Week 5 - What it means to be a man

Theology of the Body Week 5
Living True Manhood in Christ

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for a friend.” John 15:13

“Jesus Christ, in the revelation of the mystery of God and His love, fully reveals man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear.” Gaudium Et Spes 22

“If we live according to the truth of our sexuality, we fulfill the very meaning and being of our existence.” Pope John Paul II

In the beginning…
1. God created men and women in His image and likeness. God is Love, and we are made to reflect and point to His Love.
2. Once again, through the union of a man and woman in marriage, God makes visible His love for mankind and His plan to be eternally united with us in Heaven.
3. God’s love is FREE, TOTAL, FAITHFUL and FRUITFUL. Our love must be the same…
4. However, our calling to love one another is often warped by sin
5. Instead of giving, men resort to taking. Instead of seeing the woman as a sister in humanity, he reduces her to an object of his lust
6. By looking at the way God designed our body and desires, we can learn who we are as men and how we should live

The Meaning of Masculinity
1. What is the most important question a man could ask himself?
2. Men: there is a reason why we are fascinated by women’s bodies: God made us that way!
3. The closer you get to God, the more you become who He made you to be as a man
4. Your sexual drive will not be eliminated – it will be perfected in Love
5. According to society, who or what is a man?
6. Is this what God planned from the beginning? Then, why do we believe it?
7. Once again, we must uncover the lies of Satan from their origin, and untwist what is good, pure, and true!

Initiating Love – What it means to be a man…
1. Just as women, men are called to LOVE
2. But, men and women aren’t the same, they are equal but different
3. So, men are called to love in a distinctly different way than women. Women are called to love through receiving and conceiving where as men are called to love through initiating a gift of themselves.“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her…Ephesians 5:25
4. The man initiates love because he is the man – it isn’t what he ought to do, it is part of who he is
5. When you consider the anatomy of a man, it is obvious he is the one who initiates the gift of himself to the woman
6. Christ repeatedly refers to Himself as the BRIDEGROOM
7. Men: don’t be ashamed into thinking you are bad for having strong sexual desires. When you see a woman, God designed your entire being to respond!
8. God says that women are an earthly reflection of paradise. When we get to Heaven we will realize God is the ultimate delight of our eyes. Until then, women foreshadow the beauty of Heaven itself!
9. Just as God initiates love with us, men are to initiate this love with a woman according to God’s demands of true love
10. Just as God did, men are also to initiate LIFE
11. A young man must choose wisely when and through who he will bring life into the world
12. By abstaining from sex until he is married a young man is doing what is best for his future children by not conceiving them yet…He sacrifices his desires for the good of others…He postpones gratification…He is a real man
13. Instead of abstaining, some men gamble with the future of others and if their girlfriend does “accidentally” get pregnant some either blame her or pay for her to “take care of it”
14. Remember men, that Satan hates women, he hates children, he hates life. He will even use you to destroy women, children, and, yes, even life.
15. The mission of being a father is something every man is called to do – no matter what their vocation is
16. But, we should not engage in the act that creates a family until we are prepared to bear the responsibility for one
17. If God chose to reveal Himself as Father, you can be sure that the devil will use every weapon to tarnish the earthly image of fatherhood

The Fall of Man(hood)
1. To discover the meaning of manhood, we must look at the two Adams: Adam, and Christ (the new Adam)
2. In the beginning, Adam understood his call to love as God intended, and he loved his bride rightly. This is why “the man and his wife were naked and felt no shame.” Genesis 2:25
3. What went wrong? Why did Adam fail?
4. Adam doubted the love of the Father and chose not to obey God’s plan for his manhood.
5. In Genesis 2:15 God tells Adam that it is his job to cultivate and protect the Garden of Eden.
6. The Garden of Eden is also a metaphor for the woman. Remember Song of Songs 4:12: “You are a garden enclosed, my sister my bride.”
7. So, essentially Adam’s duty was to protect both his wife and the garden.
8. In doubting the love of the Father, Adam denies his duties willed by God and allowed Satan access to his wife, the very life he was called to protect above his own.
9. As Satan tempts Eve, Adam stands by and watched Satan put his wife to death, Genesis 3:6, and his role as a man becomes further distorted.
10. The first result of sin is: SHAME
11. Why were Adam and Eve ashamed?
12. In this case, Adam, who once loved purely as God loves by making a complete self-sacrificial gift of himself to his bride, now looked upon Eve with lust and no longer desired to make a selfless gift of himself to her.
13. Just as Satan disoriented the meaning of woman’s sexuality through sin, he disoriented the man’s desires – opening him up to an enslaving emotion of lust
14. Lust is the absence of LOVE
15. If God is love, then lust is the absence of GOD
16. Lust = Satan’s attack to object women and confuse masculinity, to take humanity away from the plan of God.
What happened after sin?
17. As a man, Adam should have accepted responsibility for “falling down at his post” and allowing Satan access to his wife. However, he does the opposite and blames both the woman and God: “The woman whom you put here with me – she gave me the fruit of the tree so I ate it.” Genesis 3:12
18. Just as Eve failed to trust in the love of God and chose to take for herself, Adam failed too. Did he participate in the manhood planned by God? No!
19. Our hearts are now a battlefield between love and lust
20. How does sin effect men?
· Man’s view changed from giving love to “getting some” à and knowing how to push a woman’s buttons to get her to give him what he wants…
· Man became passive towards woman and allowed her to do the imitating
· Others are wrapped up in pornography – “the woman on the screen never says no”
· Even masturbation and oral sex say that “all I want is my own gratification”
21. Man’s problem is not the beauty of the woman’s body. His problem is that he must re-learn how to “look” at her
22. But…all is not lost!

Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous…Just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Romans 5:18-19,21

Restoring Real Manhood Through the New Adam
Why did Christ come?
1. Christ did not come to give us coping mechanisms to deal with our sins! Christ came to set us FREE!!! To restore God’s original plan from the beginning!!! To untwist the meaning of masculinity and femininity…
Why did Christ come as a man?
2. Christ came to physically reveal the fatherhood of God.
3. God is Father because he initiated the gift of life
4. He came as the bridegroom to physically give His body to His bride on the cross
5. Christ came as a man also because men are called to initiate love by making a gift of that love to his bride. “We love because He first loved us.” 1John 4:19
6. Because of sin, the love of God dies in the hearts of man. Christ came to breathe the breath of life back into His people so we can once again love in the image and likeness of God.
How was Christ’s response to manhood different from Adam’s?
7. Just as Eve doubted and Mary surrendered in complete faith, Adam cowardly backed down but Christ did the opposite!
8. Instead of allowing Satan to attack His Bride, Christ took the attack upon his back and endured it until it killed him. Christ succeeded to make a self-sacrificial gift of himself. The TREE now becomes the source of eternal life, a choice of pure love
“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends”
John 15:13
9. The battle is for the dignity of the Bride, as individuals and as the Church. Men are then called to be the defender and protector of women’s dignity.
10. Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. 2The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe 3and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they struck him in the face…When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, “BEHOLD THE MAN!” John 19:1-6
11. This is the meaning of manhood! Why did Christ suffer the Passion? So he could lay down His life out of love for His bride…

The Way Christ Loved His Bride
1. Freely: “…I lay down my life in order to take it up again.” John 10:17
2. Totally: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you.” John 15:9
3. Faithfully: “But God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8
4. Fruitfully: “In this way the love of God was revealed to us; God sent His only Son into the world so that we might have life through him.” 1John 4:9
5. Gentlemen, this is your call! “Husbands love your wives even as Christ loved the Church and handed Himself over for her.” Ephesians 5:25

Man as a Warrior
1. Strength has always been associated with masculinity
2. The strength of the male body points to something deeper à it reveals the interior strength men possess
3. True masculinity requires interior strength – especially to overcome lust
4. God is a warrior, but often enough we don’t hear of him this way.
5. God fights for His beloved – He isn’t weak and doesn’t back down from a fight
6. Too many people have tried to feminize men and God. The result is fewer men at church, and fewer real “men” in general
7. Rarely will a man ever have to literally die for his bride. But, men, if you really want to be a warrior and die for her, let your lust die. Guard her soul. Protect her eternal life…

“Christ assigns the dignity of every woman as a task to every man.”

JP II

Pursue Her!!!
1. Remember how men are to initiate love?
2. The Book of Tobit gives us a glimpse of how to love a woman…Tobit 8:4-9
3. Although Tobias “yearned deeply” for his beautiful bride, he pursued her with sincerity and not because of lust
4. A woman knows the difference between being looked upon as an object and being viewed as a daughter of God
5. Often men are portrayed as “womanizers” (which isn’t fair…)
6. Society says that gay men are the only non-threatening males that are as friends to women

There is a need for a crusade of manliness and purity…

St. Josemaria Escriva

The Mission of Men
1. Men: Who will you be for women?
2. Your answer to this question will determine the measure of your masculinity
3. Should you ever lose sight of what it means to be a man, imagine Jesus hanging on the cross saying: “This is how I got my bride to Heaven. How else do you think you’ll get yours there?”
4. Although marriage or the priesthood may seem far away, the way you live today will form the person you are a decade from now. How are men to live?
YOU ask out the girl – take the fear of rejection off her
Be a gentleman – know that because you are a man, you represent who God is to women
· Treat her like a sister, first – protect her like a sister
· Give your life and struggles to Christ everyday and allow Him to change your lust into love
· Remember the strength that God gave you to be a man
· Don’t be afraid of what true love will “cost” you

“Behold the Man…”

John 19:6