Resurrection Of The Body And Celibacy

The Resurrection of The Body and Celibacy Introduction: When we think about life after death or heaven, how do we picture it? I would love, if we had time, to get your feedback on this question as I'm sure that the answers would be very interesting. But i'm wondering do many of you picture it as a purely spiritual existence or do you have an understanding of it being also a fully human, bodily existence? This is what I would like to explorein part one of my talk – the resurrection of the body and what Pope John Paul II teaches us about it in the Theology of The Body. Every time we say the Creed we profess our belief in the resurrection of the body but how often do we really think about what this means. The resurrection of the body, and of on body in particular – that of Christ's – is at the core of the Christian faith. Without this reality and the surety that it gives us that death is not the end, our faith would be in vain. St. Paul sums this up so well in his first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 15:12) when he says “But if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead neither has Christ been raised and if Christ has not been raised, then empty too is our preaching; empty too your faith. Then we are also false witnesses to God, because we testified against God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain, you are still in your sins. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all.” We, as Christians, know that we will be raised to new life in Jesus, through the fruits of his life, death and resurrection; if we remain in his love. This belief in life eternal after death should fill us with great hope and joy and dispel any fear of death so that we can say, as St. Paul did, “Where O death is your victory? Where O death, is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:55) Without a belief in the resurrection, we can become depressed about life and the finality of death. It can lead to a self-centredness and selfishness that leads some to use others so that they can achieve ot attain as much as possible in this life, and it can lead to the vain hope of trying to hold onto this life by prolonging our life by any means necessary or even trying to chart death by having our bodies frozen in the hope that we can be brought back to life in the future when medical science has advanced. When I think of the reward of an eternal life of love with God and those that I have loved in this life, it fills me with great joy and hope and challenges me to live my life in a way that will merit me attaining this reward by loving God with all my heart and by putting him first, and ny loving my neighbour as myself. I still have a lot of work to do so my prayer is that God gives me sufficient time and graces to grow in holiness.

Part 1 The section of the Theology of the Body that deals with the Resurrection of the Body, or Eschatalogical man, occupies Chapter Three of Part One of “Man And Woman He Created Them” and part one of this chapter is called “Christ Appeals to the Resurrection”. It covers audiences 64 to 72. It is interesting to note that the day that Pope John Paul II was due to start this section of the teaching (13th May 1981) was the day he was shot and almost died. So JPII did not start delivering this section until the Wednesday audience of November 11, 1981. The Pope begins this section without reference to the attempt on his life or his suffering and nonchalantly begins by saying “After a rather long pause, today we will resume the meditations . . . on the theology of the body” 1

JPII begins this section, as he began the two previous sections on “the beginning” and “the human heart”, by meditating on the words of Christ, this time on what Jesus says about marriage in heaven in Marks Gospel, chapter 12 (which was the Gospel reading last Wednesday). Why does he start with the words of Christ? Because as Pope John Paul often said (quoting from Guadium et Spes) “Christ fully reveals man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear.” What Jesus says is in response to a question where the Sadducees question Jesus about the afterlife and the resurrection of the body, which they didn’t believe in (and that was why they were sad-you-see) “And Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection; and they asked him a question, saying, Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man must take the wife, and raise up children for his brother. There were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and when he died left no children; and the second took her, and died, leaving no children; and the third likewise; and the seven left no children. Last of all the woman also died. In the resurrection whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife. Jesus said to them, "Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God said to him, `I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not God of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong.” (Mark 12:18-27) The Sadducees hoped, through their question, to make it appear that the resurrection of the body was impossible. The Sadducees were arguing that the earthly bodily reality of marriage would surely be the same in Heaven if there was a bodily resurrection. If this was the case, they hoped to catch Jesus out by showing that if marriage was the same in heaven as on earth, the woman could not have more than one husband in heaven and therefore there could be no marriage in heaven. By this reasoning, if there is no marriage in heaven, there is no resurrection of the body. The Sadducees were arguing from the mistaken belief that the individual body-soul unity that we experience on earth would be the same in heaven but Jesus’ answer shows how mistaken they were “Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God said to him, `I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not God of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong.” The question that the Sadducees asked shows that they were ignorant of the scriptures and the power of God. Jesus points out, when explaining the scripture passage from the Book of Exodus, that for God to be the God of someone, that person must be in his presence and therefore alive. (Moses and Elijah spoke with Jesus during his transfiguration, thereby showing the disciples that they were alive). Jesus makes it very clear that the resurrection of the body is a truth that is to be believed when he says to the Sadducees twice that they are wrong. Jesus teaches the Sadducees that the body-soul unity in heaven is not identical to the body-soul unity on earth. As Pope John Paul says “The resurrection [of the body] . . . means . . .a completely new state of human life itself.” These words from Jesus about us not marrying or being given in marriage in heaven also make it clear to us that in heaven the human body will retain its masculinity or femininity. This glorified life that God has prepared for us is still a human life. Because we are body persons, our gender is a permanent dimension of our being, even in heaven. But the meaning of masculinity and femininity will be different in heaven than it was “in the beginning”

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before sin or in our current “historical” state, i.e., after sin. Christ also says that those who attain to the resurrection of the dead “can no longer die, for they are like angels.” This may remind us of the line from Psalm 8 that even in our fallen nature we are “a little less than the angels” (Ps.8:5). Pope John Paul goes on to say that “The resurrection means a new submission of the body to the spirit.” Because of our fallen nature our flesh and spirit are not integrated and unified the way they were for Adam and Eve before the fall. We live with the tension between the flesh and the spirit which St Paul speaks of when he says: “I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind” (Rom. 7:23). Pope John Paul comments on this when he says “ ‘Eschatological’ man will be free from that ‘opposition. . . . ‘Spiritualization’ means not only that the spirit will dominate the body [as in the state of man before sin], but, I would say, that it will fully permeate the body, and that the forces of the spirit will permeate the energies of the body.” (No. 67, Dec 9 1981) This new spiritualization of the body will have its source in what the Pope calls a “divinization” of each person’s humanity. The divine life of grace, given in Baptism, will be perfectly united with human life to the extent that grace will permeate every aspect of humanity. Pope John Paul says “Participation in the divine nature, participation in the interior life of God Himself, permeation of what is essentially human by what is essentially divine, will then reach its peak so that the life of the human spirit will arrive at such fullness which previously had been absolutely inaccessible to it.” (No. 67, Dec 9 1981) He goes on to say: “ ‘Divinization’ in the ‘other world’ will bring the human spirit such a ‘range of experience’ of truth and love such as man would never have been able to attain in earthly life.” (No. 67, Dec 9 1981) The Pope’s description of the joy of the human person in his or her body-soul unity in heaven is difficult to grasp because no one living on earth has ever experienced it or anything close to it. The best St. Paul can say in his 1st letter to the Corinthians is "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him," (1Cor2:9-10) Therefore even the Pope’s views of the resurrection of the body are necessarily incomplete because not everything about this state has been revealed to us. However, it is clear from what the Pope describes that we will be so enraptured by the vision of God that we will experience a level of love that we have never been able to experience in this life. God will be everything to us and for us. Fulfilment of the Nuptial Meaning of The Body: Another way we can understand Christ’s words about the resurrection of the body is as the complete fulfilment of the “nuptial meaning of the body”. The nuptial meaning of the body is the body’s “capacity of expressing love: that love precisely in which the person becomes a gift and – by means of this gift – fulfils the very meaning of his being and existence” (Jan 16, 1980) The human body reveals to human persons through its nuptial meaning that we are called to love, to give ourselves in imitation of the Trinity. The nuptial meaning of the body is the understanding we have that we are created to give ourselves to one another in a God-like self-giving, life-affirming and life-giving love. 3

Husbands and wives witness to the reality of the nuptial meaning of the body by living a loving union expressed in and through their bodily self-giving. The marital act between husbands and wives is not only an expression of their love, but it also enriches their union and allows their mutual affection to grow , intensify, and be fruitful. In heaven, once the union between each person and God is established, it will not need to grow or intensify because it reaches its peak at the very first moment of the union and it remains at that point. The immense level of joy of the union with God we will experience in heaven will mean that every bodily sense will be focused on God. As Pope John Paul puts it “There will be born in him [i.e., in the human person experiencing the resurrection in heaven] a love of such depth and power of concentration on God Himself, as to completely absorb his whole pscychosomatic subjectivity.” (No. 68, Dec 16 1981) We will be so filled with the indescribable joy of the union with God that we will not desire any other physical union. Therefore the marital union of spouses will not occur. Our deep desire for love will be completely satisfied in God. St Augustine said “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee O Lord”. In heaven, our restlessness will be at an end. We will have attained the total fulfilment that eludes us in this life. Only in God can we be satisfied because only in Him, with Him, and through Him do we “live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) When speaking of the absence of the marital union in heaven it's important to understand that we will not feel deprived of this. The very purpose of the marital union (.i.e. to love one another as God loves us – freely, totally, faithfully, and fruitfully) will be totally fulfilled. We will know that we are loving in a way that we were created to love. We will be able to love purely. Rather than feeling any loss or lack, we will finally feel satisfied that we are expressing our love for God, and love for others through God, and this will bring us indescribable joy. JPII sums it up like this “Marriage and procreation in itself do not determine definitively the original and fundamental meaning [i.e., that we are called to love] of being a body or of being, as a body, male and female. Marriage and procreation merely give a concrete reality to that meaning in the dimensions of history. The resurrection indicates the end of the historical dimension.” (No. 69, 13th Jan 1982) It's important, at this stage, to point out that in any of our attempts to explain or try to understand heaven we have to always bear in mind that in this life our understanding of the reality of heaven and the true nature of God will always remain very limited as God and heaven are so far beyond our human understanding. We may echo the words of the great theologian and doctor of the Church, Thomas Aquinas, who said after experiencing a celestial vision “In comparison to what I have seen all that I have written is so much straw!” Heaven is often described as the wedding feast and if marriage is supposed to be an earthly sign of the loving union of the Trinity, what does the earthly union of man and woman tell us about our ultimate union with God in heaven? Pope John Paul points out the differences between an earthly marriage and the union with God in heaven when he says that “the virginal state of the body will be totally manifested as the eschatological fulfilment of the ‘nuptial’ meaning of the body.”(no. 68, 16th Dec 1981) What he is saying here is that in heaven, we will all be as virgins, i.e., we will not enter into marriages. And yet we will be completely penetrated by and taken up into the divine love of God, that we see “face to face”, and divinized. In heaven we will become completely who we are meant to be: images of God. As St Iraneus said “The glory of God is man fully alive”. In Heaven God will be fully glorified as we will be fully alive. We will have attained that perfection that Jesus asks us to strive for when he says “Be perfect as your Heavenly father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). We will only reach this perfection in heaven because only in heaven will we be completely united with God in whose image we are all created. 4

The “nuptial meaning of the body,” (i.e., that we realize that we are called to love as God loves) will be perfectly realized in our total gift of self to God and His gift of Himself to us. And yet, we will not be married. We will be virgins. Both marriage and the virginal state, celibacy and virginity, will find their fulfilment together in the same union: the union with God. In this union God does not absorb us. Rather, He donates Himself to us and makes it possible for us to donate ourselves to Him. Neither God nor human persons “lose” their identity or cease to exist, but each comes to “possess” the other through love. We experience an imperfect nuptial union with God everytime we receive Holy Communion. As a priest friend of mine once said, when we receive Holy Communion “Jesus enters into the wedding chamber of our hearts and the nuptials begin.” What a beautiful image to meditate on! The Communion of Saints: In heaven everyone will be individually linked in a communion of persons with God Himself in the mystery of his trinity, and through God there will also be a link to everyone else in heaven. JPII says: “We must think of the reality of the ‘other world’ in the categories of the rediscovery of a new, perfect subjectivity of everyone and at the same time of the rediscovery of a new, perfect intersubjectivity of all.”(no. 68, 16th Dec 1981) Each of us will be totally focused on God, but through God, everyone will be linked to everyone else because in love, He will “possess” all of us and in “possessing” Him through love, we, in turn, will be united with all others in heaven. In God, we will be united especially with those we knew on earth. In heaven the deepest meaning of our bodies will be fulfilled when we become a total gift of self in perfect communion with God and one another. St Paul and the Resurrection of The Body: In the last three addresses of this section, nos. 70-72, Pope John Paul turns to an analysis of Paul’s words regarding the resurrection of the body. John Paul notes that Paul’s perspective is different from Christ’s. When Christ answered the question posed to Him by the Sadducees, He did not use His own resurrection as an argument for the resurrection of the body. He couldn't as this event had not happened yet. But Paul, having seen the risen Christ on the way to Damascus, some years after Christ’s Resurrection, certainly could and did refer to Christ’s rising from the dead. Saint Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians “It [the human body] is sown corruptible; it is raised incorruptible. It is sown dishonourable; it is raised glorious. It is sown weak; it is raised powerful. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one.” (1 Cor. 15:42-44) Paul emphasizes the spritualization of the body when he writes that “If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one.” The good news is that, after the resurrection of the body, there will no longer be any sickness or pain and the opposition between the spirit and the flesh that causes us so many problems will no longer exist. This spiritualized body will be powerful and glorious. All this, of course, confirms the previous analysis from Christ’s answer to the Sadducees. Pope John Paul points out that in Paul’s view the resurrected human body will not just be “restored” to the state of original innocence, i.e., to the state before original sin, but rather will have a “new fullness.” From this Pauline exploration of the Resurrection of the body, JPII moves on to look at the celibate vocation in part two of chapter 3 which is called “Continence for the Kingdom of Heaven”. Since celibacy and virginity have always been understood by the Church as a sign of the future perfection of humanity in the kingdom of God after the resurrection of the body, Pope John Paul’s analysis of Christ and Paul’s words on the resurrection of the body lays a great foundation for his meditations on the question of virginity and celibacy in the lives of ‘historical’ men and women. Only when we understand our ultimate destiny of total union with God in Heaven can we properly understand the celibate vocation on earth.

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Part 2 Celibacy and Virginity: This section on celibacy and virginity covers the audiences from 73-86. The topic of virginity and celibacy is a difficult one in the context of the Theology of the Body. John Paul has clearly and brilliantly shown that God created human beings in His image and likeness, i.e., as persons, with bodies. As images of God, human beings are called to do what He does, i.e., to love one another as He loves Himself in the mystery of the Trinity and as He loves all created persons. This call, this “innate vocation” as its says in the Catechism, of every human being is “inscribed in the humanity of man and woman,”. It should be crystal clear to all of us because this meaning is “inscribed” in our very flesh. Our masculinity and femininity is the physical sign given to us so that we might know that we are called to enter a loving communion in imitation of the Trinitarian communion. This is what John Paul has called “the nuptial meaning of the body”. However, our bodies not only reveal to us that we are to love others as God loves Himself and us, they are the means of expressing this love in the world. Because of our capacity to love, we are the only beings God has created who can be (and are meant to be) visible images of the Creator Himself. Marriage is the most common and natural response to fulfilling the nuptial meaning of the body and our deep desire to love and be loved. After creating them “male and female,” God called them to imitate His own loving Trinitarian communion by inviting Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply,”(Gen 1:28.) i.e., to become the first human married couple. (A husband, wife and child are an earthly image of the love and fruitfulness of the Trinity). In the Theology of The Body Pope JPII very beautifully describes the incredible blessing and goodness God has bestowed on the human race by inviting each of us to imitate His own Trinitarian communion through marriage and become co-creators with him. In the context of exploring the vocation of celibacy and virginity, this then raises an obvious question: If marriage is such a beautiful and foundational calling, instituted by God Himself and inscribed in the very flesh of every human person, why would anyone choose not to enter into such a communion—especially for the sake of the Kingdom of God? This choice seems almost contradictory to the very will of God manifested, most obviously, when He created us male and female and again when He said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” (Gen 2:18) However Christ’s words on virginity and celibacy are just as much part of His teaching as are His words on marriage. Christ's teaching on celibacy for the kingdom (Mt 19:12) is to be found in the same passage where He answers the Pharisees’s question on divorce (Mt 19: 3-12) And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?" Mat 19:4 He answered, "Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, Mat 19:5 and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? Mat 19:6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder." Mat 19:7 They said to him, "Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?" Mat 19:8 He said to them, "For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. Mat 19:9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery." Mat 19:10 The disciples said to him, "If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry." 6

Mat 19:11 But he said to them, "Not all men can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. Mat 19:12 For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it." After answering the question of the Pharisees, Christ’s disciples say to him that it might be better not to marry (because divorce will no longer be accepted as a moral option). Mat 19:10 The disciples said to him, "If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry." Christ responds to this remark and says: “For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it.” (Mt 19:12) By using the term eunuch Jesus was referring to the self-denial that is involved in the celibate vocation. But Jesus goes on to point out that celibacy is a charism or gift from God that is bestowed on those he chooses, inviting them to freely accept it. Jesus teaches that virginity and celibacy are to be embraced by those called to those exceptional vocations not because marriage without divorce is too hard and would lead people to sin but because this is God's plan for the person's life. This will be their path to holiness and the one that will bring them the greatest joy and fulfillment in life. The words of Jesus “He who is able to receive this, let him receive it” show that virginity and celibacy are “granted,” but also should be “accepted.” This is the mystery of a vocation. Whether called to marriage or celibacy, the gentle action of the grace of the Holy Spirit calls us to a specific path to heaven, a specific vocation. This is the “granting” which Christ speaks of. But this gentle stirring of God’s grace in our hearts must be chosen in our wills. In any vocation, there are two aspects: the gift of God and the acceptance on our part. Those called to virginity and celibacy should receive this vocation, i.e., they should choose it wholeheartedly in their wills, just as those called to marriage should choose marriage wholeheartedly in their wills. But since every vocation is “granted,” i.e., a gift from God, we cannot simply choose our own. The best vocation is the one that God has invited us to follow. For most, that vocation is marriage. It is interesting to note that Christ’s call to virginity and celibacy is not found together with his answer to the question of the Sadducees on the resurrection of the body and this is because virginity and celibacy in this life, chosen for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven, is a choice made in the context of “historical man,” the fallen (because of original sin) state of all human beings now on earth. In this way, the choice of Christian celibacy parallels the choice of marriage. Both vocations are chosen in the context of the heritage of original sin and its effects, both are in response to a deep love for another, and both fulfill the nuptial meaning of our bodies. The married person expresses love in the familial communion and the celibate or virgin does it in the communion of the Church which is the union of Christ with each member of the Church and with the Church as a whole. Christ’s placing of this teaching on celibacy and virginity for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven immediately after his teaching on marriage clearly indicates that marriage is the norm and Christian celibacy and virginity is an exception. That Christ first talks about marriage and then about celibacy and virginity demonstrates this as does his remark about celibacy “He who is able to receive this, let him receive it.” Sometimes the best way to answer a question is with another question so in dealing with the question of why somebody might choose to forego marriage for the sake of the kingdom I think we can ask another question: If the nuptial meaning of the body shows that we are called to love God and others as Christ loves us, why could someone not choose to express one’s love for Christ and all that He did through His passion and death, by devoting one’s life to Him, i.e., by loving Him without entering the marital communion?

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Ultimately, through the nuptial meaning of our bodies, we are called to give ourselves in love for another or others, following Jesus' example. For some, the love of Jesus for them is the love that they are drawn to respond to by giving their lives to him. As Pope John Paul puts it: “man (male and female) is capable of choosing the personal gift of his very self, made to another person in a conjugal pact in which they become ‘one flesh,’ and he is also capable of freely renouncing such a giving of himself to another person, so that, choosing continence ‘for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven,’ he can give himself totally to Christ.”(no. 80, April 28, 1982) Obviously, if the celibate or virginal life is to be an act of love expressed in and through the body, it must be freely chosen because if it were not, as we have seen, it would not be an act of love—it would not be an adequate human alternative to the spousal union. The Apostles: Christ’s teaching on virginity and celibacy shocked the Apostles. In the religious beliefs of the Chosen People of the Old Testament, marriage was a sacred and holy state. In God’s promise to Abraham to make him “the father of a host of nations,” (Gen 17:4) marriage and procreation became the means by which this divine promise would be fulfilled. As John Paul writes, “In the Old Testament tradition marriage, as a source of fruitfulness and of procreation in regard to descendants, was a religiously privileged state: and privileged by Revelation itself.”(no. 74, March 17, 1982) Even before Christ’s exalted teaching on marriage, the Apostles would have held marriage as an exalted state willed by God at the very dawn of Creation (“be fruitful and multiply.”(Gen 1:28)) and specifically endorsed by God for the Jewish people as the means of fulfilling the covenant God made with them through the patriarch, Abraham. In hearing Christ recommend virginity and celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven, i.e., for the sake of God, the Apostles would have been stunned! Marriage and procreation was the means of building the Kingdom of God according to the promise God made with Abraham. Making Abraham the father of a host of nations through procreation and expansion of the Jewish kingdom was THE fulfillment of the covenant sealed between Abraham and God. In the minds of the Apostles and according to the entire Old Testament tradition, the building and expanding of the Jewish Kingdom was identical to building the Kingdom of God. How could the Apostles who heard Christ’s teaching on virginity and celibacy for the Kingdom of God have accepted what Christ taught? To ask this question is to ask a whole series of related questions, such as how could they have accepted His teaching on the Eucharist when He taught them that they were to “eat his flesh and drink his blood?”(John 6:54) The Apostles did not leave Him on this occasion, as many others did, because He “had the words of eternal life.”(John 6:68.) In other words, they accepted what Christ said because He was the Revelation of the Father and they knew this through the gift of the Holy Spirit: “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.”(Matthew 16:17.) They entrusted themselves to the Lord and believed what He taught. Similarly, on the question of virginity and celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of God, they accepted what He taught them because HE said it and because He lived what He said. The Lord’s testimony and His own celibate life was the only basis they had for accepting this teaching. Of course, there was a further testimony to the goodness of continence for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven: the marriage of Mary and Joseph. It was not just the Lord’s public life which testified to the goodness of virginity and celibacy; it was His entire life from His conception to His Ascension. Jesus was conceived by a virgin who remained a virgin her entire life even though married to a husband, Joseph. And Joseph, even as a husband lived a celibate life! The Apostles did not know this history of Christ’s parents, conception, and birth, but as the Church came to know the wonderful fruitfulness of Joseph and Mary’s virginity and celibacy, it could appreciate Christ’s teaching on virginity and celibacy in an entirely new way. In Mary and Joseph, the nuptial union was realized in a complete gift of each of them to one another and to God for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. It was through them that the full reality and truth of the Kingdom of God was announced because this is precisely the Good News 8

their Son gave to the world. How could celibacy and virginity do more for the Kingdom of God? At the same time, in their union at Nazareth, they were as committed to one another in love as any couple could have been. Pope John Paul notes this wonderful mystery when he writes: “The marriage of Mary and Joseph conceals within itself, at the same time, the mystery of the perfect communion of the persons, of the man and the woman in the conjugal pact, and also the mystery of that singular ‘continence for the Kingdom of Heaven:’ a continence that served, in the history of salvation, the most perfect ‘fruitfulness of the Holy Spirit’.”(no. 75, March 24, 1982) The apparent contradiction between the goodness of marriage, on the one hand, and celibacy and virginity for the sake of the Kingdom of God, on the other, is completely resolved in the marriage of Mary and Joseph. St Paul and Celibacy: In the last five addresses (no.s 82-86) of this chapter, Pope John Paul takes up Saint Paul’s teaching on marriage and celibacy in the First Letter to the Corinthians. Picking up again the question that I posed earlier: If marriage is a gift from God, as well as virginity and celibacy, and it is not a refuge for the weak, why would anyone choose a celibate life? Saint Paul answers this question in this seventh chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians where he explains that celibacy is for the sake of giving oneself totally to God: “I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman or girl is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.” (1 Cor 7:32-35) There are, according to Paul, two reasons to embrace celibacy or virginity: to be anxious about the things of the Lord and to please the Lord. The first of these reasons, to be anxious about the things of the Lord, is to throw oneself into apostolic work. It is to embrace the task of spreading the Gospel of Christ and to help people live that Gospel in their daily lives. This effort takes both time and commitment and those without families are able to devote themselves totally to this effort. But the motive for embracing such total and difficult work is found in the second reason: “to please the Lord.” This phrase is the one Christ used about himself: “I always do what is pleasing to him [i.e., the Father]."(John 8:29) To do what is pleasing to someone means to unite one’s will with that person – to do what the other person chooses. In effect, do what is pleasing is to love. The motivation for embracing the evangelical work of the Gospel is the love of God. Those who receive this gift are so moved by the love of Christ, the divine Bridegroom, that they desire to give their lives in service to him and his Church. They do not deny their sexuality but rather make a complete gift of it to God (energy to relate.) They embrace spiritual motherhood or fatherhood. The celibate person is a signpost to our ultimate destiny with God. They are living out now “the virginal meaning of being male and female”. This is what we will experience in Heaven. Their life witness proclaims that God exists, that his love is real and all-sufficient, and that it is possible to have a very fulfilling life without having to get married and have sex. Paul also writes that the married person is “divided.” The married Christian is committed not only to his or her spouse, but also to God. This causes the “division” Paul speaks of since the Christian married person is called not only to the love of his or her spouse, but also to the love of God. Today, pastors and teachers might not like to use the term “divided” for the Christian married person.

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Rather, Paul’s idea would be conveyed by the idea that the celibate or virgin “pleases the Lord” and is “anxious about the things of the Lord” in the universal communion of the Church and the married person “pleases the Lord” and is “anxious about the things of the Lord” in the domestic Church, the family. Certainly, this is the message that John Paul II conveys in his Apostolic Exhortation on the Family, Familiaris Consortio. I think it is important to point out, having said what I've said so far, that we should in no way view St Paul as being anti-marriage. He stated in 1 Cor 7 “let every one lead the life which the Lord has assigned to him, and in which God has called him.” (1 Cor 7:17) “Everyone should remain in the state in which he was called.” (1 Cor 7:20) “If you marry, however, you do not sin.”(1 Cor 7:28) (Repeated in verse 36) Paul is writing from his own personal experience here and with his missionary work, he clearly understands that for him, personally, it would have been next to impossible to look after a wife and family. St Paul's personal wish for those that he was writing to in Corinth was that they be celibate and devoted to the work of the kingdom like him but also recognises that God calls people to different vocations “I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own special gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.” (1 Cor 7:7) Complimentary Vocations: Obviously, Christ did not consider his teaching on marriage and his teaching on celibacy and virginity to be contradictory. Both represent an act of self-donation, an act of love, which is expressed in and through the body. Both rest on the revelation that the human being is called to love and to express that love in and through his or her body, fulfilling the nuptial meaning of the body. Marriage and celibacy are two complimentary and equally important vocations and ways of serving God. To renounce marriage for the sake of Christ has so much value precisely because marriage is such a good. But what celibacy shows is that marriage and procreation, as good as they are, belong only to this life. Those who live the charism of celibacy anticipate the heavenly wedding in this life and remind us of our ultimate destiny with God in the heavenly wedding. Just as two married people symbolize the relationship that Christ has now with his Church (giving his body for his bride), so the celibate person is a symbol of that relationship as it will be perfected in Heaven. The Church needs both celibate and married Christians. These vocations enrich one another when they are lived according to God’s plan for them. Both married and celibate people are called to practice chastity, which makes authentic self-giving love possible. When someone tries to live a vocation to which one is not called, there are usually many difficulties. What is best for each person is to embrace the vocation to which God has personally called him or her.

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