At last Friday's meeting, we talked about celibacy. The word celibacy tends to connote a sense of unwelcome austerity and impossibility.
Unwelcome austerity for the state of celibacy is defined as abstinence from sexual activity and is usually considered a joyless act of will to consciously refrain from doing something pleasurable.
Impossible because it is seen as something so unnatural that going against our human nature will cause us to explode. Well, maybe not explode, but certainly celibacy is not something viewed as easily attainable or remotely desirable.
Plus celibacy is often relegated to religious and priests, people of a higher moral order, not ordinary folk. It's just not doable or practical for us common people.
Guess what, JPII regards celibacy as the vocation of every man or woman who is single.
Even married folk don't get a free pass for if they wish to honour the language of their bodies, they would practise Natural Family Planning which asks for sexual abstinence during the fertile periods of a woman's cycle if the couple were not ready for children.
My immediate reaction to the Pope's statement is a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Quite the same reaction of some of the women in the group until we looked at it differently, as sexual purity and honesty.
If we agree that the language of the body is spousal, that is, the act of love is a profound act of total self-giving as an expression of committed and faithful love, then we would be true to our bodies if we refrain from having sex unless we were married.
If we also agree that lust is impersonal sexual desire, that is, a desire to use another person as an object (not recognizing the innate dignity of that person) or a means to an end (say sexual gratification), then we recognize that sexual lust is always unethical.
Even as a group of women of different ages, from diverse backgrounds and states of life, we all concurred we desired purity of heart. Unified as we are by our love for Jesus, we recognize that to be in living, ever-deepening and intimate relationship with Jesus is paramount to each of us.
The spousal meaning of the body is the call to love in a life-giving manner and this does not contradict celibacy but gives it a richer meaning.
All of us in W2W are beginning to experience a glimmer of understanding of this as we progress on our TOB journey.
Because we are first called to be in communion with God, we can express this desire in manifold ways: spending time alone with Him in prayer as Jesus did, receiving the transubstantiated host on our tongues and in our hearts, loving others by being a gift and leading others to Truth by living truth in every action.
Whether married or single, a personal relationship with God leads us to living out our sexuality fully with honesty, fidelity and purity. This does require chastity, even from those of us who are married for marriage is not an excuse to indulge in lust.
But it is not all grimaced stoicism or as impossible as pigs flying. It is only impossible because we fear sexual purity may sometimes keep us away from love or opportunities to receive love and to experience pleasure.
When we don't trust God enough to wait for love (like Adam and Eve) and we grasp for love out of loneliness or fear, that is when we lose the plot and make decisions that steer us away from being our true selves and from God. We allow our sexual desires to degrade into lust.
Celibacy does not mean we are not having fun. Far from it. Some of the most joyful and fun-loving people I know are those who truly claim celibacy as their vocation. They are fulfilled as people because they live rich interior lives and in turn are able to love others with delightful purity.
They have already experienced in part the joy reserved for heaven when we are in complete union with the Trinity and have opted to live out the vocation of celibacy for the Kingdom here today.
For the spousal meaning of the body is an invitation to be like the bride and bridegroom in the Song of Songs, who are in a state of holy inebriation where the "words, movements and gestures of the spouses, their whole behaviour, correspond to the inner movement of their hearts" which is a "pure flame of love".*
If we take up the invitation to offer our sexual desires (which are fully kosher and ethical) to God to direct, we can get drunk from drinking God's wine, the inner "truth and strength of love", so that "sexual desire passes over from lust to an immeasurable love" and this is how we can experience a "real and deep victory" over the distortion of lust.*
The opportunity to savour God's "new wine" (just like the Cana wedding miracle) is ours because "Christ came to restore creation to the purity of its origins (CCC, 1733). Fear is dispelled in the light of this pure love.
JP II says, "The Eucharist is a school of freedom and charity in order to fulfil the commandment to love" for the Eucharist "frees us from attachment in order to open ourselves to others".**
This is the gift of love from Christ, who loved us with a love that is:
FREE He chose to give us His body and blood by dying for us.
TOTAL He gives us His body, blood, soul and divinity every Sunday in the sacrament of
the Eucharist.
FAITHFUL He is with us day and night, 24X7.
FRUITFUL We all have eternal life.**
We can now experience the redemption of this immeasurable love in the gift of Christ's body and love immeasurably ourselves.
When ethics transforms into ethos, the difficult becomes easy. Bleak reality becomes joyously divine.
Celibacy is something prized and not looked upon with distaste and suspicion.
And so a slice of the Kingdom of Heaven has made its way onto earth.
Something we at W2W are discovering every day when we offer up our love and fidelity to Christ.
* From Christopher West's Heaven's Song, a great book on how JPII uses Song of Songs to expound on marital love.
** From chapter seven of the DVD, Theology of the Body For Teens
Unwelcome austerity for the state of celibacy is defined as abstinence from sexual activity and is usually considered a joyless act of will to consciously refrain from doing something pleasurable.
Impossible because it is seen as something so unnatural that going against our human nature will cause us to explode. Well, maybe not explode, but certainly celibacy is not something viewed as easily attainable or remotely desirable.
Plus celibacy is often relegated to religious and priests, people of a higher moral order, not ordinary folk. It's just not doable or practical for us common people.
Guess what, JPII regards celibacy as the vocation of every man or woman who is single.
Even married folk don't get a free pass for if they wish to honour the language of their bodies, they would practise Natural Family Planning which asks for sexual abstinence during the fertile periods of a woman's cycle if the couple were not ready for children.
My immediate reaction to the Pope's statement is a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Quite the same reaction of some of the women in the group until we looked at it differently, as sexual purity and honesty.
If we agree that the language of the body is spousal, that is, the act of love is a profound act of total self-giving as an expression of committed and faithful love, then we would be true to our bodies if we refrain from having sex unless we were married.
If we also agree that lust is impersonal sexual desire, that is, a desire to use another person as an object (not recognizing the innate dignity of that person) or a means to an end (say sexual gratification), then we recognize that sexual lust is always unethical.
Even as a group of women of different ages, from diverse backgrounds and states of life, we all concurred we desired purity of heart. Unified as we are by our love for Jesus, we recognize that to be in living, ever-deepening and intimate relationship with Jesus is paramount to each of us.
The spousal meaning of the body is the call to love in a life-giving manner and this does not contradict celibacy but gives it a richer meaning.
All of us in W2W are beginning to experience a glimmer of understanding of this as we progress on our TOB journey.
Because we are first called to be in communion with God, we can express this desire in manifold ways: spending time alone with Him in prayer as Jesus did, receiving the transubstantiated host on our tongues and in our hearts, loving others by being a gift and leading others to Truth by living truth in every action.
Whether married or single, a personal relationship with God leads us to living out our sexuality fully with honesty, fidelity and purity. This does require chastity, even from those of us who are married for marriage is not an excuse to indulge in lust.
But it is not all grimaced stoicism or as impossible as pigs flying. It is only impossible because we fear sexual purity may sometimes keep us away from love or opportunities to receive love and to experience pleasure.
When we don't trust God enough to wait for love (like Adam and Eve) and we grasp for love out of loneliness or fear, that is when we lose the plot and make decisions that steer us away from being our true selves and from God. We allow our sexual desires to degrade into lust.
Celibacy does not mean we are not having fun. Far from it. Some of the most joyful and fun-loving people I know are those who truly claim celibacy as their vocation. They are fulfilled as people because they live rich interior lives and in turn are able to love others with delightful purity.
They have already experienced in part the joy reserved for heaven when we are in complete union with the Trinity and have opted to live out the vocation of celibacy for the Kingdom here today.
For the spousal meaning of the body is an invitation to be like the bride and bridegroom in the Song of Songs, who are in a state of holy inebriation where the "words, movements and gestures of the spouses, their whole behaviour, correspond to the inner movement of their hearts" which is a "pure flame of love".*
If we take up the invitation to offer our sexual desires (which are fully kosher and ethical) to God to direct, we can get drunk from drinking God's wine, the inner "truth and strength of love", so that "sexual desire passes over from lust to an immeasurable love" and this is how we can experience a "real and deep victory" over the distortion of lust.*
The opportunity to savour God's "new wine" (just like the Cana wedding miracle) is ours because "Christ came to restore creation to the purity of its origins (CCC, 1733). Fear is dispelled in the light of this pure love.
JP II says, "The Eucharist is a school of freedom and charity in order to fulfil the commandment to love" for the Eucharist "frees us from attachment in order to open ourselves to others".**
This is the gift of love from Christ, who loved us with a love that is:
FREE He chose to give us His body and blood by dying for us.
TOTAL He gives us His body, blood, soul and divinity every Sunday in the sacrament of
the Eucharist.
FAITHFUL He is with us day and night, 24X7.
FRUITFUL We all have eternal life.**
We can now experience the redemption of this immeasurable love in the gift of Christ's body and love immeasurably ourselves.
When ethics transforms into ethos, the difficult becomes easy. Bleak reality becomes joyously divine.
Celibacy is something prized and not looked upon with distaste and suspicion.
And so a slice of the Kingdom of Heaven has made its way onto earth.
Something we at W2W are discovering every day when we offer up our love and fidelity to Christ.
* From Christopher West's Heaven's Song, a great book on how JPII uses Song of Songs to expound on marital love.
** From chapter seven of the DVD, Theology of the Body For Teens
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