It is Tuesday afternoon at the Blackrock Conference Centre in Quarryville Pennsylvania. This is day three and we have now had four three-hour sessions. The reason for my overseas trip was this week here; undertaking a one week intensive course in Pope John Paul’s Theology of the Body (TOB). The course is led by Christopher West who for the last 10 years has been travelling the world teaching and popularising that catechesis given by Pope John Paul between 1979 and 1984. The TOB catechesis is made up of 129 general audiences that were given at the Vatican and forms the first major teaching of his pontificate. The course here is being offered through the Theology of the Body Institute
I came here to learn more about the Theology of the Body and to build upon what I had learnt at the JPII Institute in Melbourne. Theology of the Body is what first led me to Melbourne, as I saw (and still see) in TOB the way to reach out to the current generation of Christians, non Christians and atheists. TOB is essentially a catechesis on what it is to be a human person and because of that it is a lens through which to respond to all the questions of the human heart, who am I, why am I here, how can I be happy etc. It is the lens through which to see the entire Catholic faith.
This is not just another lecture series though; it is called a ‘Head and Heart Immersion Course’, that is, the course is about education minds but also transforming hearts and then changing lives. These courses have been running here for a few years. There are people who have come again who have been before and it really has changed lives. One of the things Christopher said at the beginning is that many of us come here with a Petrine (St Peter) attitude, that is to take the message and evangelise the world with it (that’s me) but more importantly we must come to this with a Marian (Mary) disposition, that is, to be in a mode of receiving the gift. After a few sessions though I can begin to see that especially for me I need to be open to receive these messages instead of just compiling more knowledge which is my specialty.
Christopher West is a dynamic speaker in the way of those very charismatic American speakers that you see on TV. They have their message and they believe in it with their whole being and want to share it. West is one of the most sought after catholic speakers in the world today and is akin to Anthony Robbins in his delivery.
Since the late 1960’s for a whole host of reasons there has been a massive amount of dissent from the Church’s teaching on sexuality and morality. The Church’s teachings were nothing new but when the sexual revolution was proclaiming a new Gospel of selfish pleasure and denial of the value of sexuality the Church continued to say that sex is good, holy and beautiful. In 1968 Pope Paul VI re-stated the position that contraception violated the language of the sexual act and was therefore never something that Christians could accept. Until 1930 every Christian church had proclaimed this same truth but between 1930 and 1960 every protestant church changed their position. The Catholic Church however is the guardian of truth and not the inventor of it so she held fast, even though many Catholics, for the first time in the history of the Church openly dissented from the authority of the Pope. Now the Church lives in a position in which many practicing Catholics think contraception is ok and it is a free choice that they are able to make. Not necessarily through their own faults they have been conditioned wrongly and not been led to see the reasons for the Church’s moral position. Many people and the media get very bitter towards the Church’s sexual teaching but we only get bitter against God’s laws when we desire to break them. Perhaps the solution that is not considered is to ask for our hearts to be changed?
John Paul II knew this and hence he gave to the world the Theology of the Body. The brilliance of the TOB is that it is starts with the human experience of what it is to be created as male and female and to sense loneliness and unity in our lives. John Paul uses the words of Christ and returns ‘to the beginning’ to the experiences of our first parents and how they viewed themselves and their sexuality before the fall from grace.
It is amazing as Christopher goes through the presentations how often the participants (there are about 100 of us) can see it as directly talking into their own hearts. There is a modern notion among people that their personal story and yearnings are somehow different and no one else could understand but that is just the individualism that we live in. In truth, men and women share the same longings and have done so since the beginning of time. We are all made in the image of God and this means certain things will always be the same. We will always ling for love and for truth.
The most basic example Christopher uses is to hold up a blank piece of paper and say ‘this is an image of male and female before the fall’. He then crunches it up and says ‘this is an image of male and female after the fall’. There are a number of responses that people make to the crunched up ball of paper; many of us believe that that is what it is meant to be, the frustration between the sexes, the misunderstanding and abuses are what is it like, as good as it gets. In that case just make the most of it and get out as much as you can. Other well meaning (often Christian teachers) have looked at the scrunched up paper, our fallen humanity and sexuality, and taught that it is bad and we should try to free ourselves from the body and live only spiritual lives. Pope John Paul however, in his TOB, looked to the scriptures and the words of Christ and the great mystics and saints to take the scrunched up piece of paper and actually UNFOLD it! Unfold it with the grace of God. We are a wounded people but the good news is that Christ has come to uncrunch the paper and help us live in freedom. This is why this is such a refreshing and unique teaching. This is not repression and this is not acceptance of our state but this is true redemption. It is the only way to live in true freedom.
The modern culture says that love is not possible, that we are not worthy of a love that dares to encompass us. Many of us are taught to just settle for the food in the dumpster, not to believe or hope that there is something better. There are many men and women out there who are too scared to give and to scared to receive, there is a great fear in the hearts of men and women…and I am talking about ‘good’ men and women! We are told there is no banquet or real joy in life so best we cling onto the pithy reality that we have, after all, at least it is real! It is like saying, best to chew on the half eaten bagel instead of looking to the feast that is being offered! But…in the beginning it was not so. Christ died and rose to restore creation to the purity of its origins. To say that we cannot overcome our lusts and selfish desires is to say the cross did not work. Yes the journey is difficult but it will lead to resurrection if we make it in honesty. Ours is a journey that is totally sustained by grace. This is where the message is totally opposite to secular culture, we do not say, I can do all things I put my mind to, but rather, I can do all things with God’s grace!
Our creation as man and woman is a window into heaven, it is an icon, it gives us the vision into understanding and living in heaven. When the image of man and woman is so distorted though Satan leads us to believe that we cannot reach the beauty of heaven, we run the other way. Both men and women are called to drink in the love that Christ offers to us and to allow him to clear out the dirt that coats our hearts. The dirt that clogs our vision can stop us from seeing where it is we are being led and it can stop us seeing the great gifts that God wants to give to us his children. We need to trust that we have a heavenly Father who loves us and wants to lead us to that love, he does not want us to grasp at things, but when we fear we are not loved, we tend not to wait for the good and instead, grab at what we can. The good news is that the echo of who we are still exists in our hearts. We are only a wounded people, not totally depraved. We need to listen to the divine echo that rests within us all. In that echo lies the path to the happiness we long for. Let us leave the half chewed bagel in the gutter and raise our eyes to heaven and cry out to God for the feast!
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