Franciscan at Home

The human heart loves mysteries. By mystery, I mean hidden knowledge that requires a sleuth to uncover the truth. We love the idea of discovering lost secrets that upend our entire understanding of our world. Think of space aliens and the secret Area 51 in New Mexico. Think of movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark where the “true purpose” of the Ark of the Covenant is revealed or National Treasure, which divulges the “real” mission behind the Knights Templar and features the discovery of an ancient, buried treasure. There are even “mysteries” about the Catholic Church found in books like The Da Vinci Code, which “promised” to tell readers the machinations of the Vatican’s puppet masters, Opus Dei, and their effort to keep hidden forbidden knowledge that would expose the “true,” scandalous origins of Christianity!

Conspiracy theories make for interesting novels and entertaining movies, but, to the dismay of many, they are nothing more than conjecture designed to lead people away from the much more mundane truth of reality. Most of the time, what is obvious and clear is the truth: we haven’t found aliens, the Ark is not the ultimate weapon, and who the Church is and what she believes has been public since its founding by Christ and does not require a detective to find it. This aspect of the Church is what we call “catholic.”

The seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel captures an intimate conversation between Jesus and God the Father. Jesus and his disciples will soon cross the Kidron Valley and enter into the Garden of Gethsemane. He will be arrested and enter into his Passion. “The hour has come” (Jn 17:1).

Earlier in John’s Gospel, when Mary approaches Jesus at the wedding at Cana, Jesus responds by saying, “My hour has not yet come” (Jn 2:4). Later, when Jesus heals on the Sabbath, the people seek to arrest him, but “no one laid hands on him, because his hour had not yet come” (Jn 7:30). But now, the hour has come, and Jesus turns to the Father in prayer.

What does Jesus say to the Father at this crucial moment? He prays that we all may be one. “Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.... The glory which you have given to me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (Jn 17:11; 22–23).

Christ’s prayer is a prayer for the Church—it is a prayer for you and me—so that we may all be regathered into one Mystical Body of Christ, founded on the apostles, sharing by Word and sacrament in that one love between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

“About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they’re just one thing, and we shouldn’t complicate the matter.”[i] These are the striking words of St. Joan of Arc, boldly spoken as she stood trial. “They’re just one thing” because Jesus himself described his relationship to the nascent Church as the relationship of vines united to a single branch (cf. Jn 15:1–5). In other words, while distinctions are not difficult to find between Christ and the Christians who make up the Church, at root (forgive my pun), they are one living thing.

We live in a time of heightened divisiveness and loneliness. Online social connections are, as we all know, meager substitutes for real connection and friendship. Perhaps you share with me the conviction that the Church is the needed antidote. The Church is—and at the same time is meant to become—a remarkable communion. The sacraments bring us into communion with the Blessed Trinity, and being in this communion means that we are also intimately united with everyone who is in this remarkable relationship with God: the angels, the saints, all those in Purgatory, and every baptized person on the planet. If Baptism makes us adopted sons and daughters of the Father, then it also makes us truly brother and sister to one another. This extraordinary truth arises out of what the sacraments accomplish.

Note

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Over the past few years, the findings from surveys done by the Pew Research Center and Gallup polls have consistently painted a dismal, disturbing, and almost depressing picture of how Catholics in the US view the teachings of the Church in the area of sexual morality. According to these sources, the vast majority of Catholics surveyed say that they dissent from the truths of our faith on almost every issue within sexual morality.

For me, these reports are not only distressing but also somewhat bewildering because they do not match my own experience from the past twenty-five years of presenting the truth of God’s plan for human sexuality to thousands of people from all walks of life. In my own work, I have seen the majority of people respond enthusiastically and with a sense of relief and satisfaction to the truth of Catholic sexual morality, especially when it’s grounded in the teachings of Pope St. John Paul II and his monumental catechesis on the theology of the body (henceforth TOB).[1]

All of this leads to some obvious questions. Have those who claim to reject Catholic sexual morality ever heard it proclaimed authentically or ever understood it accurately? Are they rejecting Catholic doctrine on human sexuality or some distorted caricature of our faith? And perhaps more importantly for us, what can we do to help ensure that people are encountering the beauty of God’s plan for human sexuality and hearing it proclaimed in the most personally appealing and most intellectually meaningful way?

In this series of articles, I will share what I have found to be the most important and most attractive truths from TOB to focus on when proclaiming Catholic sexual morality, beginning here with the basic outlook and fundamental reference points provided by TOB. In the subsequent articles, I will apply all of this to specific moral issues.

[1] John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2006).

A powerful narrative exists within the popular culture that the advancements of modern science pose an existential threat to religious belief. This narrative, popularized by many influential authors, argues that scientific discovery is gradually upending the stranglehold Christian “superstitions” have held over the popular imagination. Nowhere is this apparent conflict more evident than in the field of evolutionary biology. For example, Christians maintain that we are made in the image and likeness of the Creator, yet many advocates of evolutionary theory claim humans are a meaningless twig on the evolutionary tree of life.

This view holds such force that Pope Benedict XVI felt compelled to state in his inaugural Pontifical homily that “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.”[i]

[i] Benedict XVI, “Homily of His Holiness Benedict XVI” (April 24, 2005).

Each year, the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. Corpus Christi: “the Body of Christ” in Latin. Of course, every Mass is a special celebration of the Body of Christ because every Mass is centered on the Eucharist. But for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, the Church, in a particular way, invites us to be especially mindful of this mystery of faith, to embrace more fully the sublime magnificence of that which is the centerpiece of our religion, the very heart of Catholicism.

When we come forward to receive Holy Communion, we bow our heads in reverence to the gift that we are about to receive. Some people genuflect before receiving. Some people even fall to their knees in order to receive in the holy posture of kneeling. And if we receive Holy Communion on the tongue, then we open our mouths like helpless infants seeking to be fed; if we receive on the hand, then we hold our hands up like helpless beggars hoping for some charity, presenting the open hands like holy thrones upon which Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords, will be seated when we receive him. “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” These words we say together, and they are the final words we speak before coming forward to receive the Lord. Because indeed, we are not worthy to receive Him. But he permits himself nonetheless to be received by us because it is only by his grace—and our words and actions done in faith in our response to his grace—that we are made worthy.

And this is pure gift, pure grace. We can do nothing to earn this, nothing to merit this, nothing to make ourselves worthy, only that we receive this precious gift in a state of grace and with proper disposition of heart and soul—humbly, worthily, and well.

Behold, the pierced One. Behold, the Lamb who was slain. Behold, the Suffering Servant, and the risen and glorified, majestic, and triumphant Lord. Behold, the Body of Christ.