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Final episode of the series “Healing the Family #6 – Men &Women” with host Patti Brunner. For the ‘Men & Women’ episode we call upon St. Pope John Paul II’s teaching on the Theology of the Body. Male and female human beings were designed to not only be partners but to be the image of the Trinity as children are conceived and life goes forth into the world. Men and women are created with a spirit capable of joining with the Holy Spirit and so their union must be held as sacred. Even among unmarried people their sexuality is still considered sacred. The family was created in the image of the Holy Trinity and Satan hates this. Satan has turned to fight against the human sexuality of created gender. Destruction of the family is Satan’s goal. St. Joseph did not allow lust to take root as he noticed the Virgin Mary’s inner and outer beauty. The media today belittles the male role models of the family as stupid and lust-filled. So what is the remedy when confusion reigns in your family? Can purity be restored?
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Each person has a tendency toward the path of least resistance. This is one reason that a strong Christian community is necessary to not only teach the truth but to live the truth and give example. Does the blind lead the blind among your friends? How about in what you watch, read or listen to? These are also areas of influence. The world has begun to look upon the “blind” to emulate as role models. You are living in a difficult time, indeed. However, this is not the first such time. In the past, in the history of faith and of the Church itself there has upon occasion been a need for a righteous man or woman, called by God, to step forward in truth and trust in God to lead by showing others the Way. St. Pope John Paul II was such a man.
You are listening to the final episode of the series Healing the Family #6 – Men &Women. I’m your host Patti Brunner.
Jesus promised in John 14:18 “I will not leave you orphans.” He has sent to us the Holy Spirit to inspire us in this difficult time in our culture that is filled with confusion about sexuality and the role of men and women especially in marriage.
I became a young woman during a time that has been called the “Sexual Revolution”. In the distant future I think this era may be called the “Dark Ages”. Promiscuity has become ‘normal’ in movies and on TV and by our own families. Pornography and the degradation of women and even children have become rampant. Lustful images are used to market every product. Marriage between same gender couples has become legal. Life-giving unions are out the window with contraception and abortion. Yet, even in such a time like this the Lord says, “I have not left you orphaned. I have not left you alone.”
There was a real turning point for me, culture-wise, when an older friend talked me and my husband into going to a Marriage Encounter week-end after 24 years of marriage. Sponsored by other Catholic couples it was held in a monastery and our first instruction was to scoot our twin beds together. We walked away from that week-end with an improved marital relationship. My husband discovered that God is an integral part of our marriage. It was a totally new concept for him. To retain our re-kindled marital bond, we joined a group of other couples to spend time each week together recognizing Christ in our lives.
Totally unknown to us, when we were in high school, the book “Christ Among Us” was written. After doing a few other studies, our couples group chose this “modern presentation of the Catholic faith for adults” as our study. The Catechism of the Catholic Church had not yet been published. Mid-way through the book I came across a paragraph that changed my life. In very plan language it stated that “Sexual intimacy is a profound communication of one partner to the other, sometimes revealing God himself”… “in the heights of sexual union , they may soar beyond themselves and experience a sense of “otherness” that can only be God.” … “This profound discovery of God and each other in sexual intimacy, this most beautiful experience, means that it must never be abused, but must be used with deep consideration, foresight, and honesty as God meant it from the beginning.”
I certainly had never considered that God was present during “love-making”. Indeed, God was the furthest thought from my mind during intimacy up to that point of enlightenment; the truth quickly set me free from lust-filled movies, books and fantasies.
Several years later, my youngest daughter, returning for the summer from grad school at Franciscan University in Steubenville, introduced my parish and me to a series her dorm had studied on the Theology of the Body by Pope John Paul II. The pope taught about God’s plan for male and females from the beginning of creation—Men as givers and women as receivers—and how the fruitfulness of that union brought forth new life because man and woman were made in the image of God.
As the scriptures reveal, God made us male and female. These gender based creatures were created to come together with the ‘glue’ of God in any gap. Male and female human beings were designed to not only be partners but to be the image of the Trinity as children are conceived and life goes forth into the world.
One of the pope’s earliest teachings explained the sacredness of the body itself when Pope John Paul II said, “The body, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden since time immemorial in God” and thus God’s plan revealed God to the world.
Following my daughter’s footsteps, I presented the video series, “Introduction to the Theology of the Body” by Christopher West to other small groups of parishioners and I quickly realized that if we could just get the modern world to understand the Pope’s teaching of truth most of the problems of the world would be solved. Sadly, since then, the culture of death has stepped up the attack on life and on the sanctity of gender itself.
Each gender has characteristics that are similar and some that are different. In the world of science opposites attract and come together to bond and to allow electrical charges. Life comes forward as male and female animals join together. But the coming together of men and women is much more because they are created with a spirit capable of joining with the Holy Spirit and so their union must be held as sacred. Even among unmarried people their sexuality is still considered sacred. When disorder occurs the relationships within the family suffer. Sons and daughters can become confused as role models of the failure limit the truth to be witnessed and emulated. When outsiders are chosen to imitate it is easy to make a bad choice based on peer mentality rather than wisdom.
Yet, there is always time for truth to bring conversion when truth is sought.
What are the tenants of truth for the gender, the male and females of the human race? You can certainly turn to scripture. Jesus asks us in Matthew 19:4, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’”?
The Holy Spirit inspired Paul and others to share the truth. Paul wrote to Wives and Husbands in chapter 5 of Ephesians, ”Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water [baptism] with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So [also] husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.”
The Theology of the Body by St. Pope John Paul II offers the inspired truth in the series of talks he gave in the 1980’s. If we have been told the truth why has the family continued to disintegrate and the general public become more confused? The family was created in the image of the Holy Trinity and satan hates this. In jealousy against the human race and in distress of the truth that the Son of God became a man to bring redemption to the human race through the Holy Family, satan seeks to destroy all human families much like Pharaoh destroyed the male sons of the Hebrews in Egypt and Herod destroyed the male babies in Bethlehem. In our time satan has used a plethora of attacks: abortion, pornography, addictions of all sorts, and the limitation of worship in public areas such as schools where the children are gathered. He now has turned to fight against the human sexuality of created gender. Confusion is his ploy; destruction of the family his goal. And so, the relationships in families suffer as the roles of male and female are confused.
The male role of protector and defender was beautifully modeled by St. Joseph. His love protected the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Mother. He did not allow lust to take root as he noticed her inner and outer beauty. The media today belittles the male role models of the family as stupid and lust-filled. There is little respect given to the men who are created to be the spiritual head of the family. And when spiritual fatherhood is thwarted the result is confusion. When the wife and mother of the family steps out of the role of nurture and support to take charge the role reversal damages the beautiful and delicate relationship created by God. The women might respond, “But I must stand in the gap!” No. Jesus stands in the gap. Turn to Him for help to encourage the husband and father to fulfill his role in your holy family. When you respect the role, his God-given role, there will be holy results.
I am not talking about ‘male-dominance’. In the holy family there is no ‘dominance’ by either gender. There is submission to one another. There is respect to one another. There is a responsive love to the image of God in each other.
St. Pope John Paul II, spoke of domination in On the Dignity and Vocation of Women, in Theology of the Body: “Therefore when we read in the biblical description the words addressed to the woman: “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (Genesis 3:16), we discover a break and a constant threat precisely in regard to this “unity of the two” which corresponds to the dignity of the image and likeness of God in both of them. But this threat is more serious for the woman… This “domination” indicates the disturbance and loss of the stability of that fundamental equality which the man and the woman possess in the “unity of the two” and this is especially to the disadvantage of the woman … [but] at the same time it also diminishes the true dignity of the man.”
Jesus came to redeem and restore the original dignity and unity.
When God first created Adam, Genesis 2:18-“The LORD God said: It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suited to him.” When the animal kingdom couldn’t provide a Godly helper, God created woman from the side of the sleeping Adam. Dr. Mary Healy, who wrote a study guide to JPII’s the Theology of the Body called “Men & Women are from Eden” in 2005, describes the term ‘helper’ like this: “In his solitude Adam experienced a longing for another human person like himself—a “helper fit for him.” We, too, are fulfilled only in communion with other human beings.” “We should note that helper in this verse (ezer in Hebrew) does not mean “cook, laundress and scullery-maid.” After all, it is God who is most often called our “helper” in the Old Testament (see, for instance, Exodus 18:4; Psalm 33:20). Rather, the helper the man needs is someone who can remind him of and help him to fulfill the deepest purpose of his life: that is, to love. In other words, the man needs the woman in order to be fully human, just as the woman needs the man.”
Furthermore, Mary Healy wrote, “The care with which God carries out his design for humanity shows us that sexual differences are not just skin deep. Sexuality is more than a superficial, biological attribute. It is not manipulatable like hair or eye color. Even the various methods that attempt to manipulate it surgically or pharmaceutically only change its exterior characteristics. Sexuality is integral to us as male or female persons.”
… “The husband and wife enact their “original unity” in sexual union, which expresses exteriorly what is true in their minds and hearts.” “Here is where we find the insight that is the linchpin of the theology of the body: what the Pope calls the nuptial meaning of the body. The word nuptial calls to mind a wedding; it is synonymous with “spousal.” The nuptial meaning of the body is our call to self-giving love, which is written into our very embodiment as male or female. By becoming a gift to one another in a communion of persons, we learn to love and be loved as God loves, and so fulfill our highest destiny. We become a reflection of the very life and love of the Trinity and prepare to share in that life forever. This is true for every human person, whether married, single or a consecrated celibate, though it is lived out in different ways.” Thank you, Dr. Healy for that understanding!
We might then say, Jesus, to be fully human, needed the womanly self-giving love of the Blessed Mother and the manly self-giving love of St. Joseph.
Jesus lived in obedience to Mary and Joseph. Do your children respect and obey you? Do you respect their sexuality and teach them to respect themselves and others?
So what is the remedy when confusion reigns in your family? Can you restore purity? Have you ever heard of a ‘born again virgin’? It is possible through the sacrament of Reconciliation to restore the rightful respect of the male and females in your family. His grace is sufficient.
The Theology of the Body talk in 1981 teaches that “Purity is the glory of the human body before God. It is God’s glory in the human body, through which masculinity and femininity are manifested.”
To quote Dr. Mary Healy’s study guide, “Where there is disorder and sin, there is also hope for restoration. By God’s grace we can experience a healing of our identity as men and women in the image of God”… “Despite all the destructive results of sin, Scripture never indicates that the Fall left man in a state of utter depravity. The image of God in man, though disfigured, was never lost.” … “As male and female, we are still able to image God to form a communion of persons with one another and to pass on human life, which is itself in the image of God. ”
So, we still have an opportunity to bring our family out of the ‘dark ages’ and bring the future generations into a culture of life. I encourage you to study St. John Paul II’s teaching on the Theology of the Body. I onlytouched the surface for you. It also fits well with Pope Paul VI’s “Humanae Vitae” written in 1968.
To bring healing to the male/female relationships, call upon all the other aspects presented in our “Healing the Family” series: trust in God, healing the generations, forgiveness, inner healing and a truthful look at death to help you. The virtues, works of mercy and beatitudes stand ready to give you a starting platform. Chastity, purity, and obedience to God’s plan for the sexes of male and female will restore your family. And when your family is healed so can be the world.
You’ve been listening to Truth of the Spirit, I’m Patti Brunner. We invite you to continue to tune in by subscribing. It makes it very easy. It’s free. And take a look or a listen of our previous episodes. Then be sure and come back next time for more, because with the Holy Spirit, there’s always more! Amen.
