Coming Clean

YARWIBITE

YARWIBITE – Yet Another Reason Why I Believe In The Eucharist
This might need to become a category of its own.

Anyways.

I’m reading Theology of the Body for Beginners by Christopher West. It is, as the name implies, an introduction to the theology developed by Pope John Paul II during his life-time and particularly his papacy that explains how the human body reveals spiritual realities – even those of God: “‘The body, in fact, and it alone,’ the Pope says, ‘is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world, the mystery hidden since time immerorial in God, and thus to be a sign of it.’” (p. 5)

I’ve only read the introduction, and I’m already nodding my head and finding myself deeply moved and awed. In particular, I wanted to share this piece, which is a thought I’ve often wanted to express but did not have the theological clarity to make.

In addition to imaging the Trinity, sexual love is also meant to image the union of God with humanity. Christ’s redeeming self-donation is a new outpouring of the Trinity’s love on all of creation. The Church receives this love and attempts to reciprocate it. God endowed our bodies as male and female with the sacramental ability to convey this exchange between Christ and the Church. As St. Paul says, quoting from Genesis, “‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the church” (Eph 5:31-32)

This passage from Ephesians 5 is a key text – perhaps the key text – for understanding the body and sexuality “theologically.” Christ is the one who left his Father in heaven. He also left the home of his mother on earth. Why? To give up his body for his Bride (the Church) so that we might become “one flesh” with him. Where do we unite bodily with Christ? Most profoundly, in the Eucharist. (p 9)

No one is saying the Eucharist is a sexual encounter, but that sexuality images this ultimate, complete giving of self that we see in Jesus – an image of the giving of self we find in the Trinity. We find in our sexuality and in the Eucharist and in the Trinity the purpose of relationship – that thing we’re born into and can never escape – being made plain: that God is and mankind was created for “an eternal exchange of love and communion.” (p 10)

Yes! and Amen!