Theology of the Body Quotes (For Study)

Transcription

1 Theology of the Body Quotes (For Study) 1. Integral Vision: Reflection on the ancient text of Genesis proves to be irreplaceable. It constitutes really the beginning of the theology of the body. The fact that the theology also includes the body should not astonish or surprise anyone who is conscious of the mystery and reality of the Incarnation. Through the fact that the Word of God became flesh, the body entered theology-that is, the science that has divinity for its object- I would say, through the main door. The Incarnation-and the redemption that flows from it-has also become the definitive source of the sacramentality of marriage (TOB 23:4) 2. Original Solitude: When God-Yahweh says, It is not good that the man is alone (Gen 2:18), he affirms that, alone, the man does not completely realize this essence. He realizes it only by existing with someone - and, put even more deeply and completely, by existing for someone. They point out how fundamental and constitutive the relationship and the communion of persons is for man. (TOB 14:2) 3. Communion of Persons: the concept of image of God, we can deduce that man became the image of God not only through his own humanity, but also through the communion of persons, which man and woman form from the very beginning Man becomes an image of God not so much in the moment of solitude as in the moment of communion. (TOB 9:3) 4. Unity of Becoming One Flesh: When they unite with each other in the conjugal act so closely so as to become one flesh, man and woman rediscover every time and in a special way the mystery of creation, thus returning to the union in humanity ( flesh from my flesh and bone from my bones ) that allows them to recognize each other reciprocally and to call each other by name, as they did the first time. (TOB 10:2) 5. Naked without Shame: According to Gen 2:25, the man and woman did not feel shame ; seeing and knowing each other in all the peace and tranquility of the interior gaze, they communicate in the fullness of humanity, which shows itself in them as reciprocal complementarity precisely because they are male and female. At the same time they communicate based on the communion of persons in which they become a mutual gift for each other, through femininity and masculinity. (TOB 13:1) 6. When the first man exclaims at the sight of the woman, she is flesh from my flesh and bone from my bones (Gen 2:23), he simply affirms the human identity of both. By exclaiming this, he seems to say, Look, a body that expresses the person! Following an earlier passage of the Yahwist text, one can also say that this body reveals the living soul, which man became when God-Yahweh breathed life into him (see Gen 2:7). (TOB 14:4) 7. Body as Gift: The body, which expresses femininity for masculinity and, vice versa, masculinity for femininity, manifests the reciprocity and the communion of persons. It expresses it through gift as the fundamental characteristic of personal existence. This is the body: a witness to creation as a fundamental gift, and therefore a witness to Love as the source from which this same giving springs. (TOB 14:4) 8. Spousal Attribute/Sincere Gift: The human body, with its sex-its masculinity and femininity-seen in the very mystery of creation, is not only a source of fruitfulness and of procreation, as in the whole natural order, but contains from the beginning the spousal attribute, that is, the power to express love: precisely that love in which the human person becomes a gift and-through this gift-fulfills the very meaning of his being and existence Man is the only creature in the visible world that God willed for its own sake, adding that this man cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of self (Gaudium et Spes 24:3) (TOB 15:1)

2 9. Spousal Character of the Body: man and woman find each other reciprocally, insomuch as the Creator willed each of them for his own sake (see GS 24:3). In the first beatifying encounter, the man thus finds the woman and she finds him. In this way he welcomes her within himself (and she welcomes him within herself), welcomes her as she is willed for her own sake by the Creator, as she is constituted in the mystery of the image of God through her femininity; (TOB 15:3) 10. Filial before spousal: Before they became husband and wife, man and woman come forth from the mystery of creation first of all as brother and sister in the same humanity. (TOB 18:5) 11. Knowledge and Procreation (Gen 4:1): Thematically, knowledge is closely tied to the blessing of fruitfulness inserted in the first account of the creation of man as male and female (Gen1:27-28). Historically, by contrast, it is already inserted into the horizon of sin and death, which, as Genesis 3 teaches, has weighed heavily on the consciousness of the meaning of the human body, as soon as the first covenant with the Creator was broken. (TOB 20:1) 12. Knowledge: it remains significant that the situation in which husband and wife unite so intimately among themselves as to form one flesh was defined as knowledge. (TOB 20:2) 13. Procreation brings it about that the man and the woman (his wife) know each other reciprocally in the third, originated by both. (TOB 21:4) 14. the cycle of knowledge-generation, rooted so deeply in the power of the human body, has been subjected, after sin, to the law of suffering and death. (TOB 22:5) 15. Primordial Sacrament & Body as Sign: a primordial sacrament understood as sign that efficaciously transmits in the visible world the invisible mystery hidden in God from all eternity. And this is the mystery of Truth and Love, the mystery of divine life, in which man really participates The sacrament, as a visible sign, is constituted with man, insomuch as he is a body, through his visible masculinity and femininity. The body, in fact, and only the body, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine (TOB 19:4) 16. Christ s Appeal to the Human Heart: (see Mt 5:27-28) The morality in which the very meaning of being human is realized-which is, at the same time, the fulfillment of the law by the super-abounding of justice through subjective vitality-is formed in the interior perception of values, from which duty is born as an expression of conscience, as an answer of one s own personal I. Ethos makes us, at one in the same time, enter into the depth of the norm itself and descend into the interior of man, the subject of morality. Moral value is connected with the dynamic process of man s innermost (being). To reach it, it is not enough to stop on the surface of human actions, but one must penetrate precisely the interior. (TOB 24:3) 17. Original Shame: Casting Doubt on the Gift: By casting doubt in his heart on the deepest meaning of the gift, that is, on love as the specific motive of creation and of the original covenant (see Gen 3:5), man turns his back on God-Love, on the Father. He in some sense casts him from his heart. (TOB 26:4) 18. In all of this, nakedness does not have only a literal meaning: it does not refer only to the body; it is not the origin of a fear related only to the body. In reality, what shows itself through nakedness is man deprived of participation in the Gift, man alienated from the Love that was the source of the original gift, the source of the fullness of good intended for the creature This man was deprived of the supernatural and preternatural gifts that were part of his endowment before sin; (TOB 27:2)

3 19. The threefold concupiscence does not correspond to the fullness of that image, but rather to the damage, to the deficiencies, to the limitations that appeared with sin. Concupiscence is to be explained as a lack, however, that plunges its roots into the original depth of the human spirit. (TOB 27:2) 20. The one who lives in this way according to the flesh, that is, who subjects himself-even if not altogether consciously, nevertheless effectively-to the threefold concupiscence, ceases to be capable of this freedom for which Christ has set us free ; he also ceases to be suitable for the true gift of self, which is the fruit and expression of such freedom. He further ceases to be capable of the gift organically linked with the spousal meaning of the human body (TOB 53:3) 21. the man ought to have been from the beginning the guardian of the reciprocity of the gift and of its true balance Although maintaining the balance of the gift seems to be something entrusted to both, the man has a special responsibility, as if it depended more on him whether the balance is kept or violated or evenif it has already been violated-reestablished. (TOB 33:2) 22. Original Innocence: nakedness did not express a lack, but represented the full acceptance of the body in its whole human and thus personal truth. The body, as the expression of the person, was the first sign of the presence of man in the visible world. In that world, from the very beginning,, man was able to distinguish himself, to identify himself, as it were-that is, to confirm himself as a person-also through his body. (TOB 27:3) 23. In a sense, the human body was from the beginning a faithful witness and a perceptible verification of man s original solitude in the world, while becoming at the same time, through masculinity and femininity, a transparent component of reciprocal giving in the communion of persons. Thus, the mystery of creation, the human body carried within itself an unquestionable sign of the image of God and also constituted the specific source of certainty about this image, present in the whole human being. (TOB 27:3) 24. Shame: fracture in the human person s interior, a breakup, as it were, of man s original spiritual and somatic unity. He realizes for the first time that his body has ceased drawing on the power of the spirit, which raised him to the level of the image of God. Its shame bears within itself the signs of a specific humiliation mediated by the body. (TOB 28:2) 25. Shame has a twofold meaning: it indicates the threat to the value and at the same time in preserves this value in an interior way. (TOB 28:6) 26. One can even say that, through shame, man and woman almost remain in the state of original innocence. If fact, they continually become conscious of the spousal meaning of the body and intend to protect it, so to speak, from concupiscence, just as they try to maintain the value of communion or of the union of persons in the unity of the body. (TOB 31:1) 27. Mutual Possession as Objects: From the moment in which the man dominates her, the communion of persons-which consists in the spiritual unity of the two subjects who gave themselves to each other-is replaced by a different mutual relationship, namely, by a relationship of possession of the other as an object of one s own desire. (TOB 31:3) 28. The Look Expresses the Heart: The look, I would say, expresses man as a whole. If one assumes general that man acts in conformity with what he is (operation follows being), in the present case Christ wants to show that man looks in conformity with what he is: (looking follows being). Through the look,

4 man shows himself on the outside and to others; above all he shows what he perceives in his interior. (TOB 39:4) 29. Lustful Desiring: look to desire indicates an experience of the value of the body in which its spousal meaning ceases to be spousal precisely because of concupiscence. What also ceases is its procreative meaning (TOB 39:5) 30. Concupiscence removes the intentional dimension of the reciprocal existence of man and woman from the personal perspectives of communion, which are proper to their perennial and reciprocal attraction, reducing this attraction and, so to speak, driving it toward utilitarian dimensions, in whose sphere of influence one human being makes use of another human being, using her only to satisfy his own urges. (TOB 41:5) 31. Purity of Heart as fulfillment of the Commandment: Christ remains faithful to the Law. Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish but to fulfill (Mt5:17). He consequently shows how deep down it is necessary to go, how the innermost recesses of the human heart must be thoroughly revealed, so that this heart might become a place in which the law is fulfilled. (TOB 43:5) 32. Should we fear the severity of these words or rather have confidence in their salvific content, in their power? (see Mt5:27)(TOB 43:7) 33. 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 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. (TOB 44:5) 34. In fact, it is not possible to read in the statement from the Sermon on the Mount analyzed here a condemnation or accusation of the body. If anything, one could see in it a condemnation of the human heart. (TOB 45:1) 35. The body in its masculinity and femininity has been called from the beginning to become the manifestation of the spirit. (TOB 45:2) 36. Called & Appeal to the Heart: The words of Christ testify that the original power (and thus also the grace) of the mystery of creation becomes for each one of them the power (that is, the grace) of the mystery of redemption. This concerns the very nature, the very substrate of the humanity of the person, the deepest impulses of the heart. Does man not sense, together with concupiscence, a deep need to preserve the dignity of the reciprocal relations that find their expression in the body thanks to its masculinity and femininity? Does he not feel the need to impregnate them with everything that is noble and beautiful? Does he not feel the need to confer on them the supreme value, which is love? (TOB 46:5) 37. Called precisely to this supreme value, which is love. Called as a person in the truth of his humanity, and thus also in the truth of his masculinity and femininity, in the truth of his body. Called in that truth which has been his inheritance of the beginning, the inheritance of his heart, which is deeper than the sinfulness inherited, deeper than the threefold concupiscence. Christ s words, set in the whole reality of creation and redemption, re-activate that deepest inheritance and give it real power in human life. (TOB 46:6) 38. If we suppose that eros signifies the inner power that attracts man to the true, the good, and the beautiful, then we also see a road opening up within the sphere of this concept toward what Christ wanted to

5 express in the Sermon on the Mount eros and ethos are called to meet in the human heart and to bear fruit in this meeting. (TOB 47:5) 39. Man must feel himself called to rediscover, or even better, to realize, the spousal meaning of the body and to express in this way the interior freedom of the gift, that is, the freedom of the spiritual state and power that derives from mastery over the concupiscence of the flesh. (TOB 46:4) 40. Redemption of the Body-Ethos of Redemption: In this we follow St. Paul, who in Romans contrasts the slavery of corruption (8:21) and the submission to transitoriness (8:20)-in which the whole creation has come to share because of sin-to the desire for the redemption of our bodies (8:23). In this context, the Apostle speaks about the groans of the whole creation, which cherishes the hope that it itself will be set free from the slavery of corruption to enter into the freedom of the glory of the children of God (8:20-21) new adoption as sons (8:23)-precisely toward the redemption of the body, presented as the end, as the eschatological and mature fruit of the mystery of the redemption of man and the world achieved by Christ. (TOB 49:2) 41. Purity of Heart-Life according to the Spirit: Purity of heart, about which Christ speaks in the Sermon on the Mount-is realized precisely in life according to the Spirit. (TOB 50:5) 42. If, in fact, the whole law (the moral law of the Old Testament) finds its fullness in the commandment of love, the dimensions of the new ethos of the Gospel is nothing other than an appeal to human freedom, an appeal for its fullest realization and in some way for the fullest use of the powers of the human spirit. (TOB 53:1) 43. Paul ends his argument in 1 Corinthians 6 with a significant exhortation: Therefore glorify God in your body (v. 20). Purity as a virtue or ability of keeping one s own body with holiness and reverence, allied with the gift of piety as a fruit of the Holy Spirit s dwelling in the temple of the body, causes in the body such a fullness of dignity in interpersonal relations that God himself is thereby glorified. Purity is the glory of the human body before God. It is the glory of God in the human body through which masculinity and femininity are manifested. From purity springs that singular beauty that permeates every sphere of reciprocal common life between human beings and allows them to express in it the simplicity and depth, the cordiality and unrepeatable authenticity of personal trust. (TOB 57:3) 44. Resurrection of Body/Divinization: Eschatological man will be free from this opposition. In the resurrection, the body will return to perfect unity and harmony with the spirit: man will no longer experience the opposition between what is spiritual and what is bodily in him. Spiritualization signifies not only that the spirit will master the body, but, I would say, that it will also fully permeate the body and the powers of the spirit will permeate the energies of the body. (TOB 67:1) 45. When Christ says that those who will participate in the future resurrection take neither wife nor husband (Mk 12:25), his words-as we observed earlier-affirm not only the end of earthly history, tied to marriage and procreation, but seem also to unveil the new meaning of the body. Is it possible, in this case-on the level of biblical eschatology- to think of the discovery of the spousal meaning of the body above all as the virginal meaning of being male and female in the body? To answer this question we should penetrate more deeply into the very essence of what will be the beatific vision of the Divine Being, the vision of God face to face in the future life. (TOB 67:4)

6 46. Participation in the divine nature, participation in the inner life of God himself, penetration and permeation of what is essentially human by what is essentially divine, will then reach its peak, so that the life of the human spirit will reach a fullness that was absolutely inaccessible to it before. This new spiritualization will thus be a fruit of grace, that is, of God s self-communication in his very divinity, not only to the soul, but to the whole of man s psychosomatic subjectivity. (TOB 67:3) 47. The eschatological communion of man with God, which is constituted thanks to the love of a perfect union, will be nourished by the vision face to face, by the contemplation of the most perfect communionbecause it is purely divine- the Trinitarian communion of the divine Persons (TOB 68:1) 48. The reciprocal gift of oneself to God the virginal state of the body will manifest itself completely as the eschatological fulfillment of the spousal meaning of the body, as the specific sign and authentic expression of personal subjectivity as a whole. (TOB 68:3) 49. the rediscovery of a new, perfect intersubjectivity of all. In this way this reality means the true and definitive fulfillment of human subjectivity and, on this basis, the definitive fulfillment of the spousal meaning of the body. (TOB 68:4) 50. Continence for the Kingdom of Heaven: The question of continence for the kingdom of heaven is not set in opposition to marriage, nor is it based on a negative judgment about the importance of marriage.christ appeals to another principle but in view of the particular values which is connected with this choice and which one must discover and welcome as one s own vocation. For this reason Christ says, Let anyone understand this who can (Mt19:12) One can say that the choice of continence for the kingdom of heaven is a charismatic orientation toward that eschatological state in which human beings take neither wife nor husband (TOB 73:3,4) 51. This way of existing as a human being (male and female) points out the eschatological virginity of the risen man, in which, I would say, the absolute and eternal spousal meaning of the glorified body will be revealed in union with God himself, by seeing him face to face, glorified moreover through the union of a perfect intersubjectivity that will unite all the sharers in the other world, men and women, in the mystery of the communion of saints. Earthly continence for the kingdom of God is without doubt a sign that indicates this truth and this reality. It is a sign that the body, whose end is not death, tends toward glorification; (TOB 75:1) 52. Celibacy/Virginity for the Kingdom and Spousal Love: kind of an exception to what is, by contrast, a general rule of life. This is what Christ emphasized above all. Christ does not directly speak here about the fact that such an exception contains within itself the anticipation of eschatological life without marriage and proper to the other world (that is, to the final stage of the kingdom of heaven ). (TOB 74:5) 53. love as the readiness to make the exclusive gift of self for the kingdom of God. (TOB 79:8) 54. Perfect conjugal love must be marked by the faithfulness and the gift to the one and only Bridegroom (and also by the faithfulness and gift of the Bridegroom to the one and only Bride) on which religious profession and priestly celibacy are based. In sum, the nature of the one as well as the other love is spousal, that is, expressed through the complete gift of self. The one as well as the other love tends to express that spousal meaning of the body, which has been inscribed from the beginning in the personal structure of man and woman. (TOB 78:4)

7 55. that reciprocal for of man and woman, can be understood appropriately and adequately only within the dynamic whole of the personal subject. Christ s words in Mt 19:11-12 show accordingly that this, for, which has been present from the beginning at the basis of marriage, can also stand at the basis of continence for the kingdom of heaven! Relying on the same disposition of the personal subject, thanks to which man fully finds himself through a sincere gift of self (see Gaudium et Spes, 24:3), man (male and female) is able to choose the personal gift of self to another person in the conjugal covenant, in which they become one flesh, and he is also able to renounce freely such a gift of self to another person, in order that by choosing continence for the kingdom of heaven he may give himself totally to Christ.the love that commits man for his whole life (TOB 80:6) (See 79:9 too) 56. Spiritual Fruitfulness: The grace of the hypostatic union is connected, I would say, precisely with this absolute fullness of supernatural fruitfulness, fruitfulness in the Holy Spirit, shared by a human creature, Mary, in the order of continence for the kingdom of heaven. Mary s divine motherhood is also in some way a superabundant revelation of that fruitfulness in the Holy Spirit to which man submits his spirit when he freely chooses continence in the body, specifically, continence for the kingdom of heaven. (TOB 75:4) 57. In Reference to Ephesians 5:25-33: Love makes the husband simultaneously subject to the wife, and subject in this to the Lord himself, as the wife is to the husband.christ is the source and at the same time the model of that submission (TOB 89:4) 58. the whole text of Ephesians 5:21-33 is permeated by the same analogy: that is, the reciprocal relationship between the spouses, husband and wife, should be understood by Christians according to the image of the relationship between Christ and the Church. (TOB 89:8) 59. It shows in some sense the way in which this marriage, in its deepest essence, emerges from the mystery of God s eternal love for man and humanity: from the salvific mystery that Christ s spousal love fulfills in time for the Church. (TOB 90:4) 60. the husband is above all the one who loves and the wife, by contrast, is the one who is loved. One might even venture the idea that the wife s submission to the husband, understood in the context of the whole of Ephesians 5:22-23, means above all the experiencing of love. (TOB 92:6) 61. This text is equally valid both for the theology of marriage and for the theology of continence for the kingdom, the theology of virginity or celibacy. (TOB 99.4) 62. Sacrament : The sacrament consists in manifesting that mystery in a sign that serves not only to proclaim the mystery but also to accomplish it in man. The sacrament is a visible and efficacious sign of grace. It is a means for accomplishing in man the mystery hidden from eternity in God, about which Ephesians speaks immediately at the beginning (Eph 1:9)-the mystery of God calling man to holiness in Christ and the mystery of man s predestination to become an adoptive son. (TOB 93:5) 63. the sacramentality of the Church is the source of the sacraments, and in particular of Baptism and the Eucharist, as is clear from Ephesians 5:25-33 the sacramentality of the Church remains in a particular relationship with marriage, the most ancient sacrament. (TOB 93:7) 64. Sacrament of Redemption and the Indissolubility of Marriage: To such unity and such a communion of persons, according to likeness with the union of divine Persons, are dedicated Christ s words referring to

8 marriage as the primordial sacrament and confirming that sacrament at the same time on the basis of the mystery of redemption. (TOB 100:1) 65. 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. (TOB 102:4) 66. Sign of Marriage Vows & Prophetism of the Body: rereading the perennial language of the body, form a sign, an unrepeatable sign, which also has a future-orientation meaning, all the days of my life, that is, until death. This is the visible and efficacious sign of the covenant with God in Christ, that is, of grace, which is to become their portion in this sign as their own gift (TOB 103:6) 67. My Sister, My Bride : The expression of sister speaks of union in humanity and at the same time of feminine diversity, of the originality of this humanity If being a person means both being a subject, but also being in relation, the term sister seems to express in the simplest way the subjectivity of the feminine I in its personal relation, that is, in its openness toward others, toward the neighbor the particular addressee of this openness become the man understood as brother. The sister in some sense helps the man to define and conceive himself, she becomes, I would say, a challenge in this direction. (TOB 109:4) 68. (Familiaris Consortio 48/49) Christian spouses are therefore the permanent reminder to the Church of what happened on the cross. 69. Two inseparable meanings of conjugal act: In Humanae Vitae we read, Calling human beings back to the observance of the norms of the natural law, the Church teaches that each and every marriage act must remain through itself open to the transmission of life. That teaching, often set forth by the magisterium, is founded upon the inseparable connection, willed by God and unable to be broken by man on his own initiative, between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning (HV 11-12). (TOB 118:2) 70. By its intimate structure, the conjugal act, while most closely uniting husband and wife, capacitates them for the generation of new lives, according to the laws inscribed in the very being of man and of woman (HV12). (TOB 118:5) 71. when the conjugal act is deprived of its inner truth because it is deprived artificially of its procreative capacity, it also ceases to be an act of love if this truth is lacking, one can speak neither of the truth of the reciprocal gift of self nor of the reciprocal acceptance of oneself by the person. Such violation of the inner order of conjugal communion, a communion that plunges its roots into the very order of the person, constitutes the essential evil of the contraceptive act. (TOB 123:6,7) 72. To make use of the gift of conjugal love with reverence for the laws of the generative process means to acknowledge oneself not to be the arbiter of the sources of human life, but rather the minister of the plan established by the Creator (HV 13) (TOB 124:5) 73. Man in tension: man is situated in the cosmos man is set in tension between these two poles in the perspective of eternal destiny that concerns from the beginning to the end his same human nature. When Paul writes, The first man taken from the earth consists of earth, the second man comes from heaven (I Cor 15:27), he has in mind both Adam-man and Christ as man. Between the two poles-between the first and the last Adam-the progress unfolds that he expresses in the words, Just as we have been borne the image of the man of earth, we will bear the image of the heavenly man (I Cor 15:49) (TOB 71:2)

9 74. When marriage is not esteemed, neither can consecrated virginity or celibacy exist; when human sexuality is not regarded as a great value given by the Creator, the renunciation of it for the sake of the kingdom of heaven loses its meaning. (The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality, Pontifical Council for the Family, par. 34) 75. the beloved of the Father, reveals that his saving love, which consists in his gift of self for the Church, is a spousal love by which he marries the Church and makes her his own Body. (TOB 95:7) 76. The Church as Bride, being the object of the redemptive love of Christ, the Bridegroom, becomes his body. The wife, being the object of the spousal love of her husband, becomes one flesh with him: in some sense, his own flesh. (TOB 92:6) 77. such maturity partly shows the efficaciousness of the gift of the Holy Spirit, whose temple the human body is (see I Cor 6:19) (TOB 58.7)