Man and Woman He Created Them by Paul John

Author:Paul, John [Paul, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Religion
ISBN: 9780819848741
Publisher: Pauline Books and Media
Published: 2011-06-24T00:00:00+00:00

2. Continence for the Kingdom of Heaven

A. THE WORDS OF CHRIST IN MATTHEW 19:11–12

Christ’s Word and the Rule for Understanding

73 General Audience of March 10, 1982 (Insegnamenti, 5, no. 1 [1982]: 789–93)

1. TODAY WE BEGIN TO REFLECT about virginity or celibacy “for the kingdom of heaven.”

The question of the call to an exclusive gift of self to God in virginity and celibacy plunges its roots deeply into the evangelical soil of the theology of the body. To show the dimensions proper to it, one must keep in mind the words by which Christ appealed to the “beginning,” and those by which he appealed to the resurrection of the body. The statement “When they rise from the dead, they will take neither wife nor husband” (Mk 12:25) indicates that there is a condition of life without marriage, in which man, male and female, finds at one and the same time the fullness of personal giving and of the intersubjective communion of persons, thanks to the glorification of his whole psychosomatic being in the eternal union with God. When the call to continence “for the kingdom of heaven” finds an echo in the human soul, in the conditions of temporality and thus in the conditions under which persons “take a wife and take a husband” (Lk 20:34), it is not difficult to perceive a particular sensibility of the human spirit that seems to anticipate, already in the conditions of temporality, what man will share in the future resurrection.

2. Christ, however, did not speak about this particular vocation in the immediate context of his dialogue with the Sadducees (see Mt 22:23–30; Mk 12:18–25; Lk 20:27–36) when he appealed to the resurrection of the body. He had spoken about it (already earlier) in the context of the dialogue with the Pharisees about marriage and its indissolubility, as an extension, as it were, of that dialogue (see Mt 19:3–9). His concluding words are about the so-called certificate of divorce allowed by Moses in some cases: “Because of the hardness of your heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. Therefore I say to you, Whoever divorces his wife, except in the case of concubinage, and marries another commits adultery” (Mt 19:8–9). Then the disciples, who—as one can deduce from the context—were attentively listening to that dialogue and particularly to the final words spoken by Jesus, say to him, “If this is the condition of man in relation to woman, it is not advantageous to marry” (Mt 19:10). Christ gives them the following answer. “Not all can understand it, but only those to whom it has been granted. For there are eunuchs who were born this way from their mother’s womb; there are some who were made eunuchs by men, and there are others who made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone understand this who can” (Mt 19:11–12).

3. About this dialogue reported by Matthew one can raise the question: What did the disciples think when,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.