“It is very good.”

Based on pages 7-30 from The Theology of the Body in Simple Language

God’s look sees the world as good, as created – even where it is a fallen world.  And because of God’s look, with which God embraces God’s work and does not let it go, we live. (Creation and Fall, p45).

[M]an, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.  (Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes 24:3)

Does Facebook make us lonely?

The Theology of the Body has introduced us to two complementary themes: original solitude and original unity.  Each of us is a unique individual, alone and distinct from the created world around us.  Yet we were made to be in relationship to God and with one another, as imaged in the story of our original human parents created as male and female.  Yet while solitude and relationship with others are essential aspects of our being human, we often experience these in our broken world as mere loneliness, an especially modern problem in an era of instant communication.

Learning to give onions

     Sunday our Theology of the Body Rector’s Forum continues with “Why Love?,” reading pages 31-34 in Theology of the Body in Simple Language. In the meantime, here’s a chapter and a couple quotes from Doesteyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov that hopefully may inspire our thinking about life as a gift from God that we, in turn, offer to and receive from others. (Here’s some extra comments on the scene.)

My Lord and my God

The scripture readings for the Easter season continue to reinforce the things that we are learning from the Theology of the Body.  Our bodies are important to God.  He himself took upon himself a body of human flesh. We encounter God—more than just a body—when we “see” Jesus Christ.  This is certainly true for the readings we heard this past Sunday.

It was as His Flesh: ours

A bit belatedly, let me wish to all of our readers of this blog a most blessed Easter! The resurrection of Jesus—the Word made flesh—is a most important part of the Theology of the Body.  He is risen indeed!  Allelulia!  Jesus’ risen body demonstrates that our bodies are significant eternally to our Father God who loves us.  It is a foreshadowing of the resurrection bodies that our Father will one day give us.

Only the wound is there

As we continue our reflections on Holy Week, we come to the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday that we often neglect.  Yet the Church from ancient times has had much to say about this remarkable Sabbath-Saturday that stands between the full and the empty tomb. 

A Friday called Good

Many words have been written about the crucifixion of Jesus.  Yet words can never be fully adequate to capture the depths of the mystery of human sin and evil that is so bound up with the mystery of the redemptive love of God in Christ Jesus.  I was drawn to a short poem by George Herbert (1593-1633) and need not say more. 

Signs and Wonders

     My parents and I awoke to the sound of our shepherd barking in our car, which is uncool in the middle of the night in a peaceful Yosemite campground. We looked out to see the moonlit situation: a bear cub was up a tree, our stupid dog was in our tin can of a car barking at the cub, momma bear was at the bottom of the tree, and we were in a tent. It all did work out eventually, but everyone knows—you don’t mess with momma bear.

A week called Holy

During this special week of the liturgical year—Holy Week—Christians reflect upon the events around Jesus’ passion, crucifixion, and burial.  It is not hard to see that what we have learned so far from the Theology of the Body is connected with these seminal events.

March Madness and Living the Christian Life

     Tonight Kentucky plays Kansas for the NCAA championship. We lived in Kansas City only about long enough to get our daughter’s high school diploma, an adorable teeny tractor Christmas tree ornament, and go to the weirdest sporting event I’ve ever attended. I didn’t know if KU’s fans were watching a basketball game or The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Strange chants, newspapers up, confetti all over, and they hardly ever sat down. Something also happened and their arms all turned into a supposed wheat field, I think—they were well trained at the slightest event to act in a certain way. Though not a March mad fan myself, it is interesting to compare this to living the Christian life.

The Abyss

After Rich Mullins died, fellow singer-songwriter Amy Grant had this to say about her friend: