“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” Matthew 5:8
“The man and his wife were naked, yet they felt no shame.” Genesis 2:25
“Love is our origin, our vocation, our end.” Christopher West
Why do we need TOB?
• Our world is hurting. Our friends are hurting. We are so connected by technology, yet we are so alone.
• Everyone has the desire to be loved. It is written on our hearts. And we are searching for love everywhere
• According to Christopher West, there are 3 “gospels” out there that propose to satisfy this ache for love we have:
o Starvation gospel: repress desire, follow rules, and do it because God and our parents say so.
o Fast Food gospel: “Supersize Me” example: just feed yourself as much as you want whenever you want and you’ll be satisfied. This is the gospel our culture offers
o Banquet gospel: The Good News that Jesus offers through His Word, His Church, and through TOB. Think about it: God knows we HUNGER for love. So what did He do? He made it so we actually consume LOVE when we receive Him in the Eucharist!
What is TOB?
1. Pope John Paul II’s explanation for the real meaning of love, sex, and God’s plan for human relationship
2. TOB is the working title of 129 short talks. This was the first major teaching of his pontificate…hmmm…interesting
3. It is a biblical reflection on the meaning of the body, sexual desire, and love. It is an understanding of our sexuality in a way you’ve never heard before.
4. In a nutshell: the physical human body has a specific meaning and is capable of revealing answers regarding fundamental questions about us and our lives:
• What is the meaning of life?
• Is there a real purpose to life and if so, what is it?
• Why were we created male and female? Does it really matter?
• Why did God give us desires for love?
• What is the purpose of the married and celibate vocations?
• What exactly is "Love"?
• What does chastity really mean and is it truly possible to be pure of heart?
• What is God’s plan for my life?
5. Over the course of our time together you will discover the beauty and purpose of your sexuality
6. Despite what you may have heard, the Catholic Church teaches and believes that human sexuality is good, beautiful, and really important. The Church teaches that our sexuality points us to heaven!
7. In TOB you will learn what Jesus’ love on the cross and sexual love have in common
8. You will learn about how to get to heaven and have a taste of it on earth, how to love as God calls, and that we will be set free by living God’s plan for our lives
When we see the truth about our bodies and the truth about sex, we change our lives not as a result of persuasion, guilt, fear of pregnancy or disease, or because we have to, but because God’s view of love is everything the human heart longs for.
Jason Evert
Why is the Body a “Theology?”
1. What is the MOST IMPORTANT question you could ask yourself? Answer: What is the meaning of life?
2. God has given us profound clue, stamped in our very bodies.
3. Many people grow up thinking that spirit = good, body = bad. This is sooo wrong!
4. JP II says that God created the physical body as a “sign” of his own divine mystery!
5. The word theology means a “study of God”
6. Theology of the Body is a “study of God” through the body!
The Body and the Spiritual Battle
1. How many slang terms can you come up with to describe your knee?
2. Now, how many slang terms can you come up with to describe those things that make you different from the person of the opposite sex?
3. If God created the body and sexual union to proclaim his own eternal mystery of love, why don’t we typically see them in this profound way?
4. Ponder this for a moment: If the body and sex are meant to proclaim our union with God, and if there’s an enemy who wants to separate us form God, what do you think he’s going to attack?
5. If we want to know what is most sacred in the world, all we need to do is look for what is most profaned.
6. It is not that society’s answer to sex and our bodies reveals too much, it is that it doesn’t reveal enough!
The Bible: The Greatest Love Story Ever Told
1. What are some of the analogies or parables that the Bible uses to express God’s love for us?
2. From beginning to end, the Bible itself is a story about marriage. How?
3. It begins with the Book of Genesis and the marriage of Adam and Eve
4. It ends in the Book of Revelation with the “wedding of the Lamb” – which is the marriage of Christ and the Church
5. Throughout the Old Testament, God’s love for his people is described as the love of a husband for his bride. Hosea: “I have betrothed myself to you forever…”
6. Read the Song of Songs…juicy stuff!!
7. Using these books of the Bible as two bookends to interpret everything else that’s in between, what is God’s ultimate plan?
To marry us!
8. How did God reveal this eternal plan to us in a way that we couldn’t miss?
In our bodies!
In the Beginning…
1. When some Pharisees questioned Jesus about the meaning of marriage, they recalled to Him that Moses allowed divorce.
2. Jesus’ reply provides one of the keys to understanding the Gospel: “For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” Matthew 19:8
3. If we are to understand God’s purpose for our sexuality and the meaning of the “one flesh” union, according to Christ, we have to go back to the beginning, before sin entered the picture
4. In the beginning God created Adam and Eve to be pure and holy
5. They didn’t have relationship problems like we do today and their relationship was filled with pure love, pure generosity, and pure passion
6. They were truly naked without shame
7. There was no need to cover themselves because they had no fear of being used
8. They saw in their naked bodies the call to be a gift to each other, and they knew how to live that out
9. If we are to understand God’s purpose for our sexuality and the meaning of the “one flesh” union, according to Christ, we have to go back to the beginning, before sin entered the picture
10. According to John Paul II, three experiences in particular define the human person in the original state of innocence and purity: solitude, unity, and nakedness.
11. Genesis: The Lover, not the optometrist
a. Rather than looking abstractly at God’s original plan, we need to consider the first man and woman’s experiences of the body and sexuality.
b. Symbolism is the most fitting way to convey deep spiritual truths – this is what Genesis does (My ways are not your ways, says the Lord…)
In the Image of God He Created Them…
1. Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness…” Genesis 1:26
2. “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply.” Genesis 1:27-28
3. “The body, in fact, and it alone is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine.”
4. The complimentarity of the sexes images God.
5. If we want to understand how we image God we must first understand who God is
Who is God?
6. “God has revealed his innermost secret: God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” CCC 221
7. This key statement summarizes the ultimate mystery of God and the meaning of human existence: LOVE
8. Whoever is without love does not know God for God is love IJohn 4:8
What is God’s love?
9. Free, Total, Faithful, Fruitful…where have we seen these before?
10. Because we are created male and female in the image of God, we too are called to a life giving communion of persons
11. Sexual union, the two becoming “one flesh” makes visible the invisible mystery of God…this is huge!
God created the union of man and woman to image the union of the Trinity. God created the union of man and woman to foreshadow our union with Him in Heaven. WHOA!
Original Solitude: The First Discovery of “Personhood”
1. “Then the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Genesis 2:18
2. The most obvious meaning of this “solitude” is that the man is alone without woman. But there is a deeper meaning from this verse.
3. This creation account doesn’t even distinguish between male and female until after Adam’s “deep sleep.” Here, Adam represents humanity
4. Genesis 2:20: Adam differs from the animals. How? His Freedom.
a. Adam isn’t determined by bodily instinct
b. Unlike the animals, he has the “breath of life” inspiring his body Gn 2:7 and he is invited to enter a “covenant of love” with God himself
5. Man is “alone” because he’s the only bodily creature made in God’s image and likeness.
6. Why is it not good for man to be alone?
a. Man must have someone else to be able to fulfill the call to love as God loves, as a communion of persons.
7. Why was Adam given freedom?
a. Adam was called to love, and without freedom, love is impossible
b. In his solitude, Adam realizes that love is his origin, his vocation, his destiny
c. Freedom is given for love. It can lead to destruction and division, but it’s intended to give us life and unity. It is our choice.
Original Unity: The Communion of Persons
1. “So the Lord God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. The Lord God then built up into a woman the rib that he had taken from the man.” Genesis 2:21-22
2. The Hebrew word for rib is a play on the word “life”
3. Woman comes from the same life as man, therefore she is equal in dignity
4. Notice that the woman comes from the side of Adam. What does this mean?
5. Since woman is equal, she shares the same humanity and life of man – she also shares the same call to LOVE
6. “When he brought her to the man, the man said: ‘This one, at last, is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh…” Genesis 2:23
7. Adam finally found his “complement.” He found the one he could love and with whom he could image God and be a gift (remember, sin has not entered into the world yet)
Original Nakedness: Key to Understanding God’s Original Plan
1. “The man and his wife were naked and felt no shame.” Genesis 2:25
2. Why are humans the only creatures that experience shame?
3. Shame is self-defense from being looked at or treated like an object
4. Adam and Eve were created by God as something very good in their nakedness.
5. Did you know that Pope John Paul II ordered that all the painted over loin cloths be removed from the Sistine Chapel?
6. Sadly, many people harbor a deep hatred for their own bodies. How is this manifested? Eating disorders, cutting, steroid use, doing anything to get those six-pack abs, and exploitation
8. The reason both Adam and Eve were naked without shame is because they experienced sexual desire only as the desire to love in God’s image. There is no shame, or fear, in pure love. “Perfect love casts out all fear.” 1John 4:18
9. They saw in each other the nuptial meaning of their bodies – that their bodies were created to be a gift to one another in their union
How do they do this?
10. Because their bodies are complimentary: they go together!
11. Because they reveal the communion of God
12. “The body and it alone is capable of making visible what is invisible, the spiritual and the divine.” February 20, 1980
13. Adam gazed upon his wife, and she upon him, as they each experienced the revelation of the body.
14. “The fact that ‘they were not ashamed’ means that the woman was not an object for the man nor he for her.” February 20, 1980
15. Freedom allowed this to happen…“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” Matthew 5:8
A Re-cap…The Nuptial Meaning of the Body
1. The nuptial meaning of the body reveals that man and woman are called to image God through bestowing the gift of themselves on each other, thus forming a life giving communion of persons.
2. “The human body…includes right from the beginning a nuptial attribute, that is, the capacity of expressing love. The love that precisely in which the person becomes a gift and – by means of this gift – fulfills the very meaning of his very being and existence.” January 16, 1980
3. “Man can fully discover himself only in a sincere giving of himself.” GS, n.24
4. We can only discover who we are by loving as God loves.
5. Christ’s new commandment is “Love one another as I have loved you.” Jn 15:12
6. How did Christ love us? “This is my body which is given for you.” Luke 22:19
7. Love is spiritual, but Christ demonstrates that it is expressed and realized in the body
8. God wanted this to be so near to us that He “stamped” this call to love (to be a gift) in our bodies. We call this the “nuptial meaning of the body.”
9. A man and a woman’s body do not make sense on their own, but together they make sense that they are called to be a gift to one another
10. Not only that, but their mutual gift can even lead to a third!
11. “Adam knew his wife and she conceived.”
12. Genesis 1:28: God’s first commandment
13. Sexual love becomes an earthly icon of the Trinity, and it points us to Heaven! (I bet you’ve never heard of sex like this before!)
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