#402 Our Forgotten Sacred Human Sexuality; And So Modern Men and Women Suffer for Want of Authentic Love

And St Athanasius , an early church father and a doctor of the church , said the son of God became man so that we might become God . You know , I make a while to guess at this , but I bet you , most of us , are a bit disconnected from this divine life that these saints are pointing us to .

Yet St John Paul II said there's an echo of this story , of this divine life that we're created for , inscribed in each human heart , in your human heart . And if you put on a proper lens , if I put on a proper lens , we can get in touch with this echo within us in such a way that we have that aha moment .

See , that's the genus of St John Paul II's theology the body . It connects our lived experience of life to the gospel in such a way that our life takes on a whole new meaning and helps us answer those big questions that our whole culture is so confused about today . Who am I ? What's my purpose ? Why were we created male and female ?

How do I find happiness here on earth ? How do I find love that satisfies forever ? Hey , glad you're with me . I'll be right back for today's episode . Linda and I were just talking right before I hit the record button that our lives are going so fast . It seems like we just recorded one of these , linda , and we're back in action again . So how are you ?

I've seen more rainbows in the past year than I have , I think , in my life .

I see them on the doors , I see them on the flags , I see them all over , and this is actually not planned , but I think this is actually a pretty good segue into this , which is audience number 63 , which is the ethos of the body in art and media , which is really part of the last part , of the second part of the triptych , where Christ appeals to the

human heart , and this is right before we go into , which is a very exciting part two , which is the third triptych , which is the resurrection of the body and Christ appeals to the resurrection . So that's going to be a lot of fun too , but here , linda , this is really important segue . So you mentioned the flag . You see what happens .

Or I mentioned the flag , but the rainbow , so the rainbow , right , and this is where the rainbow came from . The rainbow is God's sign , of God's covenant with His people . Isn't that something ? how we always say this Satan doesn't have his own clay , satan can only take and we're going to be getting it to the body and how we look at the body .

And this is a great segment to say Satan doesn't have his own clay . He can only twist and distort what God has created good , which is our bodies , right , and our body expresses love and the mystery of God Himself within the body can twist and distort that , and we can see that in art and media and all over .

And the same thing with the rainbow flag now , and I don't mean to again to demean all the people that are under the , you know that follow that rainbow flag because these are our brothers and sisters . You know we've all been offered an eternal life , you know .

But it is a good distinction , I think , to make to say we've taken the covenant of God and actually twisted our sexuality in there . I mean this is stands for LBGTQ plus , you know , plus plus , plus now .

And so what happens is it's very important that Jesus and John Paul always take us back to the beginning , before sin , before the fall , before all these different attractions and different things . To say what in the beginning ? It was not so .

And this beautiful , this beautiful mystery of the body , right , do you remember , linda , when we were young , and let's talk about this a little bit .

You know , when you first started your sexuality , we started to , you know , enter into puberty and then early adolescence and you saw the boy or you saw the girl right and this beauty and this mystery of attraction . You want to talk about that a little bit Because I think that's so important here .

You know some kids their innocence is stolen very quickly but but for normal young people they're growing up in , you know , decent families and stuff you have this , this innocence , that all of a sudden boom , you see the boy , you see the girl and you go wow , what is going on ?

Right In all our masculinity and femininity that he always brings up , there's a beauty and a sacredness of the body and we have that understanding in that echo that's in our hearts when we're young , if it hasn't been totally destroyed which , as we speak , is pretty much the aim of what is happening with the comprehensive sex and things that are going on in the

schools right now . So if we can rise above that for a moment and think , if a young child has not had that inner echo , that sense of something going on here because of that attraction that we've been blessed with , it comes out in that awesomeness of . Okay , I'm going to give it to you from the girl's perspective .

You know I can remember about eighth grade . There were a couple of boys in my class that anxious thought were so cute , you know , so good looking , and if one of them smiled at me it was just this wow , just kind of wow . You know , he looked at me , kind of thing , and it was all totally innocent .

And then I thought , gee , he's really cute , I think I like him , whatever that meant in my head at the time , I'm not really sure , but it was well , I think , and if we , if you go underneath that , what does that mean ?

You know that's all the start of it and that all kind of fits into the fact that we're made for relationship and the Pope says it so beautifully when he talks about the whole sphere of meanings of the body , of woman and man , because of that personal character , so deep down , the the we're persons , and so we have that understanding that we're , we're , we have

, you know , we're psychological , social , emotional , physiological , all those elements make up the human person and we're also destined for going outside of ourselves , being that gift that we talked about for those interpersonal relationships . And so it does start in the beginning that we recognize that echo is still there .

And the contrast I guess we've been trying to draw in our last few podcasts is how that innocence , that echo , that understanding of who we are as persons made for the other , is being chipped away greatly now , at a very quick speed I think , in our society , because we're being attacked from every angle that you can imagine to kind of desensitize us to this

whole understanding of who we are as persons made for the other .

So what he's saying is so what we've just laid out as a foundation of this beautiful call to original innocence , this beautiful way of looking at another person with purity of heart , this is what Christ is appealing to when he says that in Matthew 5 , verses 27 , 28, . You have heard it said you should not commit adultery .

Okay , well , we get that , but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart . And so when we're looking at art and media , john Paul was very concerned about culture . And so what happens as we think about culture ? We think about artists and musicians . And what do we see on television ?

You know from Hollywood all of those types of things . You know it's the cafes and the restaurants , though it's all kinds , it's food and it's smells and tastes . But at the end we're really talking about art and media . And so how do we portray the body , the human body ?

And so this really gets down to a number of players in here , it's the artist himself , say , a movie producer or a painter or a sculptor . What is in that person's heart will show and be manifested into what type of works he's producing .

Now we have a viewer , we have someone that's going to watch that or look at that sculpture , or look at that picture or listen to that music or read that literature . So how do I look at that ? What is my heart saying about this ?

And then , when we're talking about these schools , the national sex ed standards and the things that we're doing to children with pornography in schools , we have a third player which is an administrator or a teacher that's actually taking that art or lack of real art you know , from , say pornography , and then revealing that to the innocence of this child with the

actual aim and this is really where it becomes diabolical and I don't throw that around lightly Diabolical when you show the innocence of a young person and you're taking away that chance that they can enter into that mystery that we're talking about , that beauty and mystery of another person and not be violated , have the innocence to be able to experience .

Holy cow . What is that in my heart ? What is that doing to my heart when I look at another person and I'm drawn to them and I want to get close to them , and when you twist it and distort it into a lustful look , you know that Christ is talking about here . Then you can see that we're not seeing the person , we're not seeing the heart .

You know , john Paul would say the problem with pornography is not that it reveals too much , but that it reveals too little . It doesn't reveal the person right , the person .

And I find it interesting , jack , that he first in this audience , in paragraph two , is saying well , we're talking about whether and to what degree the human body can be portrayed in its nakedness , which would lead people to think well , is he saying it shouldn't be at all ? And that's not at all the conclusion that he comes to .

So in paragraph four he says that those reflections aren't intended to cast doubt on whether the human body can be a subject of art . But he says it's very much connected with the particular responsibility of the artist as well as the viewer . So we can't get around it .

We each , as the artist or the viewer , have to search our heart on what is my intention here . And if I can't understand the idea of the purity of heart , then the opposite is working in me . It's that lust in the heart . So I'm just objectifying the person , and that's why we say the pornography doesn't show the person , it just shows an object .

So John Paul says the human body has been and is such a model or subject to the works of visual art and literature , just as the whole sphere of love between men and women also connected with it . Is , though and this is a key it's a reciprocal self giving of masculinity and femininity . So what does this say ?

This body right , these bodies of ours , and our masculinity and femininity ? They call one another to be united .

But do you know it as a gift , when I become united with you , if that boy looks at me , and then you smile back , linda , and you end up getting married some years later , that means I say yes to you , I'm giving my life to you and I'm opening myself up to you to be vulnerable to you , to give my , to pour my whole life into you , and then the other

person receives that and gives that back to you , and you enter into this beautiful dance of love , and so you form families and you form bonds , and you're rooted in this love , and this is what we're called to do when you lose that reciprocal self giving and you look at another person to use them .

This is the flip side of that , and so this is what Christ is saying . He's saying the human heart was made for more . The human heart isn't made to use and abuse others , even though you see it after the fall all around us . The human heart is made for more , and you're not going to find yourself .

John Paul would say often until you give yourself away , you will not find life . Until you give your own life away . You know , isn't that something ? And when you start in , christ said that you know , in order to find yourself , you have to give yourself away . And and and finally , the crucifix says this this is me .

I humble myself to pour myself out to you , right .

it becomes a lot easier for me to feel like I can then be gift to that person . I can give myself and my life to that person In my case it's my husband and then the extension is your children and your grandchildren .

And it never ends and it's so fruitful in so many ways when we can get over that hump of that selfishness , so to speak , where , yeah , when I get frustrated , it's like , but this is really how I find myself , it's giving myself away .

So now in my situation , with the grandkids popping in at sometimes inconvenient times and grandma , I need help with this or that , like okay , here's another opportunity that I can give a little bit of myself away by putting my work aside , so we can find it in our lives if we're searching for it .

And I hope that these thoughts are kind of coming together in folks minds that while we have been specifically looking at the issues of the human body in art , it kind of brings us back to recognizing that it is God shining through that human body . That where we need to get to .

Well , jesus said right in the beginning , or God said right in the beginning in Genesis , you know , then go out and subdue the earth and till and keep it . And so what is he saying ? He's saying look it , go , humanize it . Go humanize the culture . Here it is . You know , here's all the plants , the animals , the trees . So now go there and humanize it .

You know , I'm an old backpacker and I've been backpacking almost all my life . And I'll tell you what you can get lost in the forest , and the mosquitoes and the flies alone can eat you up If you don't know how to survive out there . You know there's wild , various wild animals and stuff . You can break your leg there . You know where do you get water ?

I mean , you know nature can be pretty unforgiving , as beautiful as it is . You walk into nature and you can get lost and you can die out there pretty quickly , right ? And so what do we do with the earth ? You know , you know we humanize it . We , you know .

We start to plant fields and we start to bring crops in and we start to put flowers around our house , even a dog , you know . You put wild dogs out in the woods . You better be careful if you run across them . I mean , they can really take you down , you know .

You know the wild dogs of Africa are some of the best , most efficient predators on the planet . But you domesticate a dog and he becomes man's best friend , and so you've humanized that animal , you've humanized that dog .

And so that's what we're getting to here , that when we start to think about being a gift to one another and this lust in the heart , now you think about I go out from culture and I bring lust and selfishness into the culture , and then the last step is the politics or economics or finance .

All these people then move out into the world right , and they become leaders of countries and they take positions of power , and that lust in their heart now turns around and it pushes back on everybody . It wants to enslave everybody , the Hitlers and the Stalin's .

You know , joseph Stalin was in the seminary at one time and he got twisted and distorted and ended up right as a mass murderer and you know he , getting back to this person , he said if you kill one person , if you murder one person , that's a person , right , but if you murder a million , it's just the statistic .

You know you lose , you lose , count , you don't even care anymore . You know .

So everything that we can think of that would include what does that mean ? The culture of life .

You know , we could go on to name everything that that we're now working against , the culture of life , with the attacks on marriage and family and further on with our children , and all the desensitizing to the whole realm of what family life should be and what our sexuality is about , and all those elements .

And the Pope says what's so important is this culture of life , of which a piece of it is creating that climate favorable to education in Chastity .

So in paragraph six , here in our audience , he brings that up again and we have to think what we've done and where we're headed right now is exactly the opposite , that everything about our culture is pulling us further and further away from that education in Chastity .

And that wonderful innocence and that sense of who am I for the other person that begins to develop with , you know , the teen years , with puberty , with the hormones starting . You know what is this all about . We're taking that and we're shredding it to pieces , we're destroying it .

So we need to wake up to see that we're headed in the opposite direction of where we need to be , on every aspect of our sexuality , our family life , and on and on and goes .

So if you think that Church or John Paul is talking about Prudism , it's not about being prude , it's not about a Puritan model . This is about opening your heart , opening your heart to authentic love , and so this is very important . You know , when I'm speaking to young men that are struggling with pornography , I'll say you know , you , look at the world .

The world teaches you . There's only two ways to do this . You can be a prude or a Puritan , say , and maybe in a good way . Right , you're trying to do the best thing you can with your heart . So you're pushing these images down .

You know , you see that a woman scantily dressed in a store and you look down , but at the end that's not going to be enough for you , you know , because those images will come back or these sensuality will bubble up in you , and then you'll ask yourself why ? What is going on in my heart ?

And then the culture will say there's only one other way to do this , then , is to indulge , and it wants to bring you into seeing that woman , and that image pops up in your mind . You see here , as someone to use .

Now , you know , I began to dream of her , say , in bed , right , or in a sexual union of some kind , you know , which is not bad in itself , right , but I'm talking about outside of marriage and using and abusing somebody else just for their body .

Well , you know , there's a third way , and that third way is to open your heart to Jesus Christ , really to open it and say you know , the image and likeness that I'm trying to portray is a mystery given to us by God himself of trinitary and love , which is , you know , god's not even a sexual being , right , but God's intimacy .

If we think about this , it's the third way of saying , every time you're tempted , this is an invitation to open your heart to the one who put those desires in your heart . And so you get back to the song of songs , you know , thousands of years ago . This doesn't change .

We keep thinking modern man's changed and pornography's here , and this is that , and blah , blah , blah , blah , blah . We've come so far . Now , you know , to get away . No , no , no . Love is love , right , that's what we hear , right , love is love . Well , love isn't just love .

Love is this mystery of the other person , but it's a wooing and it's a sensuality that brings us into a really an expression of love , of trinitary and love . So here , right from the song of songs , it says tell me to whom my heart loves where you passed your flock . This is the future bride here speaking to her future husband .

Right , where do you give them it ? Where do you give them rest at midday , lest that can be found wandering after the flocks of your companions ? This is an old story , right ? So they're out shepherding and she's looking for him . Her heart is aching .

And then he says back to her almost beautiful among women , follow the tracks of the flock and pasture the young ones near the shepherd's camp . He's wooing her , right , they're going back on floor . And she says I'm a flower of Sharon , a lily of the valley , and in the groom says , as a lily among thorns , so is my beloved among women .

And then it goes on and on . And then it goes in chapter four Ah , you are beautiful , my beloved . You're so beautiful , your eyes are like dubs . And he even gets to her breasts and he says all of them . You know , he says your neck is like David's tower , your breasts are like twin fawns .

And again he's using these old images , but they're not afraid to speak of these things Very , very sensual . And then , finally , he gets to this key part . You have ravished my heart , my sister , my bride . You've ravished my heart with one glance of your eyes , my sister , my bride , and he calls her sister before bride . And John Paul points it out .

Why does he do that , right ? Well , because we have a common heritage , because we come from one father . Because , at the end of the day , if I see her as sister , first I won't . I want to protect her , I won't want to use her and abuse her .

And then that gives me time to get to know her , to get to laugh with her , to get to sit at a table and have dinner with her , and get to know who that person is . And only then do we get to the point where we become husband and wife , right . And then finally he says to her I have come to my garden , my sister , my bride , very sensually .

So he's come to her and their marriage say and now he's come to her garden and says you're in a closed garden , my sister , my bride in a closed garden , a fountain sealed , and only you can say yes to me , only you . This is your garden , your mystery , your , your , your the sexual intimacy we're about to enter into . You are in a closed garden right now .

You have to say yes to me . This is no using and abusing , no taking right . This is a gift from one person to another . That expresses a deep mystery of love . It's amazing actually .

How does a woman decide to , you know , to be a Chased virgin ? You know , for you know , and give that up for for Christ , and so that shows you , you can be able to skip all everything that we're talking about here and that 3d image I talked about .

They actually go deeply into that 3d image and I think that's why it's so important , the traditions that we have today , where we have celibate men and women that give up their marriages here , to show you and point to that intimacy God wants with us , and it's in a .

This is where we're going and this is what we're gonna be getting into a little bit later .

So the prudishness tends to come from thinking perhaps Sex is ugly , it's dirty , you know whatever adjective you want to use there .

So there , there may be a time where that's a good thing to do , right .

I love the my sister , my bride , when we talk about that more because it's so strongly Spates to me a recognition of the woman as equal in humanity . So male and female are two ways of being human and that verbiage Says that .

First my sister , because we're both human , created by God in his image , and then , as I move to that relation , that special relationship , my bride . So it's really good stuff .

Well , it's , I think that's the way we should start to look at the world , you know . So I think these are things we can start to do today . Christopher West , in In as he's winding down some of the meditations commentary he did , he said what then are we to do in this world that incessantly Bombards us with pornographic Portrails of the body ?

The Pope says that each person must decide whether he remains only a superficial consumer of the media's images or Commits himself to the effort of drawing near to the glorious truth of the human body and its masculinity and feminine envy . The hunger we all experience to behold the human body and its nakedness is not the problem .

This hunger manifests the God-giving yearning , yearning for beauty , a God-given desire for the great mystery Revealed by the body . The question is , where will we go to feed that hunger ? To the dumpster presented by our porn , pornified culture ? Or to the banquet presented by this theology of the body .

And again , you see this all throughout our whole society and our politics and our economics . How do we look at another person ? This extends out , and so this is the battle that we must all face . In essence , we are all standing at that tree of the knowledge of good and evil . So what's the solution ?

You have to say yes , we're the second Adam , jesus and the second Eve , our blessed mother . They say yes , and so you have to to be with them , carry your cross and then kneel with our blessed mother and say yes or Reject them , reject God , because because that's the only way you're gonna find out , you know whether you know , whether all of this is real .

How much can I open up my heart , how much can I be a person of love ? And if I am , does that bring me happiness ? Does that bring me peace ? Does that bring me joy ? You'll have to find out , people have to walk into the story themselves . We can talk about it .

But until you do it , until you get into a deeper prayer life and tell you really kneel at the cross , until you go to Confession and do the hard work and tell you start to receive the Eucharist With , you know , with , without mortal sin on your stain of mortal sin on your soul , you won't know . You won't know .

You know this is real combat time and you have to allow God to actually take a sword to your heart . You know , in the in , when Jesus was presented at the temple , simeon called him a sign of contradiction , and then he looked to our blessed mother , jesus's mother , and said and your heart , too , will be pierced .

And so we have to allow that , that , that heart to be pierced , because we don't want to do this , we don't want to go away easily , we want to view that person because this is a powerful , these pornographic images , or money , or power , these are , these are your big deals . How do you change , you know , your heart . Well , you know you can't do it alone .

You need grace .

I have to make that choice . I have to decide . Is it appropriate to look away ? Do I need to say a prayer for that person who seems to have lost that sense of dignity ? You know what's , what's the appropriate Response that I need to have if I am truly serious about Becoming one who is pure in heart .

And as you were speaking , jack , it kind of took me all the way back to what is the these ? A statement of theology , the body itself . You know , you've got it well memorized , but I'm gonna read it and just Recall to our listeners that Pope said the body , and only the body , is capable of making visible what is invisible , the spiritual and the divine .

It's been created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden from Eternity in God and thus to be a sign of it . We must never , never , never forget that , that that our bodies Bring the mystery that's been hidden in God to us be a sign in the world , and we can't let those diabolical forces twist and pervert and distort that .

I mean there's some very moving stories that are out there and portrayed well . Some of the love songs that are out there , I mean there's some great love songs . I want to kind of I want to end this With Christopher West .

Did this beautiful reflection that I think people might find find interesting , linda , it's right at the end of Actually it's , it's in his commentary , at the very end of this section , and he calls it conclusion of chapter 2 . This might be interesting for people .

He said this with these Refreshingly balanced reflections on nakedness and our John Paul closes his chapter on historical man . We've reflected on man's origins and on the historical drama of sin and redemption .

Now , in order to complete the outline of an adequate anthropology , we must look to the reality of embodiment and sexuality and the dimension of man's eternal destiny . For us , on an interesting historical note , john Paul concluded this cycle of reflections on May 6th 1981 .

Exactly one week later , while driving through the crowd in st Peter's Square at the beginning of his Wednesday audience , he was gunned down by a Turkish assassin , ali Agha . Many years later , john Paul II reflected , agha knew how to shoot and he certainly shot to kill , yet it was as if someone was guiding and deflecting the bullet .

That someone was , according to John Paul II , our Lady of Fatima . How could I forget ? He said that that the event in st Peter's Square took place Listen to this on the day and the hour when the first appearance of the mother of Christ to the poor little peasants has been remembered since 1917 at Fatima in Portugal .

For in everything that happened to me on that day , I felt that extraordinary motherly protection and care which turned out to be stronger than the deadly bullet . Most people know the pope was shot on the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima .

What many people didn't know about that afternoon is that John Paul II had planned to announce the establishment of his Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family , his main arm for promoting academic study of his theology of the body . So what happens ?

That day when he was shot , he was going to announce to the world that the theology of the body was so important for the culture and for all of us going forward that he was going to announce this Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family that day and he was shot .

But yet our lady wasn't done and he was dedicating that to our Lady of Fatima . He was dedicating that , isn't that something ? And then he was shot and then he felt that protection of our lady of Fatima . Now he would , a year later , actually a little bit over a year later , actually establish that and get that up and running .

It's really powerful and that's why , between this audience now and the next one that we're going to pick up , let's see , here it is we pick up on the next one in November , I think , of 1981 . So six or seven months later , and that's because he was recovering from almost losing his life .

We're talking about actual war between Satan and our Lord right Between our Lord and Savior , Jesus Christ , and Satan . And that's what our Lady of Fatima told Sister Lucia . The last great battle between our Lord and Satan is going to be over marriage and the family .

He did not want , Satan did not want that pontifical Institute of Marriage and the family did he .

We've talked about these things in the past and I want this to be an upbeat podcast . This one . But at the end of the day , you see the battle going on today within the church , and that was my marker in my mind when I thought , wow , something's wrong in the church .

Look , we know there's always sinful people in the church , and just like there are in the culture , and that's nothing new . But when I saw that happen , when I saw that taken down , I go , ooh , this is not good , this is not going to be good .

It takes guts and it takes courage , but if we don't come up with numbers , with lots of numbers , then the powers of evil will pick those individual people off . So it really is a movement .

We've got to support them 100% .