Tag Archives: Theology of the Body

Unique and Unrepeatable

As a spiritual director, I regularly journey with people who are seeking God’s will in their lives.  Young people frequently ask the question whether they are called to marriage, religious life or priesthood.  Young people who are already dating ask whether this is “the one”.  Young people who are drawn to religious life ask which religious community is the right one for them.  These are all important questions, but they often lose sight of the more foundational question.

When we group people into huge categories such as “priest” or ”religious” or “married” we sometimes overlook the more fundamental question of our individual uniqueness and the unrepeatability of the way God made us.  Pope Francis captured this beautifully in his exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate using the concepts of mission: “Each saint is a mission, planned by the Father to reflect and embody, at a specific moment in history, a certain aspect of the Gospel,” (#19) and message: “Every saint is a message which the Holy Spirit takes from the riches of Jesus Christ and gives to his people.” (#21) Using the terms of mission and message, Pope Francis reiterates what Pope Saint John Paul II expressed in his Theology of the Body that each person is “set into a unique, exclusive and unrepeatable relationship with God himself.” (TOB 6:2)

Each person has a unique message to share with the world.  Each person has a unique and unrepeatable mission to carry out.  It is insufficient to reduce this to “marriage” or “priesthood.”  Those are two wonderful paths in life and one of those may be the path on which that mission can be carried out, but the most important thing for each one of us to develop our own unique and unrepeatable relationship with God starting wherever we are today.  That is the first take-away from this post and the reader may want to stop right here and contemplate what this means for you.

One way to explore our individual uniqueness is through a human strengths assessment or through understanding one’s unique motivational blueprint. Although this seems to put us back into repeatable and general categories, the reality is that the particular combination of strengths and particular arrangement of motivational patterns elucidates the uniqueness of the individual rather than concealing it.  As a spiritual director, I have the blessing of knowing individuals in a very deep, personal and meaningful way.  Time and again, however, I have gained new insights from the results that come when my directees have taken an assessment such as Strengthsfinder or MCORE.

These two assessments gather together and present information about human uniqueness that can be a great help in guiding individuals to paths which are most deeply fulfilling for them.  I hope to offer some additional posts to go into some examples and detailed applications of this information for enhanced spiritual direction.  In this post, however, I will conclude with a podcast that I was able to record recently with one of the developers of MCORE, Joshua Miller.  Joshua Miller and Luke Burgis have also written a book called Unrepeatable: Cultivating the Unique Calling of Every Person that would be valuable reading for anyone who is seeking to understand themselves more deeply, seeking their purpose in life, or helping others in that way.

Please tune in to our podcast episode (by clicking that link) to understand some ways that Spiritual Direction (and some of the material from our book Spiritual Direction: A Guide for Sharing the Father’s Love), interface with Joshua’s work on understanding our motivational blueprint.  I hope that all these efforts will assist anyone who is seeking true happiness to find their purpose and help them live their mission and proclaim their message.

 

The Resurrection of the Body – more than the raising of Lazarus

[Jesus] cried out in a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come out!' The dead man came out… (John 11:43b-44a)

What was Lazarus's experience? Why do we not hear a report about it? We are fascinated with “near-death” experiences (e.g. the recent book “Heaven is for Real” remained on the best seller list for over three years) and we have this feeling that if someone could scout ahead beyond the veil of death and come back to tell us about it, we would more easily believe (and more readily behave!). It is reminiscent of Israel's explorations of the land beyond the Jordan river, the Promised Land–we would like to send a Caleb or Joshua ahead of us to reconnoiter the land and come back to tell us what it is like. But Jesus assures us, “If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.” (Luke 16:31b)

Perhaps this is why Scripture tells us practically nothing about Lazarus's experience of rising from the dead. It leaves us wondering, “What was it like?” It would be so interesting to know what his experience was…or would it? Perhaps we do not get more about Lazarus's experience of waking up and emerging from the tomb because it is simply a distraction. As Jesus reported in the parable of Lazarus (a different Lazarus) and the rich man, “They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.” (Luke 16:29) Indeed, the law and the prophets, the Gospels and the epistles bring us closer to understanding the meaning of life (and eternal life) than someone who comes back from the dead (like Lazarus). How can this be?

Resurrection is more than a resuscitated corpse

Pope John Paul II explained this in the following way, “Eternal life should be understood in an eschatalogical sense, that is, as the full and perfect experience of the grace (charis) of God…” (TOB 67:5). Pope John Paul II clarified (in the same audience) that we already get a taste of this through faith, that this is an experience, “in which man can share through faith during his earthly life…” At the same time, we do not experience it fully, it will “only be revealed to those who will participate in the 'other world' in all its penetrating depth, [and] will also be experienced in its beatifying reality.” (TOB 67:5)

In order to participate “in all its penetrating depth” and experience this grace “in its beatifying reality,” we must be transformed in a way that is not only “by degree” but in a way that is “essential.” At the same time, we must be quick to clarify that this transformation does not involve any “disincarnation” or “dehumanization.” (TOB 67:2) Rather, there is a certain continuum between the human experience of this life, particularly the way that we are permeated by truth and love, and the divinized experience of the “other world.” (TOB 67:4) At the same time, our divinization in the “other world” is “incomparably superior to what can be reached in earthly life” (TOB 67:3).

The greatest mutation

Pope Benedict XVI tied all this together in an Easter Vigil homily when he called the resurrection “the greatest mutation”:

But somehow the Resurrection is situated so far beyond our horizon, so far outside all our experience that, returning to ourselves, we find ourselves continuing the argument of the disciples: Of what exactly does this 'rising' consist? What does it mean for us, for the whole world and the whole of history? A German theologian once said ironically that the miracle of a corpse returning to life – if it really happened, which he did not actually believe – would be ultimately irrelevant precisely because it would not concern us. In fact, if it were simply that somebody was once brought back to life, and no more than that, in what way should this concern us? But the point is that Christ’s Resurrection is something more, something different. If we may borrow the language of the theory of evolution, it is the greatest 'mutation', absolutely the most crucial leap into a totally new dimension that there has ever been in the long history of life and its development: a leap into a completely new order which does concern us, and concerns the whole of history. (April 15, 2006)

A glorified body

Pope John Paul II gave a thorough treatment of the resurrection of the body in his Theology of the Body discourses (TOB 64-72), but we will just give a hint of what he says about this experience. I will leave it to the reader to contrast this description of resurrection as a radically new step in life with Lazarus's experience of merely resuming this earthly life still headed towards his second death. Pope John Paul II described our resurrected life as being perfectly integrated, and “the powers of the spirit will permeate the energies of the body” (TOB 67:2). The “powers of the spirit” refer to things like the intellect and the will and the memory. That these powers will permeate the body means that we will have absolute control over our bodies to the most refined degree–having intelligent fingers, for example or eyes that can make their own choices. Furthermore, because our whole person will be taken up in receiving “God's most personal self-communication” (TOB 67:5) all of these powers will be oriented towards love. Our bodies will be a perfectly harmonized integration totally open and oriented to receiving God's love and through Him open to everyone else.

Whatever Lazarus's experience of life after death was, we can be sure it was not like that. From the experience of the resurrection of the body, there will be no turning back. In the Resurrection of Christ, we have a future that is unimaginably beautiful and therefore a hope that helps us to say with St Paul, “For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him…to know him and the power of his resurrection and [the] sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:8,10-11) And “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us.” (Romans 8:18)

 

“Blessed Be Saint Joseph, Her Most Chaste Spouse”

Jesus, Mary and Joseph

As the Divine Praises remind us, St. Joseph is Mary’s most chaste spouse. He is a master of purity and a master of modesty, even if he needs a little convincing on this point. A master of purity is able to see, to read, in the language of the body, the mystery of God’s presence hidden in the intimate center of another. A master of modesty does not exploit this mystery, nor expose this mystery, nor run away from this mystery, but rather veils the mystery with his love. In the end, St. Joseph both sees and veils the mystery of God’s spousal love for mankind expressed in the body of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But it took an angel to help him understand this and have the courage to accept the task.

Purity and modesty

We turn to the Catechism to understand more clearly the two virtues of purity of heart and modesty. The Catechism teaches us: “[purity of heart] enables us to see according to God…; it lets us perceive the human body–ours and our neighbor’s–as a temple of the Holy Spirit, a manifestation of divine beauty” (CCC, 2519). Purity of heart allows us to behold the mystery, the beauty hidden in the heart of another, but seen through the body. In regard to modesty, the Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 2521 reads, “Modesty protects the intimate center of the person. It means refusing to unveil what should remain hidden…”and in paragraph 2522 we read, “Modesty protects the mystery of persons and their love… it keeps silence or reserve where there is evident risk of unhealthy curiosity. It is discreet.”

St Joseph’s drama – purity sees the mystery, humility backs away

Let us turn now to the Scriptures to see how the drama of St. Joseph’s life unfolds. Throughout the ages, the “Masters of Suspicion,” as St. John Paul II names them, read the Annunciation to St. Joseph with the suspicion that no one, even St. Joseph, could have sufficient purity of heart to see the mystery of God’s love in the unexpected pregnancy of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This presumption colors the interpretations of key biblical passages, supposing that St. Joseph saw Mary as an adulteress. Modern Scripture scholarship and the Doctors of the Church help us to reread these passages in the light of truth. The passage in question comes from St. Matthew’s Gospel and we hear it each year in the Mass on Christmas Eve and on the Solemnity of St. Joseph: “Joseph, her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly.” (Mt 1:19)

First, we need help with two Greek words–the verb deigmatizo, translated here as “expose to shame” and apoluo translated here as “divorce.” While we cannot go into all the details, a valid re-translation of this passage is proposed by the Jesuit scripture scholar Fr. Ignace de la Potterie, “But Joseph, her spouse, who was a just man, and who did not wish to unveil (her mystery), resolved to secretly separate (himself) from her.” (Mary in the Mystery of the Covenant, p. 39)

From this we get a better understanding of the insight of St. Bernard of Clairvaux who wrote, “Why did he wish to leave her?… He saw, with sacred astonishment, that she bore a special quality of the divine presence, and while not being able to understand this mystery, he wished to leave her.” (Hom. “Super Missus Est”) St. Thomas Aquinas reiterates this insight in his Summa Theologica, “Joseph wanted to give the Virgin her liberty, not because he suspected her of adultery, but out of respect for her sanctity he feared to live together with her.” (Supplementum III, q. 62, art. 3)

Then the angel appears to St. Joseph in a dream and helps him (and us) to understand the following truth expressed by St. John Paul II in his reflections on the Sermon on the Mount in the Theology of the Body, “[Christ] assigns the dignity of every woman as a task to every man.” And “he assigns also the dignity of every man to every woman” (TOB 100:6). Upholding this dignity “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 behavior” (TOB 100:7). St. Joseph is assigned the “task” of Mary’s dignity. This task requires two virtues: purity, to see, and modesty, to protect.

Scripture scholarship and the Doctors of the Church reinforce our faith that St. Joseph’s purity of heart allowed him to behold a great mystery in the body of Mary. In the purity of his heart, St. Joseph beheld in his virginal bride not the sin of an adulteress but the awesome mystery of God’s presence. The body of Mary caused the sacred astonishment of St. Joseph as he beheld the great mystery of divine, spousal love in the language of Mary’s virginal pregnancy.

At the same time, St. Joseph recognized the virtue necessary to protect such a profound mystery. He feared that in his human weakness, he might defile the mystery by remaining close. Like St. Peter and the centurion who both said, “I am not worthy,” St. Joseph did not consider himself virtuous enough to veil this mystery by his presence; rather he thought he could do so better by his absence. Because of this, reasoned St Bernard, St Joseph decided to separate himself (apoluo) from Mary.

Obedience veils the mystery

Fortunately, in God’s gentle Providence, He sent an angel to St. Joseph to reassure him that he should protect her mystery by remaining her husband, by taking her mystery with him under his roof. Scripture affirms that St Joseph obeyed the angel. We can even read the exactitude of his obedience by the exact correspondence in scripture. The angel said, “Take Mary your wife into your home” (Mt 1:20) and Scripture affirms, “When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home.” (Mt 1:24)

One of the Church Fathers claimed the success of Joseph’s obedience in indicating that it is precisely the marriage that he maintained with Mary that protected her from the devil. Referring to something written by St Ignatius of Antioch, Origen asserted that the devil did not find Mary because he was looking for a Virgin rather than a married woman.

I found an elegant statement in the writing of a martyr–I mean Ignatius, the second bishop of Antioch after Peter. During a persecution, he fought against wild animals at Rome. He stated: “Mary’s virginity escaped notice of the ruler of this age.” It escaped his notice because of Joseph, and because of their wedding, and because Mary was thought to have a husband. If she had not been betrothed or had (as people thought) a husband, her virginity could never have been concealed from the “ruler of this age”. (Trans. By Joseph Lienhard, Origen: Homilies on Luke, Fragments on Luke, FC 94 [Washington, 1996, 24-25], quoted in St. Joseph in Early Christianity, pp. 36-37)

St Joseph’s obedience to the angel’s command served as a veil to protect Mary and her Child from the ruler of this age. This pattern was repeated twice more as St Joseph protected the Child and His Mother from Herod’s wrath (Mt 2:13) and the menace of Archelaus (Mt. 2:22) through his humble obedience to the angel’s command (Mt 2:14,22).

Let us ask St. Joseph to teach us true chastity in purity of heart, in modesty and in obedience. We ask him first to teach us to have sensitive hearts that can recognize the beauty of the mystery of God’s presence in us and in others. Then may he teach to protect that mystery through the obedience of faith. In this way, like St Joseph we will enter into deeper communion with Mary and the Mystery of God’s love revealed in the Word made flesh in her womb.

Originally written for the Theology of the Body Institute e-newsletter and expanded March 19, 2016

 

St. Joseph, Master of Virginal Begetting

Msgr. Jean-Jacques Olier, who founded the great seminary Sainte-Sulpice (and later the Sulpicians) as a response to the Council of Trent's call for a reform of the approach to training priests in seminaries, entrusted the seminarians of Sainte-Sulpice to the patronage of St. Joseph. The reason, he explained, was that St. Joseph, like priests, was involved in the “virginal begetting of Christ.” To understand this, one must recognize that the marriage between Joseph and Mary was necessary for the Annunciation to take place. In this sense St Joseph plays a real and important, although not biological, role in the begetting of Christ. St John Paul II wrote that “while it is important for the Church to profess the virginal conception of Jesus, it is no less important to uphold Mary's marriage to Joseph” (Redemptoris Custos #7).

Msgr Olier's concern that priests master the art of the virginal begetting is shared by Pope Francis who tied together unhappiness in a celibate vocation with a lack of spiritual fatherhood, “please: … never any priests with faces like 'chilis pickled in vinegar' — never! … But what is at the heart of this lack of joy? … when a priest is not a father to his community … he becomes sad. … the root of sadness in pastoral life is precisely in the absence of fatherhood…. It is impossible to imagine a priest … who [is] not fertile: this is not Catholic!… Joy, no sadness, pastoral fecundity.” (Pope Francis, Address to novices and seminarians, July 6, 2013)

Essentially, Pope Francis is emphasizing that the joy of the priesthood comes from fulfilling the spousal meaning of the body in making a sincere gift of oneself. This self-gift becomes mystically, virginally fruitful, begetting Christ in souls, and thus engenders a spiritual fatherhood in the priest. What can we learn from St. Joseph about how to live out this essential element of priesthood more fruitfully?

St Joseph models a culture of encounter and tenderness

The first point is the importance of cultivating encounters with certain qualities–encounters that are personal, tender, and open to human suffering. Pope Francis has taught us persistently about this as he has encouraged us to build a culture of encounter. When we have the courage to draw close to others, it forms a people, a family. “Sometimes we are tempted to be that kind of Christian who keeps the Lord’s wounds at arm’s length. Yet Jesus wants us to touch human misery, to touch the suffering flesh of others. He hopes that we will stop looking for those personal or communal niches which shelter us from the maelstrom of human misfortune and instead enter into the reality of other people’s lives and know the power of tenderness. Whenever we do so, our lives become wonderfully complicated and we experience intensely what it is to be a people, to be part of a people.” (Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (EG) #270)

St Joseph was tempted to distance himself from Mary, from her human suffering, but his openness to the Word of God and his courage to reverse his decision and draw close to Mary is an inspiration for priests who might likewise seek to distance themselves. His return to Mary with tenderness, rather than stoning, is likewise an example. And there is no doubt that his decision made his life “wonderfully complicated” and helped to form a people, truly to form the People of God.

Complementarity, the Holy Spirit and virginal fruitfulness

A second quality that is important for spiritual fecundity can be seen in the complementarity of Joseph and Mary and the role of the Holy Spirit. Joseph and Mary could only enter into a marriage because they were male and female. Furthermore, the virginal begetting could only take place because Mary was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. St Joseph clearly did not understand all that was taking place and yet he was willing to draw close to the mystery and discover God in a new way in his virgin bride. The priest opens himself to the same spiritual fruitfulness when he draws close to the mystery of the bridal Church in the power of the Holy Spirit. He does this when he preaches the Word of God in the power of the Holy Spirit. Without this the seeds of faith cannot be planted in hearts, “and how can they believe…without someone to preach?” (Rom 10:14) When the priest goes out of himself to plant the seeds of faith in the hearts of his people, watering them with baptism and nourishing them with the tenderness of personal encounter, the Church becomes pregnant with new life by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Without the bridal Church and without the Holy Spirit there can be no virginal begetting. Pope Francis drew out this analogy in a Wednesday Audience on the Church, “First of all a mother generates life, she carries her child in her womb for 9 months and then delivers him to life, giving birth to him. The Church is like this: she bears us in the faith, through the work of the Holy Spirit who makes her fertile, like the Virgin Mary.” (Sept. 09, 2013) Pope Francis also described the fruitfulness that comes when we are willing to let ourselves be fascinated by the difference, by the complementarity of the other, “When we live out a spirituality of drawing nearer to others and seeking their welfare, our hearts are opened wide to the Lord’s greatest and most beautiful gifts. Whenever we encounter another person in love, we learn something new about God. Whenever our eyes are opened to acknowledge the other, we grow in the light of faith and knowledge of God.” (EG #271)

The mysterious nature of virginal fruitfulness

A final point that must be raised is that the pastoral fecundity is not always obvious; virginal begetting is also mysterious. Just as St. Joseph lived for many years in the hiddenness of Nazareth, the priest must often live in the uncertainty of the importance and fruitfulness of all his efforts. He can teach us what Pope Francis has called “a sense of mystery”. “'A sense of mystery' … involves knowing with certitude that all those who entrust themselves to God in love will bear good fruit (cf. Jn 15:5). This fruitfulness is often invisible, elusive and unquantifiable. We can know quite well that our lives will be fruitful, without claiming to know how, or where, or when. We may be sure that none of our acts of love will be lost, nor any of our acts of sincere concern for others.” (EG #279)

St. Joseph is the best teacher for us in understanding the mystery of virginal begetting which he inaugurated in his willingness to encounter our Lady with tenderness, in embracing her difference with the power of the Holy Spirit and in rejoicing at the mysterious fruitfulness that burst forth in their lives.

Originally published in the Theology of the Body Institute email newsletter

 

Fasting is Romantic

“When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites.” These are among the words of Matthew’s Gospel that welcome us into Lent on Ash Wednesday. We are told to fast and not look gloomy, but why not? After all, don’t we feel gloomy? Hungry, a little weak, maybe a headache coming on and we have a lot of work to do and we are not sure if we are going to hold out the rest of the day without any food. We are not sure if this might be ruining our health and we don’t like it when our stomach is growling. Looking gloomy would seem to be simply honest. What is the point of fasting anyway?

In his 6th century Rule, St. Benedict teaches us that there is a connection between fasting and chastity. In his lengthy 4th chapter on the Tools for Good Works, St. Benedict instructs the monk “to love” only two of the tools: “to love chastity” and “to love fasting.” This follows the already centuries-old tradition of monastic wisdom regarding the interrelation of sense-desires, the desires that St. Thomas calls (and Blessed John Paul II refers to in ToB audience #54) the concupiscible appetites. Based on this connection we can draw some insight on fasting from St. John Paul II’s teaching in the Theology of the Body about chastity.

In Audience #54, St. John Paul II notes that chastity has a negative aspect: to master and overcome the “lustful passions.” This is an exercise of the virtue of temperance and is part of the path to purity. At the same time, St. John Paul II explains the teaching of St. Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5, noting that, “[t]he task of purity emphasized by the author of the letter is not only (and not so much) abstaining from ‘unchastity’ and from what leads to it, that is, abstaining from ‘lustful passions,’ but, at the same time, keeping one’s body, and indirectly that of the other, in ‘holiness and reverence.'” In short, St. John Paul II couples the negative “abstinence” with the positive “reverence” for the body. He couples the exterior negative self-denial with the interior positive attitude of reverence for the body that leads to purity of heart.

In fasting, also, we have a negative, self-denial of a sense-desire, a concupiscible appetite. At the same time (if we do not want to look gloomy) there must be a positive affirmation, a positive interior movement towards reverence for the body, holiness, and love. The key for this is given in Luke 5:35 where Jesus tells us, “The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” Jesus connects the practice of fasting with love for the bridegroom. The desire for food becomes a desire for union with Christ–an attitude the Church has maintained from the earliest days. Indeed, the only current daily fast in the Roman Catholic Church is the fast before Holy Communion. We learn to relate the hunger pangs of empty stomachs with a preparation for Communion with Jesus Christ, the Divine Bridegroom. Fasting, like chastity, becomes a reverence for the Body. In short, given the motivation Jesus provides, in which fasting (like chastity) is an expression of longing and a preparation of the body for the Body of the Bridegroom, we might even say, “fasting is romantic.” In this light, we can better see how St. Benedict can encourage his monks “to love fasting” (and “to love chastity”) and we can see how Jesus can tell us not to look gloomy. Our growling stomachs are calling to us, “The Bridegroom is near! Let us go out to meet Him!”

This article was originally written for the Theology of the Body Institute e-newsletter.

Here is a homily I preached for the Franciscan TOR Sisters that expands on this topic:

The Importance of Mary’s Body in Our Faith

One week before the beginning of the Year of Faith, Pope Benedict XVI made a pilgrimage to the shrine of our Lady, her Holy House in Loreto, Italy. He did this to entrust the Year of Faith to her intercession. This physical gesture of pilgrimage and prayer (he even lit a candle!) incarnated his words at the end of his Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei for the indiction of the Year of Faith, “Let us entrust this time of grace to the Mother of God, proclaimed ‘blessed because she believed’ (Lk 1:45).” But, stepping back, we might ask, “Why Mary? Why Loreto?” Before answering those questions, first we should ask, “What is the goal of the Year of Faith?”

Pope Benedict writes in Porta Fidei, “The Year of Faith…is a summons to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the one Saviour of the world.” A “renewed conversion to the Lord” means turning away from lies and turning towards the Truth. The lies entice us to reduce ourselves, our future, our hope to something much less than God has made us to be. So, if I might paraphrase, during this Year of Faith, Pope Benedict wants us to rediscover who God is and, in light of that, to rediscover the greatness of who we are made to be, the greatness of our destiny, and then, in faith, to take a step in that direction.

With this in mind, we can understand the importance of Mary for the Year of Faith. In her, we come to a clearer vision of God, a clearer vision of God’s love for us, and a discovery of the true greatness of our human nature, a discovery of what we are called to, a discovery of our destiny. Furthermore, we can learn from Mary how to take a step away from the reduced vision of the human person offered to us by the world and a step towards embracing the greatness of the human person revealed by God in Jesus Christ.

Let us see how Pope Benedict explains this in his homily from Mass celebrated a week before the Year of Faith at the Holy House in Loreto. Please allow me to quote at length before reflecting on the Holy Father’s words:

Mary offered her very body; she placed her entire being at the disposal of God’s will, becoming the “place” of his presence, a “place” of dwelling for the Son of God. We are reminded here of the words of the Psalm with which, according to the Letter to the Hebrews, Christ began his earthly life, saying to the Father, “Sacrifices and offering you have not desired, but you have prepared a body for me… Behold, I have come to do your will, O God” (10:5,7). To the Angel who reveals God’s plan for her, Mary replies in similar words: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38). The will of Mary coincides with the will of the Son in the Father’s unique project of love and, in her, heaven and earth are united, God the Creator is united to his creature. God becomes man, and Mary becomes a “living house” for the Lord, a temple where the Most High dwells. Pope Benedict XVI, Homily from Loreto, October 4, 2012

Pope Benedict explains to us that Mary’s very body became the meeting place of heaven and earth, the place where the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, a “living house” for the Lord. What we discover in Mary, then, is the great dignity of the human being. No other creature, not even the angels, can be a dwelling place of God—only human beings, only the human body can be a living house for the Lord. We can have heaven within us.

What a different vision of the human person this is in comparison to what the world offers. We are not just a cog in the wheel of production. We are not merely consumers, who can be manipulated by advertising and enslaved by our appetites. We are not the servants of science on a path to world domination. We cannot be reduced to the sum of our failures, nor to the sum of our successes. Our life is not valuable only in so far as we have possessions, power, and pleasure in this world. Our life is valuable because we are made to be the living house of God. From the unborn child to the terminally ill, from the severely mentally challenged to the most brilliant genius, from the quadriplegic to the Olympic athlete, every human being is made, like our Lady, to be the meeting place of heaven and earth. That is what defines us.

Unfortunately, this destiny cannot be realized unless we are willing to be open to the Lord. God is willing—that is the source of our dignity—but are we willing? What is holding us back? The problem is that we are blinded by a lie, corrupted by a poison that goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. We always knew that we were made for heaven, made to be filled with God, made to be like God, but, at the serpent’s urging, we go about it in the wrong way. Hearkening back to the passage of Adam’s sin in Genesis 3, Pope Benedict summarizes, “What picture does this passage show us? The human being does not trust God. Tempted by the serpent, he harbours the suspicion that in the end, God takes something away from his life, that God is a rival who curtails our freedom and that we will be fully human only when we have cast him aside; in brief, that only in this way can we fully achieve our freedom.” Homily from December 8, 2005

When we allow this poison to take hold in our hearts and we see God as a rival, then His commandments become a threat, a plot to steal our freedom, a plot to take away the fun in life. Suspicious of God, we carve out a part of our life and keep it away from Him. This attitude, in the modern day, leads to the cry to keep God out of the bedroom or to keep God out of politics. In whatever area of life that we try to keep God away from, it is because we do not trust Him to bless that part of our life, to fill it with heaven. We think that only when we are in control, when we are free to do whatever we want, that our life will be filled with heaven.

What we discover, however, is that when we keep God out by insisting on control, we also keep love out. Love does not exist in an environment of control, but in an environment of openness and trust. Pope Benedict says, “it is precisely God who liberates our liberty, he frees it from being closed in on itself, from the thirst for power, possessions, and domination; he opens it up to the dimension which completely fulfils it: the gift of self, of love, which in turn becomes service and sharing.” Homily from Loreto, October 4, 2012 Being closed in on ourselves, being in control through power, possessions and domination is not heaven. To the contrary, it is a radical isolation, being locked up entirely in ourselves. It is hell! Only God draws us out of ourselves to become the gift of love we were made to be.

In this light we see the wisdom of the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, “man… cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.” (#24) We are filled with heaven when we make a gift of ourselves. In this, and so many other teachings of the Second Vatican Council, we see that Blessed John XXIII’s prayer to the Virgin of Loreto was answered: “Here at Loreto fifty years ago, Blessed John XXIII issued an invitation to contemplate this mystery, to ‘reflect on that union of heaven and earth, which is the purpose of the Incarnation and Redemption,’ and he went on to affirm that the aim of the Council itself was to spread ever wider the beneficent impact of the Incarnation and Redemption on all spheres of life.” Pope Benedict XVI’s Homily from Loreto, October 4, 2012

At the heart of the Year of Faith is this rediscovery of who we are, in light of the Incarnation and Redemption. Our bodies are made to be the meeting place of heaven and earth, living houses of God. Our task for the Year of Faith is first to believe this and then to let this truth reach into every corner of our lives until we experience a total conversion to the Lord. We look to Mary for this, as Pope Benedict said in Loreto, “As we contemplate Mary, we must ask if we too wish to be open to the Lord, if we wish to offer our life as his dwelling place; or if we are afraid that the presence of God may somehow place limits on our freedom, if we wish to set aside a part of our life in such a way that it belongs only to us.”

Concretely, in this Year of Faith, Pope Benedict is asking us to look back to those seminal teachings in Vatican II where we can learn who God is and who we are. He directs us also to the Catechism which is, as he says, one of the most important fruits of the Second Vatican Council. Furthermore, as a daily practice we are encouraged to take up the Creed as part of our daily prayer. We can remember that the interpretive key for all that teaching is the fundamental truth that God has made us to be His dwelling place and He wants to fill us with heaven.

In this article, we have allowed the mystery of the Annunciation to shine light on the Year of Faith. It would take another article to see how Mary guides us in the other dimension of the Year of Faith—in light of the mystery of the Visitation. Having been filled with God in the Annunciation, it is in the Visitation that Mary brought Jesus to her cousin Elizabeth, and by extension, to all who are in need. This follows the impulse of the New Evangelization, noted by Pope Benedict in Porta Fidei: “Caritas Christi urget nos.” (2 Cor 5:14) The Love of Christ impels us to share this gift of faith with others, to counteract the lie that self-sufficiency is heaven, and to open the heart of each person to be, like the womb of the Virgin Mary, filled with heaven.

To return to the question stated above, then, we can see now how important our Lady is. Heaven and earth come together in her and she teaches us how to be her little children, little Mary’s, such that heaven and earth can also come together in our bodies. With her faith in our hearts, heaven and earth come together in us. Let us conclude with Pope Benedict’s own prayer from the end of his homily in Loreto, “Mother of the ‘yes’, you who heard Jesus, speak to us of him; tell us of your journey, that we may follow him on the path of faith; help us to proclaim him, that each person may welcome him and become the dwelling place of God. Amen!”

(Published originally in the Theology of the Body Institute online newsletter October 25, 2012)