Body power

Wow, what a week! Intense in terms of content to be absorbed as well as the gruelling pace of the days.

The day starts with daily mass, followed by classes from 10:00 am - 5:00 pm. Home I go for a quick dinner followed by work till past midnight. I've been averaging about six hours of sleep every night and I am just glad my body seems to be holding up.

Speaking of body, I have begun to look at the body in a whole new way. I am awed at the richness and depth of the late Pope John Paul II's thoughts on the subject, on how there is a theology of the body.

I am amazed at how his writings encompass and synthesize what I have been absorbing from various sources as well as from my own real life experiences in the last four years.

I can only sit back in wonder at how He has led me to this point, which is a point of affirmation of my being, deep in my ensouled body.

I struggle to grasp concepts which are pretty revolutionary in a world that mostly sees the body in a very reduced way, in a very primitive sense that brings to mind what Paul said about seeing 'through the glass darkly' for we seem to live in a world that sees through a mainly obscured vision.

We have bought into a world where we see ourselves as creatures governed by our sexual urges with a distorted vision of love against which we are powerless to make choices that are true and good.

As God is love, and we are made in His image and likeness and therefore are made to love and be loved, the human quest for love is very real, as evidenced by the music, film and literature of our times and times past.

And yet, this quest for love (and happiness) which has taken us down the widely accepted route of casual sex, hedonistic lifestyles and a rejection of God and God's ways seems to have bred more loneliness, unhappiness and violence in the world.

Worse, we see perversions and abuses against humanity in new ways and increasing numbers every day.

Where have we gone wrong? What have we lost? Why is love, and happiness, so hard to experience?

JPII leads us back to the beginning, to the creation of the world, the first man and the first woman in the book of Genesis.

In his proposal of what is original solitude, original unity and orginal nakedness, which together form the essential core of every true and real experience of love, he points us to the body - for it is in the body that we exist, there can be no separation of a person from his or her body.

"I am in my body and my body is what connects me to the world. My body is a reflection of Christ's love to myself and others. It is through my body that I can concretely receive and give love of the highest order."

What we have lost is a reverence for our own body as a precious gift from God which, in turn, is a gift to our own self and to others. And thus, through our body we can be fruitful, not limited merely to the function of procreation, but to the depths of creativity only humans can plumb. We can live out the full expression of our being in our body.

Unfortunately, we rarely live in and live out the truth of our body, which is done only if we answer the call (the appeal to accept His gift of love) from God wholeheartedly.

Oftentimes, we are afraid that saying yes to the gift means a loss of freedom, a life less pleasurable and fulfilled, a life governed by outmoded rules and legalistic prudishness.

Contrary to popular belief, saying yes to God brings with it a freedom that grounds and connects us, through a love that precedes commandments and strictures of the law.

It is a giant leap to trust in God's love, that it can bring us our heart's, and more importantly (so it would seem in today's world), our body's desires.

Therein lies the paradox of Christianity: one must lose one's life in order to gain it, to die before one can live.

So we must take that leap to live out our identity as a child of God, a child of flesh and blood, living in close communion to the Father.

Only then will we begin to understand the wonders of His mighty love, the true value of the body and view the world with supernatural clarity.