] and, through these, the communio personarum [communion of persons]. Such is the image of the Church presented by the Council. The type of union and unity that is proper to the community of the Church as People of God essentially determines the nature of that community. The Church as People of God, by reason of its most basic premises and its communal nature, is oriented towards the resemblance there ought to be between “the union of the sons of God in truth and love” [Gaudium et Spes, 24:3] and the essentially divine unity of the divine persons, in communione Sanctissimae Trinitatis.
“… Thus it appears that the internal development and renewal of the Church in the spirit of Vatican Council II depends to a very great extent on the authentic deepening of faith in the Church as a community whose essential bond is that of communion”
This emphasis on the Trinitarian understanding of Vatican II’s teaching on the “People of God” is confirmed by Sign of Contradiction, the retreat Cardinal Wojtyla preached for Paul VI in 1976, two years before his own election as Pope. At a highpoint of the retreat, the beginning of the seventh talk, he says,
Let us turn our thoughts to God who is gift and the source of all giving. The Fathers of the second Vatican Council were convinced that the complex reality of the Church cannot be adequately expressed in societal terms alone, even when the society constituted by the Church is called the “People of God.” In order properly to describe this reality and appreciate its underlying significance it is necessary to return to the dimension of mystery, that is to the dimension of the most Holy Trinity. That is why the Constitution Lumen Gentium starts with an introductory account of the divine economy of salvation, which ultimately is a Trinitarian economy (cf. Lumen Gentium, nn. 2-4)…. Love, an uncreated gift, is part of the inner mystery of God and is the very nucleus of theology.
… What Wojtyla calls the fundamental “attitude” of the believer lies precisely in the self-gift to God.
1. The attitude of mission and testimony;
2. The attitude of participation in the threefold saving power of Christ;
3. The attitude of human identity and Christian responsibility;
4. The ecumenical attitude;
5. The attitude of the apostolate; and
6. The attitude required for building up the Church as communio.
… John Paul II writes, “The natural law thus understood does not allow for any division between freedom and nature. Indeed, these two realities are harmoniously bound together, and each is intimately linked to the other.”
… John Paul II’s prophetic warning in Evangelium Vitae: “Nature itself, from being ‘mater’ (mother), is now reduced to being ‘matter,’ and is subjected to every kind of manipulation. This is the direction in which a certain technical and scientific way of thinking, prevalent in present-day culture, appears to be leading when it rejects the very idea that there is a truth of creation which must be acknowledged, or a plan of God for life which must be respected.”
What is the essence of the teaching of the Church about the transmission of life in the conjugal community, the essence of the teaching recalled for us by the Council’s pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes and the encyclical Humanae Vitae by Pope Paul VI? The problem lies in maintaining the adequate relationship between that which is defined as “domination… of the forces of nature (HV 2), and “self-mastery” (HV 21), which is indispensable for the human person. Contemporary man shows the tendency of transferring the methods proper to the first sphere to those of the second. (TOB 123:1)
The fundamental problem the encyclical presents is the viewpoint of the authentic development of the human person; such development should be measured, as a matter of principle, by the measure of ethics and not only of “technology.” (TOB 133:3)
God’s plan and its renewal by Christ, the redeemer, is imprinted deeply within the bodily nature of the person as a pre-given language of self-giving and fruitfulness.
Concupiscence in general – and the concupiscence of the body in particular – attacks precisely this “sincere gift”: it deprives man, one could say, of the dignity of the gift, which is expressed by his body through femininity and masculinity, and in some sense “depersonalizes” man, making him an object “for the other.” Instead of being “together with the other” – a subject in unity, or better, in the sacramental “unity of the body” – man becomes an object for man, the female for the male and vice versa. (TOB 32:4)
… In his account of the grace of the sacrament, John Paul II unfolds the content of the “magnum mysterium” of spousal love. This is “the truth” by which the spousal meaning of the body is measured.
The analogy of the love of spouses (or spousal love) seems to emphasize above all the aspect of God’s gift of himself to man who is chosen “from ages” in Christ (literally, his gift of self to “Israel,” to the “Church”); a gift that is in its essential character, or as gift, total (or rather “radical”) and irrevocable. This gift is certainly “radical” and therefore “total.”
… The analogy of marriage, as a human reality in which spousal love is incarnated, helps in some way to understand the mystery of grace as an eternal reality in God and as a “historical” fruit of the redemption of humanity in Christ. Yet, we said earlier that this biblical analogy not only “explains” the mystery but also, conversely, the mystery defines and determines the adequate way of understanding the analogy and precisely that component of it in which the biblical authors see “the image and likeness” of the divine mystery. Thus, the comparison of marriage (due to spousal love) with the relationship between Yahweh and Israel in the Old covenant and between Christ and the Church in the New, is at the same time decisive for the way of understanding marriage itself and determines this. (TOB 95b:4-5)
In this text, John Paul II describes spousal love In agreement with St. John of the Cross as a gift of self that is radical and thus total and irrevocable. … “To love is to give everything and to give oneself,” writes St. Therese of Lisieux, in full agreement with her teacher St. John of the Cross and her student John Paul II.
…While for the Manichaean mentality, the body and sexuality constitute, so to speak, an “anti-value,” for Christianity, on the contrary, they always remain “a value not sufficiently appreciated.” (TOB 45:3)
…, Jesus speaks primarily as the redeemer, who overcomes sin and opens the way for a real transformation, for life in the Spirit. He is the redeemer of the body, who has the power to inscribe the law of love on hearts of flesh. “I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh (Ezek 11:19). “I will write my law on their hearts” (Jer 31:33). He can demand a radical gift of self, because he himself made such a gift of himself to the human race, and his gift is effective.
The Biblical tradition reports a distant echo of the physical perfection of the first man: “You were a model of perfection, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty; in Eden, the garden of God” (Ezek 28:12-13). “Wisdom….by its purity pervades and penetrates all things” (Wis 7:24).
“Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor .” Ovid, Metamorphoses, 7:20.
“Desire” in a negative sense arises when a man or a woman fails to see the full attractiveness of the other person and reduces it to the attractiveness of sexual pleasure alone. It is this isolation of sexual desire that gives rise to the vice of lust. In lustful or concupiscent desire, one sees the other person in a reductive way as a mere means for sexual pleasure (see esp. TOB 41). It does not matter whether the person one desires in this reductive way is one’s spouse or not, because the reduction is in both cases contrary to the full dignity and beauty of the person (see TOB 43).
As pointed out above (see translator’s not on TOB 24:1), the word “desire” can be used in a positive sense. In courtship and marriage, it is not only morally legitimate but good and holy, in conformity with the spousal meaning of the body, for man and woman to desire each other. “Desire” can also be used in a negative sense for a reductive kind of desire in which the other person becomes a mere means for pleasure, contrary to the spousal meaning of the body. Even husband and wife commit “adultery in the heart” if they “desire” each other in this reductive way (see esp. TOB 43:2-4).
The Council of Trent defines the state of the first man before sin as “holiness and justice” (DS 1511, 1512) or as “innocence” (DS 1521). Because of sin, therefore, Adam lost what did not belong to human nature in the strict sense of the word, namely, “integrity, holiness, innocence, and justice.” Free will was not taken away, but weakened.
“When they come up against the ruined slope, / then there are cries and wailing and the lament, / and there they curse the force of the divine. / I learned that those who undergo this torment / are damned because they sinned within the flesh, / subjecting reason to the rule of lust. / And as, in the cold season, starling’s wings / bear them along in broad and crowded ranks / so does that blast bear on the guilty spirits: / now here, now there, now down, now up, it drives them./ There is no hope that ever comforts them - / no hope for rest and none for lesser pain.” Dante, Inferno, 5:37-43.
. … In its original form, Manichaeism, which sprang up in the Orient from Mazdean dualism, that is, outside the biblical sphere, saw the source of evil in matter, in the body, and therefore condemned all that is bodily in man. And since in man bodiliness manifests itself above all through [one’s] sex, the condemnation was extended to marriage and conjugal life and to all other spheres of being and acting in which bodiliness expresses itself.… The call to master concupiscence of the flesh springs precisely from an affirmation of the personal dignity of the body and of sex and only serves such dignity. Anyone who wants to see a Manichaean perspective in these words would be committing an essential error.
Redemption means, in fact, a “new creation,” as it were, it means taking up all that is created to express in creation the fullness of justice, equity, and holiness planned for it by God and to express that fullness above all in man, created male and female “in the image of God.”
In the perspective of the words of Christ to the Pharisees about what marriage was “from the beginning,” we also reread the classical text of Ephesians 5:22-33 as a testimony of the sacramentality of marriage based on the “great mystery” of Christ and the Church.
… Speaking about concupiscence (about the concupiscent look, see Mt 5:28), Christ makes his listeners aware that everyone carries within himself, together with the mystery of sin, the inner dimension of the “man of concupiscence” (which is threefold: “concupiscence of the flesh, concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life,” 1 John 2:16). Precisely to this man of concupiscence there is given in marriage the sacrament of redemption as grace and sign of the covenant with God – and it is assigned to him as an ethos. At the same time, in relation with marriage as a sacrament, it is assigned as ethos to every man, male and female: it is assigned to his “heart,” to his conscience, to his looks, and to his behaviour. Marriage – according to Christ’s words (see Mt 19:4) – is a sacrament from the “beginning” itself, and at the same time, on the basis of man’s “historical” sinfulness, it is a sacrament that arose from the mystery of the “redemption of the body.”
… As a sacrament born of the mystery of the redemption and in some sense reborn from the spousal love of Christ and the Church, marriage is an efficacious expression of the saving power of God, who realizes his eternal plan also after sin and despite the threefold concupiscence hidden in the heart of every man, male and female. As a sacramental expression of that saving power, marriage is also an exhortation to gain mastery over concupiscence (as Christ speaks about in the Sermon on the Mount). … The truth according to which marriage, as sacrament of redemption, is given “to the man of concupiscence” as a grace and at the same time as an ethos, has found particular expression in the teaching of St. Paul as well, especially in 1 Corinthians 7. When he compares marriage with virginity (or “continence for the kingdom of heaven”) and declares the “superiority” of virginity, he still observes, “each has his own gift from God, one in one way and another in another” (1 Cor 7:7). Thus, based on the mystery of redemption, a particular “gift,” that is, grace, corresponds to marriage.
… In the Pauline words, “It is better to marry than to be aflame,” the word “aflame” signifies the disorder of the passions springing from concupiscence of the flesh (concupiscence is presented in an analogous way in the Old Testament by Sir 23: 17 [see TOB 39:1]). “Marriage,” by contrast, signifies the ethical order, which is consciously introduced in this context.
… As the primordial sacrament and at the same time as the sacrament born in the mystery of the redemption of the body from the spousal love of Christ and the Church, marriage “comes from the Father.” It is not “from the world,” but “from the Father.” Consequently, as a sacrament, marriage also constitutes the basis of hope for the person, for the man and the woman, for the parents and the children, for the human generations. On the one hand, “the world passes away with its concupiscence,” and on the other, “the one who does the will of God will remain in eternity” (1 Jn 2:17). Man’s origin in the world is linked with marriage as a sacrament, and his coming to be is inscribed in marriage, not only in the historical but also in the eschatological dimensions. … Marriage, which is the primordial sacrament, reborn in some sense from the spousal love of Christ and the Church, does not belong to the “redemption of the body” in the dimension of eschatological hope (see Rom 8:23). The same marriage, which is given to man as a grace, as a “gift” destined by God precisely for the spouses, and at the same time assigned to them by Christ’s words as an ethos – that sacramental marriage is fulfilled and realized in the perspective of the eschatological hope. It has an essential meaning for the “redemption of the body” in the dimension of this hope. It comes, in fact, from the Father and owes it origin in the world to him. And if this “world passes away,” and if the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, which come “from the world,” also pass away with it, marriage as a sacrament immutably serves the purpose that man, male and female, by mastering concupiscence, does the will of the Father. And the one who “does the will of God will remain in eternity” (1 Jn 2:17).
… As a sacrament of the human “beginning,” as a sacrament of the temporality of historical man, marriage thus performs an irreplaceable service with regard to man’s extra-temporal future, with regard to the mystery of the “redemption of the body” in the dimension of eschatological hope.
… The Pauline image of marriage, inscribed in the “great mystery” of Christ and the Church, brings together the redemptive dimension of love with its spousal dimension. In some sense it unites these two dimensions in a single one. Christ has become the Church’s Bridegroom, he married the Church as his Bride because “he gave himself for her” (Eph 5:25). Through marriage as a sacrament (as one of the sacraments of the Church), both of these dimensions of love, the spousal and the redemptive, penetrate together with the grace of the sacrament into the life of the spouses. The spousal meaning of the body in its masculinity and femininity, which manifested itself for the first time in the mystery of creation on the background of man’s original innocence, is united in the image of Ephesians with the redemptive meaning, and in this way it is confirmed and in some sense “created anew.”
… The Pauline image of the “great mystery” of Christ and the Church indirectly speaks also about “continence for the kingdom of heaven,” in which both dimensions of love, the spousal and the redemptive, are united with each other in a way that differs from that of marriage, in accord with different proportions. Is not the spousal love with which Christ “loved the Church,” his Bride, “and gave himself for her” equally the fullest incarnation of the ideal of “continence for the kingdom of God” (see Mt 19:12)? Is it not precisely in this love that support is found for all those – both men and women – who choose the same ideal and thus desire to link the spousal dimension of love with the redemptive dimension, according to the model of Christ himself? They desire to confirm with their lives that the spousal meaning of the body – of its masculinity and femininity – a meaning deeply inscribed in the essential structure of the human person has been opened in a new way by Christ and with the example of his life to the hope united with the redemption of the body. Thus, the grace of the mystery of redemption also bears fruit – even more: bears fruit in a particular way – with the vocation to continence “for the kingdom of heaven.”
… The union of Christ with the Church allows us to understand in what way the spousal meaning of the body is completed by the redemptive meaning on the different roads of life and in different situations: not only in marriage or “continence” (or virginity, celibacy), but also, for example, in the many kinds of human suffering. Indeed, in man’s very birth and death. Through the “great mystery” discussed in Ephesians, through the New Covenant of Christ with the Church, marriage is inscribed anew in the “sacrament of man,” which embraces the universe; it is inscribed in the sacrament of man and of the world, which thanks to the “redemption of the body,” is formed according to the model of the spousal love of Christ and the Church, until the measure of definitive fulfilment is reached in the kingdom of the Father.
… By choosing Israel, God united himself with a particular bond, which is deeply personal, and thus Israel, although it is a people, is presented in this prophetic vision of the covenant as “Bride” or “wife” and thus in some sense as a person.
For your Creator is your husband,
Lord of hosts is his name;
The Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer,
The God of the whole earth he is called….
My steadfast affection shall not depart from you,
And my covenant of peace shall not weaver,
Says the Lord, who has compassion on you. (Isa 54:5-6, 10)
… 8. Through this “language of the body,” the prophets, as the inspired spokesmen of Yahweh’s covenant with Israel, attempt to express both the spousal depth of that covenant and all that contradicts it. They sing the praises of faithfulness and stigmatize unfaithfulness as “adultery”: they speak thus according to ethical categories, setting moral good and evil in mutual opposition. The antithesis of good and evil is essential for ethos. The prophetic texts have in this sphere an essential significance, as we emphasized already in our earlier reflections [see TOB 36:5-37:6, 94:6-95b:2]. In the texts of the prophets, who see in marriage the analogy of Yahweh’s covenant with Israel, the body tells the truth through faithfulness and conjugal love, and, when it commits “adultery” it tells a lie, it commits falsehood. … We can say that the essential element for marriage as a sacrament is the “language of the body” reread in the truth. It is precisely through this that the sacramental sign is constituted.
… The “hermeneutics of the sacrament” allows us to draw the conclusion that man is always essentially “called” and not merely “accused,” even inasmuch as he is precisely the “man of concupiscence.”
… The Song of Songs is certainly found in the wake of that sacrament in which, through the “language of the body,” the visible sign of man and woman’s participation in the covenant of grace and love offered by God to man is constituted. The Song of Songs demonstrates the richness of this language, whose first expression is already found in Genesis 2:23-25.
… The metaphors of the Song of Songs can surprise us today. Many of them were taken from the life of shepherds; others seem to indicate the royal status of the bridegroom. … The truth of love, which is proclaimed by the Song of Songs, cannot be separated from the “language of the body.” The truth of love enables the same “language of the body” to be reread in the truth. This is also the truth of the increasing closeness of the spouses, which grows through love: and closeness means also initiation into the mystery of the person. However, it in no way signifies the violation of that mystery.
The body conceals within itself the prospect of death, to which love does not want to submit. In fact – as we read in the Song of Songs – love is “a flame of the Lord” that “the great waters cannot quench… / neither can the rivers drown it” (Song 8:6-7). Among words written in all of world literature, these seem particularly fitting and beautiful. They show at the same time what love is in its subjective dimension as a bond that unites the feminine and masculine “I”. According to these verses of the Song, love is not only “strong as death”; it is also jealous, “jealousy relentless as the netherworld” (Song 8:6). Jealousy confirms in a certain sense the exclusivity and indivisibility of love – it indicates at least indirectly the irreversibility and subjective depth of one’s spousal choice. It is nevertheless difficult to deny that jealousy manifests still another limitation of love, a spiritual kind of limitation. … The desire itself is not able to pass beyond the threshold of jealousy. … The Song of Songs is a rich and eloquent text of the truth about human love. Many are the forms possible for a commentary on this particular and deeply original book. The analysis offered here is not a commentary in the proper sense of this term. It is only a little fragment of reflections of the sacrament of Marriage, whose visible sign is constituted through rereading in the truth the “language of the body.” For such reflections, the Song of Songs has an altogether singular significance.
… At e certain moment, in the light of the death and resurrection of Christ, Paul of Tarsus was to proclaim this truth in the words of 1 Corinthians: “Love is patient; love is kind. Love is not envious; it does not put on airs; it is not snobbish. Love is never rude; it is not self-seeking; it is not prone to anger; neither does it brood over injuries, it does not rejoice in what is wrong but is well pleased in the truth. It covers all, it believes all, it hopes all, it endures all. Love will never end” (1 Cor 13:4-8).
… The “language of the body,” as an uninterrupted continuity of liturgical language, expresses itself not only with the reciprocal fascination and pleasure of the Song of Songs, but also as a deep experience of the “sacrum” that seems to be infused in masculinity and femininity itself through the dimension of “mystery,” the “mysterium magnum” of Ephesians, whose roots plunge precisely into the “beginning,” that is, into the mystery of the creation of man, male and female, in the image of God, called “from the beginning” to be the visible sign of God’s creative love.
4. Thus, that “fear of Christ” and “reverence,” about which the author of Ephesians speaks, is nothing other than a spiritually mature form of that reciprocal fascination, that is to say, of the man for femininity and of the woman for masculinity, which reveals itself for the first time in Genesis 2:23-25. … The spiritual maturity of this fascination is nothing but the fruit born of the gift of fear, one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, which St. Paul spoke about in 1 Thessalonians 4:4-7.
… 6. This seems to be the integral meaning of the sacramental sign of marriage. In this way, through the “language of the body,” man and woman encounter the great “mysterium” in order to transfer the light of this mystery, a light of truth and of beauty expressed in liturgical language, into the “language of the body,” that is, into the language of the praxis of love, of faithfulness, and of conjugal integrity, or into the ethos rooted in the “redemption of the body” (see Rom 8:23). On this road, conjugal life is some sense becomes liturgy.
… 1 Taking the teaching contained in Humanae Vitae as a point of reference, we will try to outline further the spiritual life of the spouses.
Here are the encyclical’s great words:
The Church, while teaching inviolable demands of the divine law, announces the tidings of salvation, and by means of the sacraments flings wide open the channels of grace, which makes man a new creature, capable of corresponding with love and true freedom to the design of his Creator and Saviour, and of finding the yoke of Christ to be sweet.
Christian married couples, then, docile to [Christ’s] voice, must remember that their Christian vocation, which began at Baptism, is further specified and reinforced by the sacrament of Marriage. By it husband and wife are strengthened and as it were consecrated for the faithful accomplishment of their proper duties, for the carrying out of their proper vocation even to perfection, and for the Christian witness which is proper to them before the whole world. To them the Lord entrusts the task of making visible to men the holiness and sweetness of the law which unites the mutual love of husband and wife with their cooperation with the love of God the author of human life. (HV 25)
Responsible fatherhood and motherhood understood integrally are nothing other than an important component of conjugal and familial spirituality as a whole, that is, of the vocation that the text of Humanae Vitae quoted above speaks about when it affirms that the spouses should realize “their proper vocation even to perfection” (HV 25). It is the sacrament of Marriage that strengthens and, as it were, consecrates them to reach such perfection.
… 4. “We do not at all intend to hide the sometimes serious difficulties inherent in the life of Christian married persons; for them as for everyone else, ‘the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life.’ But the hope of that life must illuminate their way, as with courage they strive to live with wisdom, justice, and piety in the present time, knowing that the figure of this world passes away” (HV 25).
… The encyclical says, “Let married couples, then, face up to the efforts needed, supported by faith and by the hope that ‘does not disappoint…because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us’ (Rom 5:5)” (HV 25).
…
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Piety (pieta, Latin pietas) 20 times. Piety is the virtue that regulates one’s relation to one’s parents, fatherland, ancestors, other family members, and above all one’s relation to God, where its proper act is reverence for the holiness of God. Among the gifts of the Holy Spirit, piety is the one most congenial to the virtue of sexual purity, because it is sensitive to the beauty and sacredness of the body as temple of the Holy Spirit. Detailed discussion in 57:2, footnote; 57:2-3; 58:7; 89:-3, 6; 95:1; 126:4. Pietas is the key gift of the Holy Spirit in the spirituality of marriage according to Humanae Vitae, 131:2; 132:1, 6.
- JOHN PAUL II, Man and Woman He Created Them – A Theology of the Body
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<<DIECI ANNI DI PRIGIONIA IN ALBANIA (1945-1955)>> GIACOMO GARDIN
“… Kam njoftë njerz n’uniformë ushtarake, qi fyejshin e torturojshin pa pushue, njerz si ata vetë; por kam njoftë edhe njerz n’uniformë ushtarake, te kuptueshëm e gati me shtri dorën me të ndihmue. Kam njoftë njerz besnikë e të dejë për nderim, por kur të shtruem torturave nuk kanë qindrue; të tjerë qi s’e vlejshin asnji pare, por kur të vumë në provë kanë dijtë me vdekë me guxim për besimin e tyne. Kam takue njerz qi me egoizëm hajshin mësheftas gjanat e mira qi kishin, e njerz qi ndajshin bukën e gojës me ata qi s’kishin kurrgja. Njofta njerz të cilët, për me ia ba qejfin atji qe komandonte, u bajshin spiuj, ase asish qi për të dalë në liri, u përulshin tue ba shërbime poshtnuese…Dij…Dij… por as padis as gjykoj. Përvoja e gjatë më ka mësue sidomos, me kuptue, me pasë dhimbje e me falë, të gjitha n’emën te Jezu Krishtit.
… Fjala eme po I afrohet fundit. Kujtimi I përmallshëm i fakteve të Shqipnis ma ka mbushë shpirtin e më bahet edhe mue, si Shën Gjonit n’Apokalips, se po shof rrasën e lterit të kësaj kishe tue u zgjanue e tue marrë trajtat e tokës shqiptare; më bahet se po shof nën rrasë ftyrat e atyne qi i kam njoftë e qi mandej kanë dhanë jetën për fen e vet e po i ndiej kah bërtasin: << Deri kur, o Zot, ti qi je i drejtë e i shejtë, po vonon pa e marrë hakun e gjakut tonë?>> E nji za kah u përgjegj: <<Saber e durim, edhe pak sa të mbushet, ma parë, numri i vllazënve tuej!>> A keni ndie? Saber… m’u mësue me pritë! E deri kur? Deri sa te bjerë sahati i Perendis. Ai i ka në dorë ndodhjet e kohës qi tjerrin historin e kombeve…
Të kemi duresë: Ta shtijmë në mend ket porosi, ta ruejmë ket përgjegje! Asht za qi nuk u siellet gjithaq atyne qi tashma jane në lumni, por ne, ma parë, neve qi jemi gjallë; ne njiherë qi jemi sot këtu, të bashkuem me përkujtue, me trishtim po, por edhe me kreni, para Zotit, viktimat e salvimit. Ne, qi me sa sjellim nepër mend e me shpirt faktet qi e kanë çue Shqipnin në kët hall, ndiejmë, ndoshta, se po na vlon gjaku në trup e andrrojmë urrejtje, gjak e hakmarrje! Jo kështu, na bërtasin martyrët, jo kështu, e na këshillojnë mendime t’urta, falje, kuvend ndërtues, uzdajë, sidomos në ndihmën e Perendis. Do ti vehemi punës, po, por në paqë e vllaznim. Keshtu do të ndërtohet e ardhmja e vendit tonë, madje e botës së mbarë.
Shekulli jonë, ndonse i lamë me gjakun e Krishtit, mjerisht priret me kapë shtigjet e dhunimit, të gjakut, të rrënimit, ma tepër se rrugën e bashkpunimit e të paqes; por rrehet, të jemi të bindun se rrehet!
E dhashtë Zoti, e martyrët qi po përkujtojmë, të na ndihmojnë prej qiellet qi ta kuptojmë mësimin qi po na vjen prej së nalti e të ndahemi prej këtij takimi burra vullnet-mirë, burra paqe.
Ashtu kjoftë!
… Atëhere mendova se përfundimi ma logjik I rrëfimit të dhetë vjetëve të burgut tim nuk duhet të shihet si një ngushllim tashti që u fitue liria, por ma shumë si ai refleksion që Manzoni e ve ne zemër të të “Fejuemve” të vet të persekutuem: <<Zoti nuk e turbullon kurrë gëzimin e bijve të Vet, pa pasë si qellim për të pergatitë nji gëzim tjeter, edhe ma të madh>>.
<<DIECI ANNI DI PRIGIONIA IN ALBANIA (1945-1955)>> GIACOMO GARDIN,
Botim I <<LA CIVILTA CATTOLICA>> - Rome, 1992.
<<Dhjetë vjet burg në Shqipni (1945-1955)>> Përkthyen nga Italishtja: Zef V. Nekaj e Petro Vucani, Romë, 1992.
In his momentous teaching, on the bodily dimension of human personhood, sexuality, marriage, and celibacy, “Man and Woman He Created Them”, John Paul II presents an integral image of the human person rooted in Sacred Scripture and the Church’s living tradition in a vision focused on the mystery of love extending from the Trinity, through Christ’s spousal relation with the Church, to the concrete bodies of men and women. Cardinal Wojtyla originally gave it the title Male and Female He Created Them (Gen 1:27). God’s designs for the person, the design of divine love for human love – this is the reality the theology of the body attempts to unfold on the basis of the teachings of Jesus.
The term “biological order,” Wojtyla argues, “does indeed mean the same as the order of nature, but only insofar as this is accessible to the methods of empirical and descriptive natural science, and not as a specific order of existence with an obvious relationship to the First Cause, to God the Creator (“Love and Responsibility”, 1960, 56 – 57). Biology “has man for its immediate author” since man abstracts certain elements from a larger and richer reality. The order of nature, by contrast, includes all these richer relationships among real beings. If one replaces the order of nature with the biological order, the consequences are devastating. “My soul had for a long time now been used to seeing in nature nothing but a dead desert covered by a veil of beauty, worn by nature like a mask that deceives”(Sergei Bulgakov). The problem of this split between person and nature was addressed in John Paul’s 1994 statement:
“The philosopher who formulated the principle of “cogito, ergo sum” – I think, therefore I am – also gave the modern concept of man its distinctive dualistic character. It is typical of rationalism to make a radical contrast in man between spirit and body, between body and spirit. The body can never be reduced to mere matter…. The human family is facing the challenge of a new Manichaeism, in which body and spirit are put in radical opposition; the body does not receive life from the spirit, and the spirit does not give life to the body. Man thus ceases to live as a person and a subject. Regardless of all intentions and declarations to the contrary, he becomes merely an object. This neo-Manichaean culture had led, for example, to human sexuality being regarded more as an area for manipulation and exploitation than as the basis of that primordial wonder which led Adam on the morning of creation to exclaim before Eve: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2: 23). This same wonder is echoed in the words of the Song of Solomon: “You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride, you have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes (Song 4:9).” (John Paul II, Letter to Families, 19).
Those who instruct the Christian people by sacred preaching must show the highest degree of prudence. They are to give first place to solid doctrine, keeping in mind the admonition of St. Paul: “Take heed to yourself and to your teaching, be earnest in them. For in so doing you will save both yourself and those who hear you.” … When they discuss biblical events, they are not to add fictitious details which hardly fit in with the truth. [“Instruction of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Historicity Of The Gospels – Sancta Mater Ecclesia”, 1964, p.10].
One of the major concerns of classical philosophy was to purify human notions of God of mythological elements. We know that Greek religion, like most cosmic religions, was polytheistic, even to the point of divinizing natural things and phenomena. Human attempts to understand the origin of the gods and hence the origin of the universe find their earliest expression in poetry, and the theogonies remain the first evidence of this human search. But it was the task of the fathers of philosophy to bring to light the link between reason and religion. As they broadened their view to include universal principles, they no longer rested content with the ancient myths, but wanted to provide a rational foundation for their belief in the divinity. This opened a path which took its rise from ancient traditions but allowed a development satisfying the demands of universal reason. This development sought to acquire a critical awareness of what they believed in, and the concept of divinity was the prime beneficiary of this. Superstitions were recognized for what they were and religion was, at least in part, purified by rational analysis. It was on this basis that the Fathers of the Church entered into fruitful dialogue with ancient philosophy, which offered new ways of proclaiming and understanding the God of Jesus Christ… . St. Paul has in mind (other elements of the cultural world of paganism cautiously regarded in Christianity’s adoption of philosophy – understood as practical wisdom and an education for life – easily confused with “philosophy” as a higher esoteric kind of knowledge, the kind of esoteric speculation reserved to those few who were perfect) when he puts the Colossians on their guard: “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe and not according to Christ” (2:8). The Apostle’s words seem all too pertinent now if we apply them to the various kinds of esoteric superstitions widespread today, even among some believers who lack a proper critical sense. [Encyclical Letter of John Paul II, Fides Et Ratio – On the relationship between Faith and Reason, 1998, p.50-51.]
Perfection demands that maturity in self-giving to which human freedom is called. …The follower of Christ knows that his vocation is to freedom. “You were called to freedom, brethren” (Gal 5:13), proclaims the Apostle Paul with joy and pride. …The firmness with which the Apostle opposes those who believe that they are justified by the Law has nothing to do with man’s “liberation” from precepts. On the contrary, the latter are at the service of the practice of love: “For he who loves his neighbour has fulfilled the Law. The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’” (Rom 13:8-9). … Saint Augustine, after speaking of the observance of the commandments as being a kind of incipient, imperfect freedom, goes on to say: “Why, someone will ask, it is not yet perfect? Because ‘I see in my members another law at war with the law of my reason ….’ In part freedom, in part slavery: not yet complete freedom, not yet pure, not yet whole, because we are not yet in eternity. In part we retain our weakness and in part we have attained freedom. All our sins were destroyed in Baptism, but does it follow that no weakness remained after iniquity was destroyed? Had none remained, we would live without sin in this life. But who would dare to say this except someone who is proud, someone unworthy of the mercy of our deliverer…? Therefore, since some weakness has remained in us, I dare to say that to the extent to which we serve God we are free, while to the extent that we follow the law of sin, we are still slaves.” [Encyclical Letter of John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth – Veritatis Splendor, pp. 30-31].
Hence the Psalmist prays: “Let the light of your face shine on us, O Lord” (Ps 4:6). …“If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments” (Mt 19:17). … Love and life according to the Gospel cannot be thought of first and foremost as a kind of precept, because what they demand is beyond man’s abilities. They are possible only as a result of*gift of God who heals, restores and transforms the human heart by his graces: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (Jn 1:17) … [Encyclical Letter of John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth – Veritatis Splendor, pp. 9; 22; 37].
“You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus makes even clearer the meaning of this perfection: “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:36). …Following Christ is thus the essential and primordial foundation of Christian morality: just as the people of Israel followed God who led them through the desert towards the Promised Land (cf. Ex 13:21), so every disciple must follow Jesus, towards whom he is drawn by the Father himself (cf. Jn 6:44). …”A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:34-35). …As the Lord Jesus receives the love of his Father, so he in turn freely communicates that love to his disciples: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love” (Jn 15:9). Christ’s gift is his Spirit, whose first “fruit” (cf. Gal 5:22) is charity: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). Saint Augustine asks: “Does love bring about the keeping of the commandments, or does the keeping of the commandments bring about love?” And he answers” “But who can doubt that love comes first? For the one who does not love has no reason for keeping the commandments.” [Encyclical Letter of John Paul II, Fides Et Ratio – On the relationship between Faith and Reason, 1998, pp. 32-33;36].
Faith is in a sense an “exercise of thought”: and human reason is neither annulled nor debased in assenting to the contents of faith, which are in any case attained by way of free and informed choice. [John Paul II, Address to the Participants at the IX International Thomistic Congress, (September 29, 1990): Insegnamenti, XIII, 2 (1990), 770-771]. Illumined by faith, reason is set free from the fragility and limitations deriving from the disobedience of sin and finds the strength required to rise to the knowledge of the Triune God. … Just as the Virgin was called to offer herself entirely as human being and as woman that God’s Word might take flesh and come among us, so too philosophy is called to offer its rational and critical resources that theology, as the understanding of faith, may be fruitful and creative. And just as in giving her assent to Gabriel’s word, Mary lost nothing of her true humanity and freedom, so too when philosophy heeds the summons of the Gospel’s truth its autonomy is in no way impaired. Indeed, it is then that philosophy sees all its enquiries rise to their highest expression. This was a truth which the holy monks of Christian antiquity understood well when they called Mary “the table at which faith sits in thought.” In her they saw a lucid image of true philosophy and they were convinced of the need to philosophari in Maria. [Encyclical Letter of John Paul II, Fides Et Ratio – On the relationship between Faith and Reason, 1998, pp. 58; 130].
The light of God’s face shines in all its beauty on the countenance of Jesus Christ, “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), the “reflection of God’s glory” (Heb 1:3), “full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14). Christ is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6). Consequently the decisive answer to every one of man’s questions, his religious and moral questions in particular, is given by Jesus Christ, or rather is Jesus Christ himself, as the Second Vatican Council recalls: “In fact, it is only in the mystery of the Word incarnate that light is shed on the mystery of man. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of the future man, namely, of Christ the Lord. It is Christ, the last Adam, who fully discloses man to himself and unfolds his noble calling by revealing the mystery of the Father and the Father’s love.” [Encyclical Letter of John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth – Veritatis Splendor, pp. 10-11].
In God’s design, the spousal union of man and woman is the original effective sign through which holiness entered the world (TOB 9:3). This visible sign of marriage “in the beginning” is connected with the visible sign of Christ’s spousal love for the Church and is thus the foundation of the whole sacramental order (TOB 95b:7).
“Someone came to him….” (Mt 19:16) …” In the young man whom Matthew’s Gospel does not name, we can recognize every person who, consciously or not, approaches Christ the redeemer of man and questions him about morality. For the young man, the question is not so much about rules to be followed, but about the full meaning of life. This is in fact the aspiration at the heart of every human decision and action, the quiet searching and interior prompting which sets freedom in motion. This question is ultimately an appeal to the absolute Good which attracts us and beckons us; it is the echo of a call from God who is the origin and goal of man’s life. Precisely in this perspective the Second Vatican Council called for a renewal of moral theology, so that its teaching would display the lofty vocation which the faithful have received in Christ, the only response fully capable of satisfying the desire of the human heart.
In order to make this “encounter” with Christ possible, God willed his Church. Indeed, the Church “wishes to serve this single end: that each person may be able to find Christ, in order that Christ may walk with each person the path of life.” [Encyclical Letter of John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth – Veritatis Splendor, pp. 16-17].
“The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light…. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and his love, fully reveal man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear.” This familiar teaching of the Second Vatican Council was John Paul II’s anthem. [John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them – A Theology of the Body, Preface by Christopher West April 19, 2006, xxx].
Wojtyla unfolds the formation of the believer’s consciousness in five steps.
1. The consciousness of creation;
2. The revelation of the Trinity and the consciousness of salvation;
3. Christ and the consciousness of redemption;
4. The consciousness of the Church as the People of God;
5. The historical and eschatological consciousness of the Church.
… Wojtyla comments:
Man’s resemblance to God finds its basis, as it were, in the mystery of the most holy Trinity. Man resembles God not only because of the spiritual nature of his immortal soul but also by reason of his social nature, if by this we understand the fact that he “cannot fully realize himself except in an act of pure self-giving” [Gaudium et Spes, 24:3]. In this way, “union in truth and charity” is the ultimate expression of the community of individuals. This union merits the name of communion (communio), which signifies more than community (communitas). The Latin word communio denotes a relationship between persons that is proper to them alone; and it indicates the good that they do to one another, giving and receiving within the mutual relationship.
… The essential point to note is that Wojtyla sees the heart of the Council in the call to deeper personal awareness of love as self-gift rooted in the Trinity. … The concept of “communion,” he argues, is the key defining concept in light of which one can understand what it means that the Church is the “People of God”:
If we want to follow the main thread of the Council’s thought, all that it says concerning the hierarchy, the laity and the religious orders in the Church should be re-read in the light of the reality of communion for the community of the People of God. “For the members of the People of God are called upon to share their goods, and the words of the apostle apply to each of the Churches, ‘according to the gift that each has received, administer it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God’ (1 Pet 5:10).”
Thus we have the communio ecclesiarum [communion of churches] and the communio munerum [the communion of gifts, tasks, or offices] and, through these, the communio personarum [communion of persons]. Such is the image of the Church presented by the Council. The type of union and unity that is proper to the community of the Church as People of God essentially determines the nature of that community. The Church as People of God, by reason of its most basic premises and its communal nature, is oriented towards the resemblance there ought to be between “the union of the sons of God in truth and love” [Gaudium et Spes, 24:3] and the essentially divine unity of the divine persons, in communione Sanctissimae Trinitatis.
“… Thus it appears that the internal development and renewal of the Church in the spirit of Vatican Council II depends to a very great extent on the authentic deepening of faith in the Church as a community whose essential bond is that of communion”
This emphasis on the Trinitarian understanding of Vatican II’s teaching on the “People of God” is confirmed by Sign of Contradiction, the retreat Cardinal Wojtyla preached for Paul VI in 1976, two years before his own election as Pope. At a highpoint of the retreat, the beginning of the seventh talk, he says,
Let us turn our thoughts to God who is gift and the source of all giving. The Fathers of the second Vatican Council were convinced that the complex reality of the Church cannot be adequately expressed in societal terms alone, even when the society constituted by the Church is called the “People of God.” In order properly to describe this reality and appreciate its underlying significance it is necessary to return to the dimension of mystery, that is to the dimension of the most Holy Trinity. That is why the Constitution Lumen Gentium starts with an introductory account of the divine economy of salvation, which ultimately is a Trinitarian economy (cf. Lumen Gentium, nn. 2-4)…. Love, an uncreated gift, is part of the inner mystery of God and is the very nucleus of theology.
… What Wojtyla calls the fundamental “attitude” of the believer lies precisely in the self-gift to God.
1. The attitude of mission and testimony;
2. The attitude of participation in the threefold saving power of Christ;
3. The attitude of human identity and Christian responsibility;
4. The ecumenical attitude;
5. The attitude of the apostolate; and
6. The attitude required for building up the Church as communio.
… John Paul II writes, “The natural law thus understood does not allow for any division between freedom and nature. Indeed, these two realities are harmoniously bound together, and each is intimately linked to the other.”
… John Paul II’s prophetic warning in Evangelium Vitae: “Nature itself, from being ‘mater’ (mother), is now reduced to being ‘matter,’ and is subjected to every kind of manipulation. This is the direction in which a certain technical and scientific way of thinking, prevalent in present-day culture, appears to be leading when it rejects the very idea that there is a truth of creation which must be acknowledged, or a plan of God for life which must be respected.”
What is the essence of the teaching of the Church about the transmission of life in the conjugal community, the essence of the teaching recalled for us by the Council’s pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes and the encyclical Humanae Vitae by Pope Paul VI? The problem lies in maintaining the adequate relationship between that which is defined as “domination… of the forces of nature (HV 2), and “self-mastery” (HV 21), which is indispensable for the human person. Contemporary man shows the tendency of transferring the methods proper to the first sphere to those of the second. (TOB 123:1)
The fundamental problem the encyclical presents is the viewpoint of the authentic development of the human person; such development should be measured, as a matter of principle, by the measure of ethics and not only of “technology.” (TOB 133:3)
God’s plan and its renewal by Christ, the redeemer, is imprinted deeply within the bodily nature of the person as a pre-given language of self-giving and fruitfulness.
Concupiscence in general – and the concupiscence of the body in particular – attacks precisely this “sincere gift”: it deprives man, one could say, of the dignity of the gift, which is expressed by his body through femininity and masculinity, and in some sense “depersonalizes” man, making him an object “for the other.” Instead of being “together with the other” – a subject in unity, or better, in the sacramental “unity of the body” – man becomes an object for man, the female for the male and vice versa. (TOB 32:4)
… In his account of the grace of the sacrament, John Paul II unfolds the content of the “magnum mysterium” of spousal love. This is “the truth” by which the spousal meaning of the body is measured.
The analogy of the love of spouses (or spousal love) seems to emphasize above all the aspect of God’s gift of himself to man who is chosen “from ages” in Christ (literally, his gift of self to “Israel,” to the “Church”); a gift that is in its essential character, or as gift, total (or rather “radical”) and irrevocable. This gift is certainly “radical” and therefore “total.”
… The analogy of marriage, as a human reality in which spousal love is incarnated, helps in some way to understand the mystery of grace as an eternal reality in God and as a “historical” fruit of the redemption of humanity in Christ. Yet, we said earlier that this biblical analogy not only “explains” the mystery but also, conversely, the mystery defines and determines the adequate way of understanding the analogy and precisely that component of it in which the biblical authors see “the image and likeness” of the divine mystery. Thus, the comparison of marriage (due to spousal love) with the relationship between Yahweh and Israel in the Old covenant and between Christ and the Church in the New, is at the same time decisive for the way of understanding marriage itself and determines this. (TOB 95b:4-5)
In this text, John Paul II describes spousal love In agreement with St. John of the Cross as a gift of self that is radical and thus total and irrevocable. … “To love is to give everything and to give oneself,” writes St. Therese of Lisieux, in full agreement with her teacher St. John of the Cross and her student John Paul II.
…While for the Manichaean mentality, the body and sexuality constitute, so to speak, an “anti-value,” for Christianity, on the contrary, they always remain “a value not sufficiently appreciated.” (TOB 45:3)
…, Jesus speaks primarily as the redeemer, who overcomes sin and opens the way for a real transformation, for life in the Spirit. He is the redeemer of the body, who has the power to inscribe the law of love on hearts of flesh. “I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh (Ezek 11:19). “I will write my law on their hearts” (Jer 31:33). He can demand a radical gift of self, because he himself made such a gift of himself to the human race, and his gift is effective.
The Biblical tradition reports a distant echo of the physical perfection of the first man: “You were a model of perfection, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty; in Eden, the garden of God” (Ezek 28:12-13). “Wisdom….by its purity pervades and penetrates all things” (Wis 7:24).
“Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor .” Ovid, Metamorphoses, 7:20.
“Desire” in a negative sense arises when a man or a woman fails to see the full attractiveness of the other person and reduces it to the attractiveness of sexual pleasure alone. It is this isolation of sexual desire that gives rise to the vice of lust. In lustful or concupiscent desire, one sees the other person in a reductive way as a mere means for sexual pleasure (see esp. TOB 41). It does not matter whether the person one desires in this reductive way is one’s spouse or not, because the reduction is in both cases contrary to the full dignity and beauty of the person (see TOB 43).
As pointed out above (see translator’s not on TOB 24:1), the word “desire” can be used in a positive sense. In courtship and marriage, it is not only morally legitimate but good and holy, in conformity with the spousal meaning of the body, for man and woman to desire each other. “Desire” can also be used in a negative sense for a reductive kind of desire in which the other person becomes a mere means for pleasure, contrary to the spousal meaning of the body. Even husband and wife commit “adultery in the heart” if they “desire” each other in this reductive way (see esp. TOB 43:2-4).
The Council of Trent defines the state of the first man before sin as “holiness and justice” (DS 1511, 1512) or as “innocence” (DS 1521). Because of sin, therefore, Adam lost what did not belong to human nature in the strict sense of the word, namely, “integrity, holiness, innocence, and justice.” Free will was not taken away, but weakened.
“When they come up against the ruined slope, / then there are cries and wailing and the lament, / and there they curse the force of the divine. / I learned that those who undergo this torment / are damned because they sinned within the flesh, / subjecting reason to the rule of lust. / And as, in the cold season, starling’s wings / bear them along in broad and crowded ranks / so does that blast bear on the guilty spirits: / now here, now there, now down, now up, it drives them./ There is no hope that ever comforts them - / no hope for rest and none for lesser pain.” Dante, Inferno, 5:37-43.
. … In its original form, Manichaeism, which sprang up in the Orient from Mazdean dualism, that is, outside the biblical sphere, saw the source of evil in matter, in the body, and therefore condemned all that is bodily in man. And since in man bodiliness manifests itself above all through [one’s] sex, the condemnation was extended to marriage and conjugal life and to all other spheres of being and acting in which bodiliness expresses itself.… The call to master concupiscence of the flesh springs precisely from an affirmation of the personal dignity of the body and of sex and only serves such dignity. Anyone who wants to see a Manichaean perspective in these words would be committing an essential error.
Redemption means, in fact, a “new creation,” as it were, it means taking up all that is created to express in creation the fullness of justice, equity, and holiness planned for it by God and to express that fullness above all in man, created male and female “in the image of God.”
In the perspective of the words of Christ to the Pharisees about what marriage was “from the beginning,” we also reread the classical text of Ephesians 5:22-33 as a testimony of the sacramentality of marriage based on the “great mystery” of Christ and the Church.
… Speaking about concupiscence (about the concupiscent look, see Mt 5:28), Christ makes his listeners aware that everyone carries within himself, together with the mystery of sin, the inner dimension of the “man of concupiscence” (which is threefold: “concupiscence of the flesh, concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life,” 1 John 2:16). Precisely to this man of concupiscence there is given in marriage the sacrament of redemption as grace and sign of the covenant with God – and it is assigned to him as an ethos. At the same time, in relation with marriage as a sacrament, it is assigned as ethos to every man, male and female: it is assigned to his “heart,” to his conscience, to his looks, and to his behaviour. Marriage – according to Christ’s words (see Mt 19:4) – is a sacrament from the “beginning” itself, and at the same time, on the basis of man’s “historical” sinfulness, it is a sacrament that arose from the mystery of the “redemption of the body.”
… As a sacrament born of the mystery of the redemption and in some sense reborn from the spousal love of Christ and the Church, marriage is an efficacious expression of the saving power of God, who realizes his eternal plan also after sin and despite the threefold concupiscence hidden in the heart of every man, male and female. As a sacramental expression of that saving power, marriage is also an exhortation to gain mastery over concupiscence (as Christ speaks about in the Sermon on the Mount). … The truth according to which marriage, as sacrament of redemption, is given “to the man of concupiscence” as a grace and at the same time as an ethos, has found particular expression in the teaching of St. Paul as well, especially in 1 Corinthians 7. When he compares marriage with virginity (or “continence for the kingdom of heaven”) and declares the “superiority” of virginity, he still observes, “each has his own gift from God, one in one way and another in another” (1 Cor 7:7). Thus, based on the mystery of redemption, a particular “gift,” that is, grace, corresponds to marriage.
… In the Pauline words, “It is better to marry than to be aflame,” the word “aflame” signifies the disorder of the passions springing from concupiscence of the flesh (concupiscence is presented in an analogous way in the Old Testament by Sir 23: 17 [see TOB 39:1]). “Marriage,” by contrast, signifies the ethical order, which is consciously introduced in this context.
… As the primordial sacrament and at the same time as the sacrament born in the mystery of the redemption of the body from the spousal love of Christ and the Church, marriage “comes from the Father.” It is not “from the world,” but “from the Father.” Consequently, as a sacrament, marriage also constitutes the basis of hope for the person, for the man and the woman, for the parents and the children, for the human generations. On the one hand, “the world passes away with its concupiscence,” and on the other, “the one who does the will of God will remain in eternity” (1 Jn 2:17). Man’s origin in the world is linked with marriage as a sacrament, and his coming to be is inscribed in marriage, not only in the historical but also in the eschatological dimensions. … Marriage, which is the primordial sacrament, reborn in some sense from the spousal love of Christ and the Church, does not belong to the “redemption of the body” in the dimension of eschatological hope (see Rom 8:23). The same marriage, which is given to man as a grace, as a “gift” destined by God precisely for the spouses, and at the same time assigned to them by Christ’s words as an ethos – that sacramental marriage is fulfilled and realized in the perspective of the eschatological hope. It has an essential meaning for the “redemption of the body” in the dimension of this hope. It comes, in fact, from the Father and owes it origin in the world to him. And if this “world passes away,” and if the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, which come “from the world,” also pass away with it, marriage as a sacrament immutably serves the purpose that man, male and female, by mastering concupiscence, does the will of the Father. And the one who “does the will of God will remain in eternity” (1 Jn 2:17).
… As a sacrament of the human “beginning,” as a sacrament of the temporality of historical man, marriage thus performs an irreplaceable service with regard to man’s extra-temporal future, with regard to the mystery of the “redemption of the body” in the dimension of eschatological hope.
… The Pauline image of marriage, inscribed in the “great mystery” of Christ and the Church, brings together the redemptive dimension of love with its spousal dimension. In some sense it unites these two dimensions in a single one. Christ has become the Church’s Bridegroom, he married the Church as his Bride because “he gave himself for her” (Eph 5:25). Through marriage as a sacrament (as one of the sacraments of the Church), both of these dimensions of love, the spousal and the redemptive, penetrate together with the grace of the sacrament into the life of the spouses. The spousal meaning of the body in its masculinity and femininity, which manifested itself for the first time in the mystery of creation on the background of man’s original innocence, is united in the image of Ephesians with the redemptive meaning, and in this way it is confirmed and in some sense “created anew.”
… The Pauline image of the “great mystery” of Christ and the Church indirectly speaks also about “continence for the kingdom of heaven,” in which both dimensions of love, the spousal and the redemptive, are united with each other in a way that differs from that of marriage, in accord with different proportions. Is not the spousal love with which Christ “loved the Church,” his Bride, “and gave himself for her” equally the fullest incarnation of the ideal of “continence for the kingdom of God” (see Mt 19:12)? Is it not precisely in this love that support is found for all those – both men and women – who choose the same ideal and thus desire to link the spousal dimension of love with the redemptive dimension, according to the model of Christ himself? They desire to confirm with their lives that the spousal meaning of the body – of its masculinity and femininity – a meaning deeply inscribed in the essential structure of the human person has been opened in a new way by Christ and with the example of his life to the hope united with the redemption of the body. Thus, the grace of the mystery of redemption also bears fruit – even more: bears fruit in a particular way – with the vocation to continence “for the kingdom of heaven.”
… The union of Christ with the Church allows us to understand in what way the spousal meaning of the body is completed by the redemptive meaning on the different roads of life and in different situations: not only in marriage or “continence” (or virginity, celibacy), but also, for example, in the many kinds of human suffering. Indeed, in man’s very birth and death. Through the “great mystery” discussed in Ephesians, through the New Covenant of Christ with the Church, marriage is inscribed anew in the “sacrament of man,” which embraces the universe; it is inscribed in the sacrament of man and of the world, which thanks to the “redemption of the body,” is formed according to the model of the spousal love of Christ and the Church, until the measure of definitive fulfilment is reached in the kingdom of the Father.
… By choosing Israel, God united himself with a particular bond, which is deeply personal, and thus Israel, although it is a people, is presented in this prophetic vision of the covenant as “Bride” or “wife” and thus in some sense as a person.
For your Creator is your husband,
Lord of hosts is his name;
The Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer,
The God of the whole earth he is called….
My steadfast affection shall not depart from you,
And my covenant of peace shall not weaver,
Says the Lord, who has compassion on you. (Isa 54:5-6, 10)
… 8. Through this “language of the body,” the prophets, as the inspired spokesmen of Yahweh’s covenant with Israel, attempt to express both the spousal depth of that covenant and all that contradicts it. They sing the praises of faithfulness and stigmatize unfaithfulness as “adultery”: they speak thus according to ethical categories, setting moral good and evil in mutual opposition. The antithesis of good and evil is essential for ethos. The prophetic texts have in this sphere an essential significance, as we emphasized already in our earlier reflections [see TOB 36:5-37:6, 94:6-95b:2]. In the texts of the prophets, who see in marriage the analogy of Yahweh’s covenant with Israel, the body tells the truth through faithfulness and conjugal love, and, when it commits “adultery” it tells a lie, it commits falsehood. … We can say that the essential element for marriage as a sacrament is the “language of the body” reread in the truth. It is precisely through this that the sacramental sign is constituted.
… The “hermeneutics of the sacrament” allows us to draw the conclusion that man is always essentially “called” and not merely “accused,” even inasmuch as he is precisely the “man of concupiscence.”
… The Song of Songs is certainly found in the wake of that sacrament in which, through the “language of the body,” the visible sign of man and woman’s participation in the covenant of grace and love offered by God to man is constituted. The Song of Songs demonstrates the richness of this language, whose first expression is already found in Genesis 2:23-25.
… The metaphors of the Song of Songs can surprise us today. Many of them were taken from the life of shepherds; others seem to indicate the royal status of the bridegroom. … The truth of love, which is proclaimed by the Song of Songs, cannot be separated from the “language of the body.” The truth of love enables the same “language of the body” to be reread in the truth. This is also the truth of the increasing closeness of the spouses, which grows through love: and closeness means also initiation into the mystery of the person. However, it in no way signifies the violation of that mystery.
The body conceals within itself the prospect of death, to which love does not want to submit. In fact – as we read in the Song of Songs – love is “a flame of the Lord” that “the great waters cannot quench… / neither can the rivers drown it” (Song 8:6-7). Among words written in all of world literature, these seem particularly fitting and beautiful. They show at the same time what love is in its subjective dimension as a bond that unites the feminine and masculine “I”. According to these verses of the Song, love is not only “strong as death”; it is also jealous, “jealousy relentless as the netherworld” (Song 8:6). Jealousy confirms in a certain sense the exclusivity and indivisibility of love – it indicates at least indirectly the irreversibility and subjective depth of one’s spousal choice. It is nevertheless difficult to deny that jealousy manifests still another limitation of love, a spiritual kind of limitation. … The desire itself is not able to pass beyond the threshold of jealousy. … The Song of Songs is a rich and eloquent text of the truth about human love. Many are the forms possible for a commentary on this particular and deeply original book. The analysis offered here is not a commentary in the proper sense of this term. It is only a little fragment of reflections of the sacrament of Marriage, whose visible sign is constituted through rereading in the truth the “language of the body.” For such reflections, the Song of Songs has an altogether singular significance.
… At e certain moment, in the light of the death and resurrection of Christ, Paul of Tarsus was to proclaim this truth in the words of 1 Corinthians: “Love is patient; love is kind. Love is not envious; it does not put on airs; it is not snobbish. Love is never rude; it is not self-seeking; it is not prone to anger; neither does it brood over injuries, it does not rejoice in what is wrong but is well pleased in the truth. It covers all, it believes all, it hopes all, it endures all. Love will never end” (1 Cor 13:4-8).
… The “language of the body,” as an uninterrupted continuity of liturgical language, expresses itself not only with the reciprocal fascination and pleasure of the Song of Songs, but also as a deep experience of the “sacrum” that seems to be infused in masculinity and femininity itself through the dimension of “mystery,” the “mysterium magnum” of Ephesians, whose roots plunge precisely into the “beginning,” that is, into the mystery of the creation of man, male and female, in the image of God, called “from the beginning” to be the visible sign of God’s creative love.
4. Thus, that “fear of Christ” and “reverence,” about which the author of Ephesians speaks, is nothing other than a spiritually mature form of that reciprocal fascination, that is to say, of the man for femininity and of the woman for masculinity, which reveals itself for the first time in Genesis 2:23-25. … The spiritual maturity of this fascination is nothing but the fruit born of the gift of fear, one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, which St. Paul spoke about in 1 Thessalonians 4:4-7.
… 6. This seems to be the integral meaning of the sacramental sign of marriage. In this way, through the “language of the body,” man and woman encounter the great “mysterium” in order to transfer the light of this mystery, a light of truth and of beauty expressed in liturgical language, into the “language of the body,” that is, into the language of the praxis of love, of faithfulness, and of conjugal integrity, or into the ethos rooted in the “redemption of the body” (see Rom 8:23). On this road, conjugal life is some sense becomes liturgy.
… 1 Taking the teaching contained in Humanae Vitae as a point of reference, we will try to outline further the spiritual life of the spouses.
Here are the encyclical’s great words:
The Church, while teaching inviolable demands of the divine law, announces the tidings of salvation, and by means of the sacraments flings wide open the channels of grace, which makes man a new creature, capable of corresponding with love and true freedom to the design of his Creator and Saviour, and of finding the yoke of Christ to be sweet.
Christian married couples, then, docile to [Christ’s] voice, must remember that their Christian vocation, which began at Baptism, is further specified and reinforced by the sacrament of Marriage. By it husband and wife are strengthened and as it were consecrated for the faithful accomplishment of their proper duties, for the carrying out of their proper vocation even to perfection, and for the Christian witness which is proper to them before the whole world. To them the Lord entrusts the task of making visible to men the holiness and sweetness of the law which unites the mutual love of husband and wife with their cooperation with the love of God the author of human life. (HV 25)
Responsible fatherhood and motherhood understood integrally are nothing other than an important component of conjugal and familial spirituality as a whole, that is, of the vocation that the text of Humanae Vitae quoted above speaks about when it affirms that the spouses should realize “their proper vocation even to perfection” (HV 25). It is the sacrament of Marriage that strengthens and, as it were, consecrates them to reach such perfection.
… 4. “We do not at all intend to hide the sometimes serious difficulties inherent in the life of Christian married persons; for them as for everyone else, ‘the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life.’ But the hope of that life must illuminate their way, as with courage they strive to live with wisdom, justice, and piety in the present time, knowing that the figure of this world passes away” (HV 25).
… The encyclical says, “Let married couples, then, face up to the efforts needed, supported by faith and by the hope that ‘does not disappoint…because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us’ (Rom 5:5)” (HV 25).
…
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Piety (pieta, Latin pietas) 20 times. Piety is the virtue that regulates one’s relation to one’s parents, fatherland, ancestors, other family members, and above all one’s relation to God, where its proper act is reverence for the holiness of God. Among the gifts of the Holy Spirit, piety is the one most congenial to the virtue of sexual purity, because it is sensitive to the beauty and sacredness of the body as temple of the Holy Spirit. Detailed discussion in 57:2, footnote; 57:2-3; 58:7; 89:-3, 6; 95:1; 126:4. Pietas is the key gift of the Holy Spirit in the spirituality of marriage according to Humanae Vitae, 131:2; 132:1, 6.
- JOHN PAUL II, Man and Woman He Created Them – A Theology of the Body
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<<DIECI ANNI DI PRIGIONIA IN ALBANIA (1945-1955)>> GIACOMO GARDIN
“… Kam njoftë njerz n’uniformë ushtarake, qi fyejshin e torturojshin pa pushue, njerz si ata vetë; por kam njoftë edhe njerz n’uniformë ushtarake, te kuptueshëm e gati me shtri dorën me të ndihmue. Kam njoftë njerz besnikë e të dejë për nderim, por kur të shtruem torturave nuk kanë qindrue; të tjerë qi s’e vlejshin asnji pare, por kur të vumë në provë kanë dijtë me vdekë me guxim për besimin e tyne. Kam takue njerz qi me egoizëm hajshin mësheftas gjanat e mira qi kishin, e njerz qi ndajshin bukën e gojës me ata qi s’kishin kurrgja. Njofta njerz të cilët, për me ia ba qejfin atji qe komandonte, u bajshin spiuj, ase asish qi për të dalë në liri, u përulshin tue ba shërbime poshtnuese…Dij…Dij… por as padis as gjykoj. Përvoja e gjatë më ka mësue sidomos, me kuptue, me pasë dhimbje e me falë, të gjitha n’emën te Jezu Krishtit.
… Fjala eme po I afrohet fundit. Kujtimi I përmallshëm i fakteve të Shqipnis ma ka mbushë shpirtin e më bahet edhe mue, si Shën Gjonit n’Apokalips, se po shof rrasën e lterit të kësaj kishe tue u zgjanue e tue marrë trajtat e tokës shqiptare; më bahet se po shof nën rrasë ftyrat e atyne qi i kam njoftë e qi mandej kanë dhanë jetën për fen e vet e po i ndiej kah bërtasin: << Deri kur, o Zot, ti qi je i drejtë e i shejtë, po vonon pa e marrë hakun e gjakut tonë?>> E nji za kah u përgjegj: <<Saber e durim, edhe pak sa të mbushet, ma parë, numri i vllazënve tuej!>> A keni ndie? Saber… m’u mësue me pritë! E deri kur? Deri sa te bjerë sahati i Perendis. Ai i ka në dorë ndodhjet e kohës qi tjerrin historin e kombeve…
Të kemi duresë: Ta shtijmë në mend ket porosi, ta ruejmë ket përgjegje! Asht za qi nuk u siellet gjithaq atyne qi tashma jane në lumni, por ne, ma parë, neve qi jemi gjallë; ne njiherë qi jemi sot këtu, të bashkuem me përkujtue, me trishtim po, por edhe me kreni, para Zotit, viktimat e salvimit. Ne, qi me sa sjellim nepër mend e me shpirt faktet qi e kanë çue Shqipnin në kët hall, ndiejmë, ndoshta, se po na vlon gjaku në trup e andrrojmë urrejtje, gjak e hakmarrje! Jo kështu, na bërtasin martyrët, jo kështu, e na këshillojnë mendime t’urta, falje, kuvend ndërtues, uzdajë, sidomos në ndihmën e Perendis. Do ti vehemi punës, po, por në paqë e vllaznim. Keshtu do të ndërtohet e ardhmja e vendit tonë, madje e botës së mbarë.
Shekulli jonë, ndonse i lamë me gjakun e Krishtit, mjerisht priret me kapë shtigjet e dhunimit, të gjakut, të rrënimit, ma tepër se rrugën e bashkpunimit e të paqes; por rrehet, të jemi të bindun se rrehet!
E dhashtë Zoti, e martyrët qi po përkujtojmë, të na ndihmojnë prej qiellet qi ta kuptojmë mësimin qi po na vjen prej së nalti e të ndahemi prej këtij takimi burra vullnet-mirë, burra paqe.
Ashtu kjoftë!
… Atëhere mendova se përfundimi ma logjik I rrëfimit të dhetë vjetëve të burgut tim nuk duhet të shihet si një ngushllim tashti që u fitue liria, por ma shumë si ai refleksion që Manzoni e ve ne zemër të të “Fejuemve” të vet të persekutuem: <<Zoti nuk e turbullon kurrë gëzimin e bijve të Vet, pa pasë si qellim për të pergatitë nji gëzim tjeter, edhe ma të madh>>.
<<DIECI ANNI DI PRIGIONIA IN ALBANIA (1945-1955)>> GIACOMO GARDIN,
Botim I <<LA CIVILTA CATTOLICA>> - Rome, 1992.
<<Dhjetë vjet burg në Shqipni (1945-1955)>> Përkthyen nga Italishtja: Zef V. Nekaj e Petro Vucani, Romë, 1992.