Theology of the Body for Beginners: A Basic Introduction to Pope John Paul II's Sexual Revolution, Revised Edition by Christopher West

Author:Christopher West
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Ascension Press
Published: 2010-12-02T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

MARRIAGE AS A HUMAN SIGN

OF GOD’S LOVE

“Authentic married love is caught up into divine love.”

–GS 48

In chapter six we looked primarily at the mystery of God’s eternal love in which marriage participates. This is the divine dimension of the sacrament. Now we will look more closely at the human dimension of the sacrament—the physical, bodily sign through which God communicates his love in marriage.

We have already said much about the nature of marital love as a “sign” of God’s love. But now the Pope gets even more specific. He does so first by developing the concept of the “language of the body” and the need to speak this language truthfully. Then he looks to the lovers in the Song of Songs and to the marriage of Tobias and Sarah as biblical examples of couples who, each in their own way, speak the language of the body truthfully. As John Paul II says, both couples “find their place in what constitutes the sacramental sign of marriage. Both share in the formation of this sign” (TOB 116:5).

The Sacramental Sign of Marriage

Every sacrament has a specific physical sign that communicates the spiritual reality of grace it signifies. For example, the physical sign of baptism—the immersion or infusion of a person with water, together with the invocation of the Trinitarian formula—really and truly communicates a spiritual cleansing of the person’s soul from original sin. What, then, is the sign of the sacrament of marriage that communicates the grace of God’s love to the couple?

Simplifying a rather complex discussion, one can recognize that over the centuries there have been two schools of thought about what causes marriage. Most theologians have considered the exchange of vows (marital consent) to be the efficacious cause of marriage. Others have taught that the consummation of marriage in sexual intercourse is the cause. The two views were resolved by Church law centuries ago in this way: Consent is the efficacious cause of marriage. However, consummation of a ratified marriage (between a baptized man and a baptized woman) makes the marriage both intrinsically and extrinsically indissoluble. This is the teaching of John Paul II.

In turn, he observes that the sacramental sign of marriage is one of “manifold contents” (see TOB 105:6). It begins with the exchange of consent, is consummated in sexual intercourse, and is borne in the spouses themselves throughout the whole of their married lives. What makes the husband and wife themselves a sacramental sign of God’s spiritual and divine love? Matrimonial consent expressed in and through the body.

Do you remember the Pope’s thesis statement? “The body, in fact, and only the body, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and divine. It has been created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden from eternity in God, and thus to be a sign of it” (TOB 19:4). Only in this context can we understand marriage as a sacramental sign. Hence, if wedding vows express a “language of the heart”—a “language of the spirit”—there must be a corresponding “language of the body.

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.