By: Christopher West

A few years back, the title of an article in the National Catholic Register caught my attention —   “Divorce: In the Image and Likeness of Hell” (Sep 30 – Oct 6, 2007).   The first few sentences confirmed what I intuited from the title — this writer, Melinda Selmys, was going to speak plainly.   It seems she’d had enough of the sweet, pious lingo with which many Catholic writers often speak about marriage.   Heck, for all I know, she may have had me in mind.

She observes, “The theologians remind us that our married life is an image of the union between … Christ [and the Church].   We hear of … the bliss of the two becoming one.”   When things get tough, we are told “to improve our communication, fall in love with each other all over again, observe the tender moments, etc., etc.”  Then she allows such advice to butt up against the all-too real experiences of actual marriages.   “But how are you to fall in love again,” she asks, “with an insensitive beast who has broken your heart and slept with another woman?   How can you see your sex life as an image of the intimate life of the blessed Trinity when your wife consents only on a full moon when Mars is in Virgo, and makes love with the enthusiasm of a dead frog?”

The Brutal Truth

When I first read that last line, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.   But I did breathe a sigh of relief.   Man, it’s refreshing to hear people say it like it is.   For whatever reason, such brutally honest writing seems rare in much of the Catholic press.   It’s as if those who promote Catholic teaching are afraid it won’t go over so well if we talk about the real sufferings of following Jesus.   So we conveniently promote the glories of the Christian life without a realistic assessment of the sorrows.   I, myself, have been guilty of that on occasion, I think.  Christian marriage is a messy, painful business.   How could it be otherwise?   “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the Church” (Eph 5:25).   If marital union is an image of Christ’s union with the Church, this means, as Selmy observes, that marriage will involve “the same agony, the mingling of tears and blood, the same thorns digging into our skulls, the same nails plowed through our palms.”

In light of how many people believe the Church is “down on sex,” the glories and ecstasies to which authentic Catholic teaching calls spouses in their union should be emphasized.   But these glories and ecstasies are the fruit of embracing much purifying suffering.   If the joy is not set before us, we will have no motivation to endure the suffering.   “For the joy set before him Christ endured the cross” (Heb 12:2).   But if the path to those joys is not also realistically assessed, we will naively wonder why marriage is so agonizing.

A Realistic Look at the Pains of Marriage

As Selmys writes, “In every marriage there are moments when it seems impossible.   I am sure that when Christ fell on the road to Calvary, the thought of lifting his cross again … seemed like madness.   Perhaps its different through divine eyes, but for men, there are always moments when we turn to heaven and say, ‘Are you insane?’   When we are hardly able to see to the top of Golgotha through our dust-bitten tears, we derive no comfort from reassurances that crucifixion isn’t all that bad, and that, seen in perspective, its’ really a beautiful expression of love and self-giving.”

It is a beautiful expression of love, to be sure.   But it’s beautiful precisely because Jesus selflessly embraced the wine-press of suffering.   It’s when we’re face to face with that wine-press that we’re most tempted by sexual sin — be it an affair, internet pornography, masturbation, contraception.   Why?   Because sexual sin promises the pleasure without the pain, the “wine” without the wine-press.  True love is always linked with suffering.   As Fr. Paul Quay said in his book The Christian Meaning of Human Sexuality, “It is precisely this link between true love and suffering that is rejected by sexual sin.”   Christ suffered greatly in loving his spouse.   We are to follow him.

By: Christopher West

 

Feast of the Assumption

For hundreds of years Christians have celebrated the feast of Mary’s Assumption.  Although it was not specifically defined as a dogma (a teaching of the Catholic Church on a specific subject which the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit and protected from error on this particular teaching, proclaims is revealed to us by God) until 1950, belief in Mary’s bodily assumption has always been part of Christian faith.   Why 1950?   God has his own reasons for the timing of such things.   But even from a human perspective, the middle of the twentieth century provided a perfect historical context for the Church’s declaration.

As Father Donald Calloway writes, “During the twentieth century, the body … began to be seen by many people as a burden, something to be overcome and manipulated. …Thus began such procedures as sex changes, plastic surgery, and genetic manipulation.   In a certain sense, it can be said that the twentieth century preoccupation with the body has led to a schizophrenic approach to … the body: either worship it as divine, or seek to manipulate it (or even kill it) through technological means” (The Virgin Mary and Theology of the Body, p. 45).

In the midst of such schizophrenia, Mary’s assumption proclaims the ultimate truth about the human body: it is destined to share in the eternal glory of the Trinity.   Christ came bodily to redeem us bodily — and Mary’s bodily assumption is the proof that what Christ did on the cross worked.   Mary is fully redeemed body and soul.   In this sense, Mary is the hope of all humanity.   She lives what we hope for.  The declaration of the Assumption in 1950 was also a powerful response to the devastation of World War II.   The horror of Hitler’s concentration camps had only recently been exposed.   Moreover, man had discovered how to split the atom — the basic building block of the physical universe — and had exploited this knowledge with terrifying consequences.

Coincidence or Providence?

A Catholic doctor named Takashi Nagai survived the explosion that rocked Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, killing nearly 80,000 of his countrymen.   Writing of Dr. Nagai’s experience, author Robert Ellsberg observes in his book All Saints that “Nagai found it remarkable that as a result of heavy clouds obscuring the originally intended city, the bomb had been dropped that day on Nagasaki, an alternate target.   As a further result of clouds, the pilot had not fixed his target on the Mitsubishi iron works, as intended, but instead on the Catholic Cathedral in the Urakami district of the city, home to the majority of Nagasaki’s Catholics.   He noted that the end of the war came on August 15, feast of the Assumption of Mary, to whom the Cathedral was dedicated.”

At an open-air Mass just days after the bombing, Dr. Nagai said to the survivors, “We must ask if this convergence of events — the ending of the war and the celebration of her feast [Mary’s Assumption] — was merely coincidental or if there was here some mysterious providence of God” (All Saints, p. 13).   We might say that in response to the A-bomb, in 1950 the Church dropped a G-bomb, a “grace-bomb” that truly is the hope of the world.   “The woman,” representing us all, has been fully redeemed body and soul.

The Serpent & the Woman

Three years later Hugh Hefner founded Playboy Magazine.   It makes a person wonder: Could the pornographic revolution of the second half of the twentieth century be some kind of diabolic response to the proclamation of the Assumption?   It’s certainly curious that the modern pornographic degradation of women’s bodies began so soon after the most glorious elevation of the female body in history.   The devil’s enmity has always been against “the woman” (see Gen 3, Rev 12).   Christ lifts her up and the enemy attempts to pull her down.  John Paul II observed that in “the face of the … debasement to which modern society frequently subjects the female body, the mystery of the assumption proclaims the supernatural destiny and dignity of every human body. …By looking at [Mary], the Christian learns to discover the value of his own body” (address, July 9, 1997).   So, let us look to Mary’s glorified body in order to learn the value of our own incarnate humanity.

By: Christopher West

The “Marriage Bed” of the Cross

I’s like to take the opportunity to reflect anew on the mystery of Christ’s body “given up for us” on the cross.   I’d like to take an angle familiar to the mystics of our tradition, but sadly unfamiliar to most Catholics in the pew.   It is an idea that, if we meditate prayerfully on it, can help us reclaim the holiness of the body and of marital union.   It is the idea of the cross as Christ’s “marriage bed” — the place where he consummates his love for his Bride, the Church.  While this imagery might raise some eyebrows, it needn’t be cause for scandal if we properly understand the spousal symbolism of the Bible.   As the Catechism observes, “The entire Christian life bears the mark of the spousal love of Christ and the Church.   Already Baptism …is a nuptial mystery; it is so to speak the nuptial bath which precedes the wedding feast, the Eucharist” (CCC 1617).   We might also recall Christ’s final words of love uttered for his Bride from the cross: “It is consummated” (see Jn 19:30).

St. Augustine wrote, “Like a bridegroom Christ went forth from his chamber….   He came to the marriage-bed of the cross, and there in mounting it, he consummated his marriage. And when he perceived the sighs of the creature, he lovingly gave himself up to the torment in place of his bride, and joined himself to [her] forever” (Sermo Suppositus 120).   Saint Mechtilde, a German mystic of the 13^th century, echoed the same idea when she wrote that Christ’s “noble nuptial bed was the very hard wood of the Cross on which he leaped with more joy and ardor then a delighted bridegroom” (cited by Blaise Arminjon in The Cantata of Love).

I first heard this idea of the cross as a “marriage bed” from the late Bishop Fulton Sheen in a recorded lecture I listened to some years ago.   Sheen’s booming voice still echoes in my mind: “Do you know what is happening at the foot of the cross?” he asked.   “Nuptials, I tell you!   Nuptials!”   Like Augustine, he then described the cross as Christ’s “marriage bed” which he mounted not in pleasure, but in pain in order to unite himself forever to his Bride.  The good bishop went on to explain that whenever Jesus calls Mary “woman” (such as at the Wedding in Cana and at the cross), he is speaking as the new Adam to the new Eve, the Bridegroom to the Bride.   Here, of course, the relationships are outside the realm of blood.   The fact that Christ’s mother is “the woman” symbolizing his “Bride” needn’t trouble us.   The marriage of the new Adam and new Eve consummated at the cross is mystical and virginal.   The Catechism, itself, refers to this “woman” (Mary) as “the Bride of the Lamb” (CCC 1138).

New Adam, New Eve, New Bridegroom, New Bride

Contemplating this spousal symbolism opens up treasures for us. Just as the first Adam was put into a deep sleep and Eve came from his side, so the new Adam accepts the slumber of death and the new Eve is born of his side (see CCC 766). This is often portrayed artistically by an image of “the woman” (Mary) holding a chalice — or sometimes a large jug reminiscent of Cana — at the foot of the cross receiving the flow of blood and water from Christ’s side.   The blood and water, of course, symbolize the “nuptial bath” of Baptism and the “wedding feast” of the Eucharist.

But there’s still more to this!   The mystical union of the new Adam and the new Eve has already borne supernatural fruit.   “‘Woman, behold, your son!’   Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’” (Jn 19:26-27).   One might also render Christ’s words as follows, “Woman, behold your giving birth to a new son.”   Mary’s sorrows at the foot of the cross are her labor pains in giving birth to all the children of the Church.   Here the beloved disciple (John) represents the offspring “born anew not of perishable seed, but of imperishable” (1 Pt 1:23), “not of blood, …but of God” (Jn 1:13).  St. Paul wasn’t kidding when he described the union of spouses as “a great mystery” that refers to Christ and the Church (see Eph 5:31-32).   Jesus, open our hearts ever anew to this “great mystery” revealed through your body given up for us on the “marriage bed” of the cross.   Amen.

By: Christopher West

The headline in USA Today caught my eye — “A Dance For Chastity,” as did the large sketch of a teenage girl wearing a t-shirt that read, “Virginity Lane: Exit When Married.” Was USA Today actually offering a positive article on the growing chastity movement?   Then I read the tag line: “Some evangelical Christians are organizing ‘purity balls,’ at which young girls are urged to put off sex until marriage.   Instead, these events simply reinforce society’s misguided notions of patriarchal religion.” So believes Mary Zeiss Stange, a professor of women’s studies and religion at Skidmore College, who authored the article (see USA Today, March 19, 2007, p. 15A).

She describes these dances as follows: “Imagine an evening of candlelight and roses, fancy food and formal dress and ballroom dancing, all in celebration of a promise of loving commitment…. They are called purity balls, and they celebrate the father-daughter bond.   Tuxedo-clad dads promise to ‘war for’ their daughters’ ‘purity’….   Daughters, in turn, vow abstinence until marriage.”  Stange looks for a few positive things to say about how these events promote “quality time” between daughters and their fathers.   Still, she concludes that “there is something profoundly disturbing about these purity balls and all they represent.”   Assuming any sensible human being would agree, she asserts: “Underlying this whole business, of course, is the age-old assumption that sex is dirty.”   Really?   If a father desires purity for his daughter he must view sex as something dirty?   “Of course,” according to Professor Stange. For her, “purity” has become a dirty word. Read the entire article here.

Purity vs. Puritanism

But here Stange falls for a common error — that of confusing purity with puritanism.   Puritanism stems from a heretical view of the body and sex as something inherently tainted, “dirty,” even evil.   This is not authentic Christian purity.   The idea that the body is inherently evil is precisely what authentic Christian purity frees us from.   Christian purity thoroughly cleanses us from the “dirt” that attacks the true goodness of the body and sex.   That’s what sexual purity is — freedom from all that taints sex.

Stange’s accusation that Christians consider sex to be “dirty” may be true in some, even many cases.   But this is by no means a neurosis induced by authentic Christian purity. A suspicion towards the physical world and discomfort with all things sexual seems to hang like a dark shadow over all human experience. Like the rest of humanity, Christians have been and still are affected and even infected by it. Hence, through the centuries the Church has defended the goodness of the physical world and the sacredness of the human body against many heresies. The Church still battles today to counter the heretical “spirit good—body bad” dichotomy which many people assume to be Christian belief.

Christianity does not reject the body!

How can one stress it enough?   In a virtual “ode to the flesh,” the Catechism proclaims: “‘The flesh is the hinge of salvation.’ We believe in God who is creator of the flesh; we believe in the Word made flesh in order to redeem the flesh; we believe in the resurrection of the flesh, the fulfillment of both the creation and the redemption of the flesh” (1015, emphasis added).  Perhaps we as Christians could take Stange’s challenge as an opportunity to examine our own approach to purity.   Are there ways that a negative view of the body has seeped into our thinking?   Do we in any way devalue the body and sex in the name of “purity”?   Do we speak of the body or certain body parts as “dirty”?   Do we label the body itself as something impure rather than examine the impurity of our hearts?

It is the lustful heart that is impure, not the human body itself.   This is a critical distinction to understand if our purity is to be just that — pure.  And it is a critical distinction to live if we are to counter the widespread idea reinforced by USA Today that Christianity views sex as something dirty.

By: Christopher West

Catholics are often accused of being unfamiliar with the Bible.   That’s probably true in some cases.   But I’d like to level a different criticism against us.   I think often times we are overly familiar with the Bible.   We’ve heard various Scripture passages so many times they lose their significance. Picture the following scenario. It’s  Advent.   The whole Church is preparing for Christmas.   Over the next several weeks we are sure to hear that famous passage from John’s Gospel dozens of times: “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”

Hold on.   Did you hear that, I mean, really hear it?   It’s become all too familiar.   It’s much easier to allow the familiarity of certain biblical proclamations to excuse us from pondering what they actually mean and imply.   A God in the flesh!?   How are we to let the implications of such a stunning truth sink in?   As I’ve written before, a phantom deity is much more tenable and much more becoming than a God who wore diapers, a God in the flesh.

The Wonder of Birth

I had an experience recently  that brought the astounding reality of the Incarnation home to me in a big way.   My third son and fourth child, Isaac Joseph, was born.   It wasn’t only Isaac’s birth that struck me.   That, of course, was amazing.   But right after his birth, the midwife pointed out something else that sent me reeling.  Let me warn you that I’m about to get earthy.   There’s a definite point to it, but the squeamish might want to skip to the last few paragraphs.

As the midwife was examining the placenta, she very casually opened up this bloodied membrane, pointed inside and said, “Here’s where Isaac lived for nine months.”   My brain couldn’t quite take it in.   The whole experience of pregnancy, birth, and then breast-feeding is an “in your face” reminder that we are mammals.   We’re more than mammals, of course.   We’re also endowed with an immortal soul.   We’re “spiritualized mammals,” or “mammalized spirits,” if you will.

The Awe of the Incarnation

All of this was striking me in a dramatic way.   But pondering the mystery of the union of matter and spirit in my newborn son was only the half of it.   It hit me like a ton of bricks while I was gazing wide-eyed and jaw-dropped into this precious mammalian “sac of life” — “In the fullness of time, God sent his son born of a woman” (Gal 4:4).   I believe, or at least I claim to believe, that the Most High God lived for nine months in a bloody mammalian sac like this.   WHAT?!

This may sound strange to some, but right there as the midwife was holding this membrane open and all of the above was flooding my mind and heart, I felt like the curtain to the holy of holies  (the most sacred space of worship for ancient Jews, was thought to be the very presence of God on Earth)  had just been pulled back.   I was gazing into the tabernacle, the dwelling place of the Almighty.   This is what we believe, that a woman’s womb became the earthly dwelling place of the most high God.   God took on our nature and entered our earthly, “mammalian” dwelling place, so that we could take on his nature and enter his heavenly, divine dwelling place.

We gave Jesus our nature and he gave us his.   Quoting from St. Athanasius, the Catechism puts it this way: “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.”   “The Word became flesh to make us ‘partakers of the divine nature’” (CCC, 460).  In a stable in Bethlehem of Judea, two thousand years ago, a human person gave birth to a divine person.   Again this Christmas the readings of the liturgy will proclaim to us this “good news of great joy.”   Perhaps what I shared above will help nudge you out of the “oh-so-familiar” mode we can be in when we hear the Christmas story repeated this year.   For me, as Isaac Joseph’s proud father, it was more than a nudge.   It was a jolt.

By: Christopher West

In a culture saturated with pornographic imagery, we would do well to remember Christ’s words from the Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’   But I say to you that if you even look at that Victoria’s Secret catalogue and lust, you have already committed adultery in your heart” (Modern Christopher West Translation of Mt 5:27-28).  And lest women think they are off the hook, we could just as aptly say, “If you even read that romance novel or watch Desperate Housewives and lust, you’ve already committed adultery in your heart.”

Christ isn’t saying a mere glance or momentary thought makes us guilty of adultery.   As fallen human beings, we’ll always be able to sense the pull of lust in our hearts.   This doesn’t mean we’ve sinned.   It’s what we do when we experience that pull of lust that matters.   Do we seek God’s help in resisting it or do we indulge it?   When we indulge it — that is, when we actively choose “in our hearts” to treat another person as merely an object for our own gratification — we seriously violate that person’s dignity and our own.   We’re meant to be loved “for our own sakes,” never used as an object for someone else’s sake.

Averting our Gaze toward a Great Mystery

What are we to do, then, just stare at the sidewalk for the rest of our lives?   Sure, remember that song we sing in church: “They will know we are Christians by our staring at the sidewalk…?”   Or, rather, is it “They will know we are Christians by our love…?”   Christ’s words are not merely a command to avert one’s gaze.   As John Paul II taught, Christ’s words about lust are “an invitation to a pure way of looking at others, capable of respecting the spousal meaning of the body” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 15).

The body has a “spousal meaning” because it reveals the call of man and woman to become a gift to one another.   Maleness and femaleness only make sense in light of each other.   Spouses express this truth most fully by becoming “one flesh.”   In this gift, spouses are meant to express the very love of God.   They are meant to reveal the “great mystery” of Christ’s love for the Church (see Eph 5:31-32).   Those who are pure of heart are able to see this “great mystery” — this great plan of God’s love — revealed through the human body.   Seeing this and rejoicing in this is very different  than looking at the body as an object of lust.

Obviously, if a person needs to avert his (or her) gaze in order to avoid lusting, then, by all means, that person should do so.   We classically call this “avoiding the occasion of sin” by “gaining custody of the eyes.”   This is a necessary first step, but John Paul II described such an approach as a negative purity (negative here not meaning ‘bad’ or ‘worse’ but an absence).   As we grow in virtue we come to experience a positive, more mature purity.   “In mature purity man enjoys the fruits of the victory won over lust.”   He enjoys the “efficacy of the gift of the Holy Spirit” who restores to his experience of the body “all its simplicity, its explicitness, and also its interior joy” (Theology of the Body, April 1, 1981).

Purity is not prudishness

Purity does not  reject the body.   “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” (ToB, March 18, 1981).   Purity in its fullness will only be restored in heaven.   Yet, as the Catechism teaches, “Even now [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, n. 2519).

If you find that lust blinds you to the true beauty of the human body, take heart: Jesus came preaching sight for the blind.   Like the blind man in the Gospel, we must all cry out to him, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me, I want to see!”

An Invitation, not Condemnation  

Most people see in Christ’s words only a condemnation.   Do we forget that Christ came into the world not to condemn, but to save? (see  Jn 3:17).   Christ’s words about lust call us back to the original truth of the body and sexuality.   As part of the heritage of original sin, lust obscures in each of us God’s original, beautiful plan for the body and sexual love — but it hasn’t snuffed it out.   John Paul II insisted that the heritage of our hearts is  deeper  than lust and the words of Christ reactivate that deeper heritage giving it  real power  in our lives (see ToB, Oct 29, 1980).

Imagine the human heart as a deep well.   Starting from the top we have to pass through layers of muddy waters.   But if we press through, at the bottom of the well we’ll find a spring that, when activated, can gradually fill the well to overflowing with pure, living water.  If we think a “lustful look” is the only way a person  can  look at the human body, then we subscribe to what John Paul II called “the interpretation of suspicion.”   Those who live by suspicion remain so locked in their own lusts that they project the same bondage on to everyone else.   They can’t imagine any way to think about the human body and the sexual relationship other than through the prism of lust.

When we hold the human heart in a state of irreversible suspicion because of lust, we condemn ourselves to a hopeless, loveless existence.   As St. Paul warns us, we must avoid the trap of “holding the form of religion” while “denying the power of it” (2 Tim 3:5).   “Redemption is a truth, a reality, in the name of which man must feel called, and called with efficacy” (ToB, Oct 29, 1980).   In other words, the death and resurrection of Christ is  effective;  when allowed, it  takes effect  in us.   It can change our lives, our attitudes, our hearts.   Yes — Christ’s death and resurrection can change the way we experience sexual desire, away from lust and toward the truth of divine love.

The Rewards of the Riches Within

Much is at stake.   As John Paul II stated, “The meaning of life is the antithesis of the interpretation ‘of suspicion.’   This interpretation is very different, it is radically different from what we discover in Christ’s words in the Sermon on the Mount.”   Christ’s words about lust “reveal …another vision of man’s possibilities” (Oct 29, 1980).   Christ’s words reveal the possibility of loving as God loves — not despite our sexuality but in and through it.

John Paul II observed that this demands “perseverance and consistency” in learning the meaning of our bodies, the meaning of our sexuality.   We must learn this not only in the abstract (although this, too, is necessary), but above all in the interior reactions of our own “hearts.”   This is a “science,” the Pope said, which can’t really be learned only from books, because it’s a question here of deep knowledge of our interior life.   Deep in the heart we learn to distinguish between what, on the one hand, composes the great riches of sexuality and sexual attraction, and what, on the other hand, bears only the sign of lust.   And although these internal movements of the heart can sometimes be confused with one another, we have been called by Christ to acquire a mature and complete evaluation.   And the Pope insisted that “this task  can  be carried out and is really worthy of man” (ToB, Nov 12, 1980).

By: Christopher West

How many people do you know — maybe it’s even true of yourself — who consider Christianity nothing but a long list of oppressive rules to follow, especially when it comes to sex? I never tire of proclaiming that Jesus Christ did not die on a cross and rise from the dead to give us a long list of rules to follow. Christ came, in fact, to set us free from the rules.

Freedom to  Fulfill the Law

What? Yes, it’s true. As St. Paul tells us, if we are lead by Christ, we are free from the law (see Gal 5). But this doesn’t mean we are free to break the law. Christ sets us free to fulfill the law. “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them” (Mt 5:17). Christ fulfills the law, as the word implies, by living it to the full. This means not only meeting the laws demands externally, but living them to the full internally — from the depths of the heart.

We all know that it’s possible to follow the rules without ever attaining holiness. It’s called “legalism” or “moralism.” It’s also called hypocrisy. “You blind Pharisee! First cleanse the inside of the cup and of the plate, that the outside also may be clean” (Mt 23:26). This is what the grace of the Gospel affords: it presents us not only with a law to follow, but with the power (God’s grace) to fulfill it.

Christ didn’t come into the world to shove laws down our rebellious throats. He came into the world to change our hearts so we would no longer need the laws. As the Catechism says, “The Law of the Gospel …does not add new external precepts, but proceeds to reform the heart, the root of human acts, where man chooses between the pure and the impure” (CCC, n. 1968).

The Purpose of the Law for Christians

This doesn’t mean laws serve no purpose for us. To the degree that our hearts are still rebelling against God’s will, we need his law to tell us where our hearts need to change. But if we welcome God’s grace in our lives and allow it to work in us, we come to find that the desires of our hearts conform more and more to God’s will for us. To this extent we are “free from the law.” Again, this doesn’t mean we are free to break the law. We are free to fulfill the law because we no longer desire to break it.

To demonstrate this point in my lectures, I usually call on a married man and ask him if he has any desire to murder his wife. Most often the husband says no (thank God). Then I’ll ask him, “Do you need the commandment ‘Thou shalt not murder thy wife’?”   He realizes, of course, that he does not. To this extent, the husband is free from the law: not free to break it, but free to fulfill it because he does not desire to break it.  To draw the point out further, I’ll then call on his wife and ask her if she has ever seen her husband slamming his fists exclaiming, “Why do those old celibate men in Rome tell me I can’t murder my wife? What do they know about marriage any way?” My point is this: we are only bitter towards the law when we desire to break it.

Pick any teaching of the Church that you are bitter about. Chances are it has something to do with sex (we’re not usually bitter about the fact that the Church calls us to feed the hungry). Here’s a proposal for us to chew on. Maybe the problem is not with the teaching of the Church. Maybe, just maybe, the problem is precisely what Jesus said it was: our own hardness of heart (see Mt 19:8). And maybe the solution is not to throw the Church’s teaching out the window. Maybe the solution, instead, is to get on our knees and humbly pray, “Lord, please change my heart.”  If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.

By: Christopher West

The early Christian writer Tertullian observed that the devil seeks to counter God’s plan by plagiarizing the sacraments.   That’s all he can do — take what God created for our true joy and fulfillment (the sacraments), twist it, put his name on it, and say “here’s what you’re really looking for.  This will make you happy.”

Untwisting Lies

Here’s an example: typical American college students quickly learn that the meaning of life is, to put it as they hear it, “get drunk and get laid.”   Take a deeper look.   This “path to happiness” is nothing but the plagiarization of two sacraments.   “Get drunk”: Untwist this and we discover the Holy Eucharist where we are called to be “inebriated” on God’s wine, that is, God’s love poured out for us.   “Get laid”: Untwist this distortion and we discover the holy sacrament of marriage where spouses give themselves to each other so intimately as to become one-flesh.

In the new evangelization urged by both John Paul II and Benedict XVI, we must find a way to demonstrate to the modern world that we’ve been duped by counterfeit “sacraments” — counterfeit paths to happiness.   Imagine walking into a fraternity party where people are getting drunk and seeking illicit sex and proclaiming, “Excuse me.   Um, do you know what you really want here?   You want the Eucharist and Marriage and the Catholic Church has both in their fullness.”

You may laugh.   And what I am proposing is somewhat humorous, but I’m also serious.   If we are to win the culture war we must understand the enemy’s plan of attack in order to unmask it.   The devil is not creative.   He cannot create his own parallel universe of raw evil.   All he can do is take what God created to be true, good, and beautiful and twist it, distort it.   This means that behind every temptation the father of lies uses to lead us away from God, we will find something that God created to lead us to him.   And behind every distorted desire in our own hearts that lures us away from God, we can discover a God-given desire that will lead us to him.

The Sexual Idol of the Modern World

We must learn to “read” the true desires of our hearts that lie on the other side of our distorted desires.   For example, what’s behind the distorted desire, so prevalent today, to view pornography?   For whatever my personal reflections are worth, it seems to me that when we untwist the desire to view pornography, what we discover is our desire for the beatific vision.     “God himself,” as the Catechism says, “is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” (CCC, n.221).   This is what we long to see!   And this is what we will behold “face to face” for all eternity in the consummation of the Marriage of the Lamb.

While pornography as we know it did not exist in St. Paul’s day, nonetheless he gives a perfect description of what I’m getting at in his letter to the Romans: “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man… .Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.   They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (Rom 1:22-25).

The truth of God is precisely that he is an eternal exchange of love and we can only find our ultimate fulfillment in that love.   The lie we have exchanged for this truth is that we can find ultimate fulfillment in sex.   And so, believing this lie, our culture has come to worship sex.   It’s become our religion.   Yet, in seeking purity we must not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

The pornographic does not define the body!   As we allow the distortions of our culture and our hearts to be untwisted — redeemed — we discover that the body is “theographic,” so to speak.   We discover, as St. Paul says, that the one-flesh union is a “great mystery” that points to Christ’s union with the Church.   In seeking to overcome our culture’s distortions we mustn’t reject the body and sex.  We must, instead, courageously reclaim what the devil has plagiarized!

By: Christopher West

As the familiar saying goes, “From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.”   Something as sublime and beautiful as the union of spouses in “one flesh,” for example, tweaked even slightly, becomes ridiculous — worthy of ridicule.   Our culture’s approach to the body and sex is certainly “ridiculous.”   But, perhaps, despite the ridiculousness, we’re not as far off from the truth as we might think.

We Settle for the Finite…

The further one travels on a globe, for instance, the closer he is to his starting point.   When it comes to God’s plan for the body and sex, if we look back from whence we’ve come as a culture, we are certainly far from shore.   But if we look ahead we might be closer than we think.   We can only take so much insanity before we return to our senses.   If the passage from the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step, is not the passage back also but a step?  I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that in recognizing the gross distortions of sex in our world, we mustn’t throw out the baby with the bath water.   There is an important element of truth behind our society’s obsession with sex.   For behind every false god we discover our desire for the true God gone awry.

Untwist the distortions and we discover the astounding glory of human sexuality in the divine plan.   “For this reason …the two become one flesh.”   For what reason?   To reveal, proclaim, and anticipate the eternal union of Christ and the Church (see Eph 5:31-32).   The union of the sexes is meant to be an icon — an earthly sign that points us beyond itself to our eternal destiny of union with God.   But when we lose sight of union with God as our ultimate fulfillment, we begin worshiping the earthly image.   The icon degenerates into an idol.

Welcome to the world in which we live.   But do we know what it means?   It means the sexual confusion so prevalent in our world and in our own hearts is simply the human desire for heaven gone berserk.   Sin always involves confusing our desire for the infinite  with finite things.   Sexual union, as beautiful and joyous as it is meant to be in God’s plan, always remains a finite thing.   It can never satisfy our desire for the infinite.   The best it can be is a foreshadowing of that satisfaction, a little foretaste.

…We Desire The  Infinite

Hence, Jesus tells us that when the infinite is granted to us, men and women will no longer be given in marriage (see Mt 22:30).   In other words, you no longer need an icon to point you to heaven, when you’re in heaven.   This also explains why some remain celibate “for the sake of the kingdom of heaven”   (Mt 19:12).   When lived in the spirit Christ intended, these men and women become a living sign that heaven is real; the eternal, ecstatic union of Christ and the Church is not just an idea or a theory — it is a living reality and it is worth selling everything for.

What should I do, then, when I recognize and live in my desire for the infinite?   In seeking God should I reject finite things?   No!   This is a classic blunder of Christians.   The more we live in union with God even while here on earth, the more all the things of earth — including and, perhaps, especially, the union of the sexes — take on their true sacramental nature as foretastes of heaven.  As we progress in union with Christ, all the pleasures of the earth, rather than being an “occasion of sin” as perhaps they once were, become so many icons pointing us to heaven.   Even those who choose celibacy for the kingdom do not reject their sexuality (at least they are not supposed to!).   They are meant to live it out in a different way, appreciating God’s true plan for it as a foreshadowing of the “marriage” of Christ and the Church.

So, rather than merely ridiculing our culture’s obsession with sex, we should try to understand it and help everyone we know to take that step back from the ridiculous to the sublime.