Marital Physical Intimacy: A Genuine Gift from God
Scripture describes the beauty of marital love. From the closing words of Genesis 2:24–25, we hear, “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body. The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame.” We appreciate our gift of human life as sexual beings. God inspires scripture writers to use the joy of marital relations as an image to describe God’s love. Read the words of Songs 7:7–12 as an example. In Proverbs and the letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians, sensual joy is connected to fidelity. Long-married couples can attest that a lifetime of fidelity enriches life in many ways.
Saint John Paul II captured these messages from Scripture in his talks known as the Theology of the Body. Those talkscombine the Church’s regard for the moral, ethical, ethos side of marital life with the sensual, eros side. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he gave 129 talks describing our existence as sexual beings. He talked about the gift and purpose of human existence. He spoke of the role of our human bodies in God’s plan. He reinforced the Church’s teaching about love and sexuality. Others have taken the content of his talks and formed them into various educational packages, but there is nothing like the original. The addresses are available online and free. What comes out in the Pope’s words is a very human message. The words reflect the Pope’s life as an athlete, poet, playwright, restaurant worker, philosopher, traveler, and youth minister. He expresses the joy of being alive as human men and women fully equipped with sexuality.
From a church teaching standpoint, the Pope reminded us that Catholic Theology of the Body rests on meaningful and joy-filled truths. God created men and women in His image. God is love, and we cannot live without love. The body is a good and essential part of our existence. Man and woman from the beginning form a communion of persons that is an expression of God’s communion with humanity. My next few articles will build on this theme.