Tag Archives: Self-Gift

Why Did the Risen Jesus Cook Breakfast for the Disciples?

I love food. My parents tell me that, as a little child, I was a mostly calm, happy-go-lucky kid—unless I was hungry. Then I turned into a monster. But once I found something to eat—serenity returned. Some of my family members say that little has changed with me in the many intervening years! I grew up working in my family’s food business. Stories about food get my attention.

Thus I’m a fan of the resurrection stories. They often involve food. In Luke, the risen Jesus walks unrecognized with two of his disciples. It was only after they arrived at the village of Emmaus, and Jesus broke the bread at the dinner table, that they finally recognized him. The story continues with Jesus appearing to a group of disciples and asking them, “Do you have anything to eat here?” They gave him a piece of baked fish. (Luke 24:13-48) Then there is the scene with Peter and other disciples after a long day of fishing. They see the risen Lord calling them from the shore. When they arrive, they find that he has cooked a breakfast of bread and fish for them and invites them to “Come, have breakfast.” (John 21:1-14) I’ll bet there were some eggs and pancakes on the side too!

All this talk about food makes me hungry. But it also makes me wonder why Jesus put such emphasis on eating. Maybe he was just hungry. Jesus did some other curious things right after the resurrection: like breathing on his disciples and inviting Thomas to actually touch his nail wounds and feel the sword gash in his side. Jesus seems to be going out of his way to assure his friends that it was really he who was present; not a ghost or vision. It was he, fully alive and in the flesh.

“‘The flesh is the hinge of salvation.’ We believe in God who is creator of the flesh; we believe in the Word made flesh in order to redeem the flesh; we believe in the resurrection of the flesh, the fulfilment of both the creation and the redemption of the flesh.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church n. 1015.)

These resurrection scenes drive home to us the importance of the flesh, that is, the human body. For Jesus, his physical body wasn’t just something that he “wore” while on earth, but part of his very being. And for us, our bodies are not something solely for this life which we forever discard at the time of death. As human beings, we are a beautifully mysterious combination of body and spirit. Just as in the Ascension, Jesus took his resurrected body with him back to the Father, we, too, at the end of time, will receive back our glorified body for entrance into heaven. The body is a profoundly good part of how God created us. The body is holy—thus what we do with our bodies really matters.

The newly canonized Saint John Paul II spent many years of his life reflecting on the meaning of the body. Drawing from the Bible and theology, he composed a work called the Theology of the Body. He explains that it is through the body, and the experiences of the body, that we most completely come to know ourselves and God. St. John Paul II makes this bold assertion:

“The body, in fact, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and divine.” (Feb. 20, 1980)

Over these next few months, I invite you to join me in exploring how our bodies help us to better understand ourselves, and the God who made us.

In May, spring takes hold and our senses are heightened. Our senses, working through our body, allow us to feel a warm breeze, enjoy a sunset, listen to music, share a handshake and give a hug. They also allow us to enjoy a burger off the backyard grill. And that makes someone like me quite happy about the Theology of the Body!

About the author
Fr. Chris Singer is chancellor of the Diocese of Erie and presented a lecture series on the Theology of the Body in the Fall of 2014. Reprinted with permission from FAITH magazine in the Diocese of Erie (Last Word column).

Reading Laudato Si in Light of Sexuality, Marriage, and Family Life

On Thursday, June 18, 2015, Pope Francis released his second encyclical, Laudato Si, “On care for our common home.” The encyclical addresses humanity’s responsibility to protect and conscientiously cultivate the earth. Ultimately, the Holy Father advocates an integral ecology as the best response to the environmental crisis. This response, illuminated by the Christian faith, is integral because it addresses not only the environmental issues of today, but also various economic, social, cultural and moral ones. In fact, three major themes emerge in the encyclical that relate to human sexuality, marriage, and family life, which are the main topics of the Pope Francis Corner: human ecology, the objectification of creation, and today’s “throwaway culture.”

Human Ecology

Drawing on the teachings of the two previous popes, Benedict XVI and St. John Paul II, Pope Francis uses the concept of “human ecology” to denote the interconnectedness of the natural environment and human culture [i]. For example, when humanity respects itself, the earth rejoices, but when humanity degrades itself, the earth suffers, too. The Holy Father uses the biblical story of Cain and Abel to illustrate this point. After Cain kills his brother Abel, God cries, “What have you done! Listen: Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the soil! Therefore you shall be banned from the soil…If you till the soil, it shall no longer give you its produce” (Gen 4:10-12a). Pope Francis says, “Disregard for the duty to cultivate and maintain a proper relationship with my neighbor, for whose care and custody I am responsible, ruins my relationship with my own self, with others, with God, and with the earth” (LS, 70). Because the “book of nature is one and indivisible,” including men and women, all creatures on the earth and the earth itself, “[t]here can be no renewal of our relationship with nature without a renewal of humanity itself” (LS 6, 118). An authentic human ecology recognizes that human beings are an integral part of the environment which we are trying to protect and promote. We need to respect “our unique place as human beings in this world and our relationship to our surroundings” (LS, 15).

Another aspect of human ecology is basic Christian anthropology: humans are moral creatures, created in the image of God with inherent meaning and purpose inscribed in their very bodies. Pope Francis quotes St. John Paul II on this point: “Not only has God given the earth to man, who must use it with respect for the original good purpose for which it was given, but, man too is God’s gift to man. He must therefore respect the natural and moral structure with which he has been endowed” (LS, 115, emphasis added). Part of this natural and moral structure is the sexual difference between women and men, which God has created in us, and indeed, in many other creatures. Pope Francis writes, “Learning to accept our body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecology. Also, valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different” (LS, 155). Sexual difference allows men and women to enter into fulfilling, self-giving relationships, particularly marriage, which is rooted in our human nature as men and women (Catechism, no. 1603). Respecting and protecting the environment, then, includes respecting and protecting ourselves as a part of creation, and specifically our unique gender differences and all they entail: marriage between a man and a woman, fertility, the need for fathers and mothers, etc. The Pope maintains that seeking to eliminate gender difference is “not a healthy attitude” because it rejects the God-given gift of our sexuality (LS, 155).

The Objectification of Creation

Another theme in Laudato Si is the objectification of creation, which Pope Francis treats as a grave issue. He notes that creatures are not “merely…potential ‘resources’ to be exploited…they have value in themselves” (33). In other words, creation is not just an object to be used. The objectification of creation leads to mass consumerism on the part of humanity, damaging the earth and her resources as well as doing harm to the poor and to future generations. Consumerism is a result of “no longer speak[ing] the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world,” of ceasing to relate to the world as a subject and instead choosing to manipulate and possess it as an object (LS, 11).

Objectification and consumerism can also take place in the human realm. There can be a consumeristic approach to persons when we stop relating to each other with love and respect, and instead seek to possess each other. This is particularly an issue when sexuality is involved, as we see in the story of the Fall of Adam and Eve. In his reflections on the theology of the body, St. John Paul II wrote that after sin enters the world, man dominates woman and their previous relationship of unity and mutual self-gift “is replaced by a different mutual relationship, namely by a relationship of possession of the other as an object of one’s desire” (TOB 31:3). Possession and domination of a person mirrors the possession and domination of the earth that Pope Francis seeks to challenge in this encyclical.

At its root, the sin of possession– and indeed all sin – results from humanity’s assuming the place and actions of God. The Pope writes that “our presuming to take the place of God and refusing to acknowledge our creaturely limitations…distorted our mandate to ‘have dominion’ over the earth (cf. Gen 1:28), to ‘till it and keep it’ (Gen 2:15)” (LS, 66). Pope Francis calls for us instead to relate to the earth in a brotherly and sisterly way. He includes the text of St. Francis of Assisi’s hymn, which speaks of “Brother Sun” and “Sister Moon.” Our fellow human beings, especially our spouses, are truly our brothers and sisters of one Father; we should accompany them through life, relate to them as fellow children of God, and refuse to treat them in a consumeristic way, as objects.

The “Throwaway Culture”

Lastly, Pope Francis criticizes the “throwaway culture,” which is fueled by a vicious cycle of using and trashing precious environmental resources (LS, 16, 20-22, 43). His criticism also extends to a culture that throws away people. He notes that “it is clearly inconsistent to combat trafficking in endangered species while remaining completely indifferent to human trafficking, unconcerned about the poor, or undertaking to destroy another human being deemed unwanted” (LS, 91). And in his first apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, the Pope described a “throwaway” culture as one wherein “human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded” (EG, 53).

There are many victims of the “throwaway” mentality – the unborn, the elderly, the poor, the disabled, the lonely, and the orphan. Abandoned spouses and children also suffer from the effects of a culture where divorce and separation are prevalent. Francis’ plea to reduce waste should resound also as a plea to reduce the harms incurred by divorce and by treating marriage as a temporary arrangement, a theme the Pope has addressed before. The Pope has also previously spoken strongly about protecting children, whom he considers the “first victims” of the harms of divorce and separation. And he has affirmed that children’s lives are never mistakes and thus can never be thrown away; “every marginalized, abandoned child…is a cry that goes up to God.” A renewed respect for marriage as an inviolable sacrament, and a commitment to caring for separated and divorced couples and their children, can help reverse the discarding of people.

In conclusion, Laudato Si addresses more than environmental concerns; it also informs how human beings can most naturally and healthily relate to one another. The frequent mentions of “human ecology” in the encyclical reveal Francis’ concern that men and women not forget that they are an important part of the natural world, and that they too have inherent meaning and purpose. Laudato Si’s warning against objectifying creation encourages us to consider whether we are “possessors” or “relators” to the loved ones in our lives. Finally, the criticism of the “throwaway” culture extends not only to the trashing of natural resources, but also to the discarding of people. One of the spiritual messages of the encyclical is to cultivate a profound sense of humility before the wonder of God and his creation. If we remember our limitations as created beings, we find that we cannot “substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves” (LS, 34). The earth and the relationships that are formed with it and on it are sources of great beauty that deserve protection.

About the author
Juliana Vossenberg is the Summer 2015 intern for the Secretariat of Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

[i] See Centesimus Annus (St. John Paul II, 1991), Evangelium Vitae (St. John Paul II, 1995), Caritas in Veritate (Pope Benedict XVI, 2009), If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation (Pope Benedict XVI, 2010)

3 Modern Obstacles to a Healthy Marriage

If this story, about a couple married for 62 years who died 4 hours apart, does not make you sigh just a little, well … I’m not sure you have a soul.

Or how about the story about Fred Stobaugh, the 96-year-old widower who wrote an ode to his late wife, “Sweet Lorraine,” and entered it in a song-writing contest? If you can watch the video without tearing up, don’t bother reading on. You’re just not human.

Why do stories like these touch our hearts in such a moving way? I think it’s because stories like these so clearly demonstrate the lifelong commitment marriage is meant to be. Till death do us part. We say the words, and we see in them an ideal to aspire to, something we all long to attain, and yet not all of us do.

It’s cliche to lament divorce statistics, but in an attempt to combat the problem of rising divorce rates and declining marriage rates, let’s take a look at some cultural problems that can be obstacles to healthy marriages.

1. We have a mixed-up idea of married love.

It’s normal to go into marriage with some expectation of romance and lovey-dovey stuff. After all, that’s how people wind up wanting to get married in the first place. They fall in love, they have a romantic relationship, and they are so crazy about each other that they can’t wait to start “together forever.” That’s awesome. That’s fun. That’s how God intends for couples to begin.

Every healthy marriage, no matter what stage its in, does have some measure of romantic love. Just as people have different personalities, though, different marriages do too, and most marriages don’t maintain that full-force “romantic” feeling forever. And we should not expect them to.

When people mix up married love with romantic love, they wrongly feel that their marriage is in decline when the romance begins to fade. There are fewer rose-petal baths and more insurance premiums. There are no more love songs and an awful lot of day-to-day drudgery.

Fading romance in a culture that tells couples they can quit when it gets hard, leave when they “fall out of love,” or their spouse “doesn’t make them happy anymore,” is a recipe for discouragement and the kinds of negative, selfish thoughts that can lead to divorce.

2. We fail at self-giving love.

This is a problem I have observed even among very “faithful” Catholics who know and love a lot about their faith. Somehow, we as a Church have failed to help some husbands and wives hear and understand that their call to marriage is a call to make a total gift of self to their spouse.

St. John Paul II emphasizes the importance of “self-gift” in Gaudium et Spes:

Man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.

That “sincere gift of self” he mentions is a daily call to sacrifice, and I will let you in on a little secret: It’s not feel-good stuff. It hurts. Like sacrifice always does. That’s why they call it sacrifice.

In my own life, I have seen what look like “perfect” marriages on the outside fall apart on the inside because of a failure of one or both of the spouses to recognize this simple fact: Love comes first. Charity above all things. You can be an otherwise “perfect” Catholic couple–earning a decent living, setting up a home, having children and educating them well–but if you fail to recognize the importance of loving your spouse with self-giving love, you are failing. At the most important thing. None of that other stuff matters.

We aren’t all perfect at self-sacrifice, of course, and in a healthy marriage there is plenty of room for mistakes, mercy, and forgiveness. The fundamentally important call to hear, however, is the call to love one another and to fully find yourself through a “sincere gift of self” to your spouse. That kind of love isn’t just “nice if you can find it”; it’s what marriage is.

3. We misunderstand the importance of vocation.

Vocation is a tough concept for many of today’s younger generations to understand. The idea of a calling–not a job, but a calling–to marriage, priesthood, or religious life is a foreign one to many. When we fail to recognize marriage as a calling, however, we belittle it. Culturally, it becomes a hobby or something nice to do “if you’re into that kind of thing.” It certainly isn’t something you would sacrifice your career for.

But our culture lets young people know that career goals can trump marriage. Travel plans can take precedence. There’s no hurry.

The sad result is that when people get married later in life, there is less likelihood that they will meet their spouses when both are ready to make a commitment, and there are fewer marriage-ready men and women in the dating pool even for those who are looking seriously for a spouse.

If marriage is a vocation, that means it’s your life’s work; it’s not a job and not something you do on the side. It’s something you do first, and then build to rest of your life around, not something you try to fit in later, once you’ve saved up enough money and you’ve accomplished “more important” things.

The saddest part of cultural obstacles to healthy marriage is that they negatively affect a lot of innocent people who desperately want to answer a call to marriage. They want to find their spouse, get married, begin a life-long commitment, and practice self-giving love. But our culture sometimes gets in the way.

The good news, though, is that our God is an awesome God. The power of an anti-marriage culture may be great, but God is greater and He works with what we give Him. All of us, married, single, divorced, widowed, dating, or something in between, can pray every day for the grace we need to live out Christ’s call to perfection in an imperfect world.

Let’s support marriage. Let’s pray for each other. Let’s encourage each another.

Article originally published by CatholicMatch Institute, which provides resources to help single Catholics develop a strong foundation for marriage through advocacy, programs, and scholarships. Used with permission.

Why Natural Family Planning Differs from Contraception

In 1998 Pope John Paul II wrote a letter to Dr. Anna Cappella, director of the Center for Research and Study on the Natural Regulation of Fertility at Rome’s Catholic University of the Sacred Heart. The occasion was a convention commemorating Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical. Excerpts are reprinted below.

I hope that everyone will benefit from a closer study of the Church’s teaching on the truth of the act of love in which spouses become sharers in God’s creative action.

The truth of this act stems from its being an expression of the spouses’ reciprocal personal giving, a giving that can only be total since the person is one and indivisible. In the act that expresses their love, spouses are called to make a reciprocal gift of themselves to each other in the totality of their person: nothing that is part of their being can be excluded from this gift. This is the reason for the intrinsic unlawfulness of contraception: it introduces a substantial limitation into this reciprocal giving, breaking that “inseparable connection” between the two meanings of the conjugal act, the unitive and the procreative, which, as Pope Paul VI pointed out, are written by God himself into the nature of the human being (HV, no. 12).

Continuing in this vein, the great pontiff rightly emphasized the “essential difference” between contraception and the use of natural methods in exercising “responsible procreation.” It is an anthropological difference because in the final analysis it involves two irreconcilable concepts of the person and of human sexuality (cf. Familiaris Consortio, no. 32).

It is not uncommon in current thinking for the natural methods of fertility regulation to be separated from their proper ethical dimension and to be considered in their merely functional aspect. It is not surprising then that people no longer perceive the profound difference between these and the artificial methods. As a result, they go so far as to speak of them as if they were another form of contraception. But this is certainly not the way they should be viewed or applied.

On the contrary, it is only in the logic of the reciprocal gift between man and woman that the natural regulation of fertility can be correctly understood and authentically lived as the proper expression of a real and mutual communion of love and life. It is worth repeating here that “the person can never be considered as a means to an end, above all never a means of ‘pleasure.’ The person is and must be nothing other than the end of every act. Only then does the action correspond to the true dignity of the person.” (cf. Letter to Families, no. 12).

The Church is aware of the various difficulties married couples can encounter, especially in the present social context, not only in following but also in the very understanding of the moral norm that concerns them. Like a mother, the Church draws close to couples in difficulty to help them; but she does so by reminding them that the way to finding a solution to their problems must come through full respect for the truth of their love. “It is an outstanding manifestation of charity toward souls to omit nothing from the saving doctrine of Christ,” Paul VI admonished (HV, no. 29).

The Church makes available to spouses the means of grace which Christ offers in redemption and invites them to have recourse to them with ever renewed confidence. She exhorts them in particular to pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is poured out in their hearts through the efficacy of their distinctive sacrament: this grace is the source of the interior energy they need to fulfill the many duties of their state, starting with that of being consistent with the truth of conjugal love. At the same time, the Church urgently requests the commitment of scientists, doctors, health-care personnel and pastoral workers to make available to married couples all those aids which prove an effective support for helping them fully to live their vocation (cf. HV, no. 23-27).

The Mountains Bring the Freedom: The Theology of the Body

Karol Wojtyla regularly escaped from the Communist regime into the mountains of Poland. Once there, he and some 200 married couples kayaked, hiked, and talked. They planned no particular diplomatic intervention or militaristic coup. Instead, they discussed the mainstay of resistance to the occupying power. The mountains brought the freedom to converse about the identity of the human person and marriage.

Some thirty years later, Wojtyla, as Pope John Paul II, conversed with a worldwide audience. He gave a series of lectures not in the countryside, but in Rome, almost every Wednesday from 1979 to 1984. The occupying powers this time were secularization, materialism, and the unbridled pursuit of pleasure. His escape route was the same: he taught on the “theology of the body” to describe the identity of the human person and of marriage.

In the theology of the body, Pope John Paul shows no embarrassment for his repeated appeal to the two accounts of creation in Genesis. He admits the accounts are myth, but not in the rationalist sense of fable. They are the classical myth: more than true, they convey a truth too dense to fit in a fact. Instead, the fable is the modern approach to the human person and marriage.

False ideas abound for persons entering marriage today. The contemporary focus on acquisition and consumerism translates into: “The more I get the happier I’ll be.” The concentration on materialism and usefulness translates into “I am what I own.” The emphasis on feeling good translates into “If it feels good do it.” These ideas infect marriage and the sense of the human person. Couples begin to “run their marriages” as a business rather than a bond of love.

The Genesis picture is different. God creates the visible world through a series of commands. The commands cease on the sixth day. God pauses and ponders within himself (Gen 1:26-27). The manner of the human person’s creation is different from that of the rest of the world because the person is different, created in the image and likeness of God. Classical theology teaches that man is the image and likeness of God in the capacity to know and to love.

The second chapter of Genesis presents a mysterious interval between the creation of man and that of woman (Gen 2: 7; Gen 2:22). This interval is the basis for a series of meanings, or original experiences, about the internal identity of the human person and the relation man to woman.

The first original experience is Original Solitude. The popular notion of solitude is a calm, silent retreat at a monastery on a hill. This is not the solitude to which John Paul refers. Original Solitude is the internal, spiritual identity of the human person and the person’s search outside the self to be in relation. Through tilling the soil (Gen 2:5), naming the animals, (Gen 2:19) and the command regarding the tree (Gen 2:17) Adam realizes his identity on the basis of his body: he is a being who has the capacity for consciousness, self-knowledge through self-awareness and self-determination in and through the body.

The body reveals meaning and identity and includes the search outside himself in openness to another in relation. God says, “It is not good for man to be alone, I shall make a helper fit for him” (Gen 2:18). Of course, there is no evil in paradise, so what does “not good” mean here? “Not good” means that man’s identity is not yet complete. The helper is not a helper to till the soil or to name the animals. The helper is the helper in terms of the man’s very identity.

The second original experience, Original Unity, reveals the meaning of the human person created always as either masculine or feminine. The sleep of Adam is no ordinary nap. For Pope John Paul, the sleep precedes a great action of God, as when Abraham fell into a sleep or trance before encountering God, as did Jacob, St. Joseph, and the apostles. The sleep is Adam’s return to the moment preceding his creation. The sleep reveals that Eve is created by God alone. Yet, created from the rib, they share the same humanity.

Upon awakening, Adam speaks for the first time. All the beauty of God’s previous creation has not caused him to speak. But the beauty of woman does. He exclaims, “This, at last, is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she has been taken from her man” (Gen 2:23). Adam recognizes her on the basis of her body. And in naming her, he reveals something about himself. Up to now in the Genesis text he has been called the general “Adam” or “person.” Yet when he names her, “woman,” he names himself “man.” Her identity unlocks his, and his identity reveals that of her. The meaning of her identity for his own fills his consciousness, self-awareness, self-knowledge, and self-determination and vice versa.

The third original experience is Original Nakedness. The account further notes that man and woman were naked but not ashamed (Gen 2:25). The nakedness is not merely that Adam and Eve have no clothes. Nakedness is more about what they do have: they share the vision of God when God looked at all he made and said it was very good (Gen 1:31). In the nakedness they see each other with the original vision of God. They understand the meaning of the other and the body of the other in a direct, immediate, simple, full and complete manner.

The body of the other or the self may never be used as an object in a selfish manner. The other is always and only a gift. Love and life always take the form of the gift of self. The meaning of the body for life and love is a spousal meaning. The reciprocity between man and woman is inscribed with the quality of the gift of self. The gift includes from the beginning the blessing of fertility. The communion of persons in marriage in which the two become one so that they may become three – is so profound that John Paul notes the communion of persons as decisive for man as the image of God.

Marriage is the reminder that love can never be reduced to the satisfaction of my own personal need, erotic or otherwise. The spousal meaning of the body is wounded in sin, but not destroyed. Pope John Paul shows that through the human person’s own choice to doubt the gift the person “casts God from his heart” by sin. The fourth original experience, Original Shame, outlines the effects of concupiscence as the flesh wars against the spirit. Through a “fundamental disquiet” and an “interior imbalance,” fear and shame disrupt the relation of marriage. The tendency to reduce and try to dominate or possess the other begins to infiltrate the gift of self. The grace of Christ and the life of virtue both restore the human person’s fruitful response to the spousal meaning of the body.

The theology of the body reasserts the original meaning of the person as a gift fulfilled in an original way through the gift of self in marriage. Through John Paul’s words married couples and those preparing for marriage can find themselves escaping into the mountains away from acquisition to be the gift, away from materialism to spend themselves for the other, away from focus on pleasure to the beauty of the gift of self.

Additional resources:

  • Pope John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994).
  • Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, translated by Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2006).

About the author
Msgr. J. Brian Bransfield, STD is the General Secretary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.