Dear Friends,
 
This weekend’s readings cause us to reflect on the nature of marriage and the complementarity of man and woman. Understanding the Word of God on this topic is especially important today when so many proponents of various gender ideologies call our original nature into question. See below the reflection of Edward Sri on some points from St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body.
 
1.  The Law of the Gift
In an age when many individuals approach their relationships as ways of seeking their own pleasure, interests, or gain, John Paul II constantly reminded us that such self-assertion is a dead end that will never lead to the love and happiness we long for.  Human persons are made for self-giving love, not a self-getting love, and they will find fulfillment only when they give themselves in service to others.
 
This "law of the gift," as it is called by Catholic commentator George Weigel, is written in every human heart.  And in the beginning of the theology of the body, John Paul II alludes to how it is based on man being made in the "image" of the Triune God (Gen. 1:26).  Since God exists as a communion of three divine Persons giving themselves completely in love to each other, man and woman — created in the image of the Trinity — are made to live not as isolated individuals, each seeking his or her own pleasure and advantage from the other.  Rather, man and woman are made to live in an intimate personal communion of self-giving love, mirroring the inner life of the Trinity.  In the end, human persons will find the happiness they long for when they learn to live like the Trinity, giving themselves in love to others.
 
2.  Original Solitude
Here, John Paul II reflects on God's statement about Adam in Genesis 2:18: "It is not good for man to be alone." At first glance, this statement seems odd.  Adam is not alone.  God has placed him in a garden with water, trees, and vegetation.  And He has even put Adam alongside other flesh-and-blood creatures just like him — the animals.  Yet, even though there are many other animal creatures with bodies in the garden of Eden, Adam is still in some sense described as being "alone."
 
This tells us that there is something about Adam that is not found in other bodily creatures.  By noticing how he is different from the animals, Adam comes to realize that he is more than a body — that he has a spiritual dimension.  As a body-soul creature, Adam is unique.  There is nothing else in creation like him.
 
And this poses a problem.  If Adam is made to live the "law of the gift" — to give himself in a mutual relationship of love — then Adam, at this stage, is in a certain sense incomplete.  He is not able to live out the law of the gift yet, for there is no one else like him to give himself to as an equal partner — no other human person, no body-soul creature, like him.  This is why God says, "It is not good for man to be alone."
 
John Paul II explains that man only finds fulfillment when he lives in a relationship of mutual self-giving, living not for himself, but for another person.  "When God-Yahweh said, It is not good that man should be alone' (Gen.  2:18) he affirmed that alone,' man does not completely realize this essence.  He realizes it only by existing with someone' — and even more deeply and completely — by existing for someone'" (p. 60).
 
3.  Original Unity
In response to Adam's solitude, the Lord creates another human person, Eve, to be his wife.  "Then the man said, This, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh'" (Gen.  2:23).  John Paul II notes how this is the first time man manifests joy and exultation.  Before this moment, he had no reason for rejoicing, "owing to the lack of a being like himself."  But now he finally has someone to give himself to in this unique way.  In ecstatic response, he sighs "At last!" for now he is able to live out the law of the gift and thus becomes who he was meant to be through his union with her.
 
Next, John Paul II reflects on how man and woman "become one flesh" (Gen.  2:24).  He notes how this oneness in flesh does not refer merely to a bodily union, but points to a deeper spiritual union, a union of persons.
 
Recall how a human person is not just a body, but consists of body and soul.  John Paul II expounds on how this union of body and soul in a person sheds light on human sexuality.  The body has a language that is able to communicate something much more profound than information or ideas. What one does in his body reveals his very self, the "living soul" (p. 61). The body expresses the person and makes visible what is invisible, the spiritual dimension of man (pp. 56, 76).
 
This has dramatic implications for understanding sexual intercourse.  The marital act is not meant to be merely a physical union.  It is meant to express an even deeper personal union.   Since the body reveals the soul, when man and woman give their bodies to each other in marital intercourse, they give themselves to each other.  Bodily union is meant to express a  deeper spiritual union.  The physical intimacy is meant to express an even more profound personal intimacy (cf.  p. 57).
 
John Paul II calls this unique language of the body "the nuptial meaning of the body."  He says our bodies have a nuptial character in the sense that they have "the capacity of expressing love, that love in which the person becomes a gift and — by means of this gift — fulfills the meaning of his being and existence" (p. 63).
 
In this light, we can see that the body will be an important arena in which the drama of relationships between men and women will be played out — for better or for worse.  We can approach the bodily union of sexual intercourse as a means to deepening personal communion in marriage.  Or we can engage in sexual intercourse primarily with our own pleasure in mind and without any regard for the body's capacity to express self-giving love — in other words, without any regard for the nuptial meaning God has given to the body.
 
Put starkly: A man can view sex as a way of deepening his personal union with his wife, giving himself completely to her and expressing his total commitment to her as a person and to what is best for her.  Or he can approach sex merely as a physical act with some woman who happens to give him pleasure — without any real commitment to that woman's well-being.  Instead of being truly committed to the woman as a person and to her good, such a man is committed to the woman in that moment primarily for what she provides him: his own sexual satisfaction.  Such a denigration of sex, which is pervasive in our culture today, certainly is a far cry from the beautiful nuptial meaning God has given to the body.