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Theology of the Body as the Foundation of Marriage and the Family

Body-soul relationship

The body is in a real sense the person, says JPII. The spirit-matter boundary is

compenetrated. This leads to two very important truths. First, the human body is

capable of expressing the person. The body is transparent to the intentional reality of thesoul. The body is not just biological. It is a constitutive part of the person. Second, this

unity implies that the body is not used as an instrument. Rather, the body is used by theperson as subject. It is Iwho am acting and living through my body. Man is a subject basedon his own body.

The body reveals the vocation of the human person to live love

The body reveals the vocation of the person. In masculinity and femininity there is anordination of man and woman to each other and to the full giving of the one to the other.

The body manifests the reciprocity of human persons. Masculinity and femininity servethe cause of an intimate love. The deepest meaning of the body is found in its spousal

characteristic. In all this the body is giving the reasons for its existence. Mutual self-givingin marriage is in the spousal relationship. This is also true in virginity. In addition torevealing mans call to love, masculinity and femininity witness to the creation of persons

out of love. Vocation to man and woman to spousal love emerges as finding root intrinitarian love.

Nature of sexuality in this vocation

This is the special locus of this deepest realisation. Masculinity and femininity areinseparable from body. Everything in the human person is characterised by masculinityand femininity, but the sphere of sex gives a special locus. Therefore sexuality is somehowat the very centre of the relationship of human love.

The body exists as personal in the body-soul unity. The sphere of sex contains a special

intersection of body-soul. We experience this when we say that entering into the sexualsphere is something spiritual. Sex by its very nature is an entirely different bodily act. Theconjugal act does not consist in merely physical movements and gestures. As physical, the

conjugal act is not complete by itself. John Paul II speaks of embodiment. A spiritual act ismade bodily in the conjugal act. If I say rose it indicates something else than e.g. I loveyou. In sexuality the full meaning is all contained in the act itself.

The natural laws that govern sex are very different in their constitution from physicallaws. The physical laws of nature are a world apart. This idea is at the centre of TOB.Everything depends on this special nature of the sexual act (says Love and Responsibility).

They are determined by a spiritual reality beyond themselves. This is why JPII can say thatthe inner structures of the spousal act reflect masculinity and femininity. It is only becauseof this that we can speak of TOB. If there were no spiritual meaning to spousal act there

could not be a TOB.

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The language of the body

The fact that the body and soul are one means that the communion of persons constitutesrelationships. Indeed love cannot be expressed without the body. Without this language ofthe body there is no love. It is not that man as made up of body and soul needs to involve

his body in all his acts. In Gods plan it is his spousal self-giving that has its body as its

special locus. It is the body as animated by a personal soul, for sure. But its more. Thatswhy, e.g., consummation is needed to ratify a marriage.

Meditation on love

The body is constitutive of the gift. How does this shed light on the nature of the union ofthe spouses. What does the body speak in its language?

3. For the present, however, we are before the threshold of man's earthlyhistory. The man and the woman have not yet crossed it toward

knowledge of good and evil. They are immersed in the mystery ofcreation. The depth of this mystery hidden in their hearts is innocence,grace, love and justice: And God saw everything that he had made,and behold, it was very good (Gn 1:31).

Man appears in the visible world as the highest expression of the divine

gift, because he bears within him the interior dimension of the gift. Withit he brings into the world his particular likeness to God, with which hetranscends and dominates also his visibility: in the world, his

corporality, his masculinity or femininity, his nakedness. A reflection ofthis likeness is also the primordial awareness of the nuptial meaning ofthe body, pervaded by the mystery of original innocence.

4. Thus, in this dimension, a primordial sacrament is constituted,understood as a sign that transmits effectively in the visible world theinvisible mystery hidden in God from time immemorial. This is the

mystery of truth and love, the mystery of divine life, in which manreally participates. In the history of man, original innocence begins thisparticipation and it is also a source of original happiness. The

sacrament, as a visible sign, is constituted with man, as a body, bymeans of his visible masculinity and femininity. The body, and it alone,is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and thedivine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the

mystery hidden since time immemorial in God, and thus be a sign of it.

Wednesday Audience, 20th February 1980

The body communicates to the world the invisible mystery of God. Man participates in

this mystery. This is the mystery of truth and love.

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God IS love. Mutual self-donation. In and through the substantial donation of Father andSon, the love becomes substantial too Holy Spirit. To understand nature of spousal love,

we need to look at it as union. Just as integral to union is another element which is theelement of fruitfulness.

It gives rise to some reality beyond self.

The law is the law of superabundance. We experience this especially in spousal love. Wesee that union and fruitfulness are two dimensions making up the one reality of love.

How are they related?

Union comes first from the causal point of view.

Fruitfulness is where union of love reaches its completion.

Union is itself only when it goes beyond itself.

4. The role of love, which is poured out into (the) hearts (Rom 5:5) ofthe spouses as the fundamental spiritual power of their conjugal pact,consists as we said in protecting both the value of the true

communion of the spouses and the value of truly responsiblefatherhood and motherhood. The power of love authentic in thetheological and ethical sense is expressed in this, that love correctlyunites the two meanings of the conjugal act, excluding not only in

theory but above all in practice the contradiction that might beevidenced in this field. This contradiction is the most frequent reasonfor objecting to the Encyclical Humanae Vitae and the teaching of theChurch. There must be a well-examined analysis, not only theological

but also anthropological (we have tried to do this in the whole presentreflection), to show that there is no need here to speak of contradiction,

but only of difficulty. Well then, the encyclical itself stresses this

difficulty in various passages.

And this arises from the fact that the power of love is implanted in manlured by concupiscence: in human subjects love does battle with thethreefold concupiscence (cf. 1 Jn 2:16), especially with the concupiscenceof the flesh which distorts the truth of the language of the body.

Therefore love too is not able to be realized in the truth of the languageof the body except through overcoming concupiscence.

Wednesday Audience, 10th October 1984

Union and fruitfulness thus depend on each other.

This is very clear from the above reading.

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What does this mean for the spousal act?

Power for unity is discovered in the spousal unity, because the union is taken up into thesoul. This act of love means that the body is the agent of union. Something else isdiscovered: the bodily act of union is also stamped with fruitfulness. The pinnacle of

fruitfulness is the coming-to-be of a new person. This is why children are the crown of

marital love.

Even if no conception from every act of intercourse, the full meaning is found only inconcept of parenthood. The child is not a consequence of the union. Rather, the child

stands as an integral element of the love. We could almost say that the child is the

spiritual correlate of physical union. Fc: fecundity is fruit and sign of conjugal love...

It is in and through the body that this particular kind of love is possible. Earlier we sawthat the physical matter of the person is raised up to become personal. Now we see that

the body does something similar for the soul. The spirit gains an entirely new possibilitybecause of its connection to matter. Similar thing said in Deus Caritas Est, 5: Each is brought

to a new nobility through spirit/soul union.

Here, we have found the most foundational reason for God giving man a body. Because ofit, man can be a procreator. An angel cannot give a part of its soul to give rise to anothercreature. We can share part of who we are in the bodily dimension of our being. Insofar as

we are our bodies, mother and father communicate themselves. Child is part of their love,substantially.

Therefore we need to see family as absolutely part of TOB.

Conclusion

How do men and women enter into this? The Fall wrecked everything. Sense of that is lost

because we have lost touch with our bodies. It is possible for husband and wife toexperience subjectively the union of deep fruit of love, says JPII. If conjugal fidelity resistsconcupiscence of flesh, it realises meanings that are unknown to concupiscence itself.Purifying, deepening and simplifying the relationship.

NB marital act is fruitful even if no children. Unity is fruitful just by being unity. Thatswhat can be said with regard to IVF cases.

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