FAMILY: Theology of the Body and Love

Marriage and family are key topics of study here at the Theology of the Body Institute, so you can imagine how busy we have been in 2015. Pope Francis has held four world events on the topic of the family, and Theology of the Body Institute is hosting the 2016 International Theology of the Body Congress (www.tobcongress.com) in California in September under the theme Love, Mercy and the Gift of the Family.

You would think that after all the millennia of lived human experience we would have come to know all there is to know and care about the family. But we haven’t. Not even close. A dizzying array of biological, social, and theological sciences has given us marvelous new knowledge on the family just in the last few decades. The Theology of the Body alone has given us a whole new depth and breadth of wisdom to ponder for the next few centuries! Why such a seemingly inexhaustible interest, study, and discovery around such an ancient and universal human experience like the family? The answer is key to our advocacy of natural family planning as an essential tool for marital happiness and holiness. Simply put, study of the family is inexhaustible because the family is a theology: a word, wisdom, and study of God. But not just a theology—a convening of interwoven theologies. “The family: This is the place where the theology of the body and the theology of love are interwoven.” Pope Benedict XVI, May 13, 2011 Pope Benedict XVI distilled what Pope St. John Paul II had proposed in great detail through his Theology of the Body regarding our Salvation Story: the interconnectedness of love, the human person, and family in our Creation, Fall, and Redemption. These two great popes used words such as “communion”, “interwoven”, “interpenetrated”, “interpersonal”, “interconnected” to conjure in our minds and hearts the unity of the family, the body, and love together as a word, wisdom, and study of God. Theology is a science in the classical sense. It is a pursuit of the truth of God for its own noble sake (Wisdom) or for the sake of living a good life (practical), or both. Theology helps us to know God, to know ourselves, to know our ultimate purpose, and to know what we must do to become perfectly happy. So how are Theology of the Family, Theology of the Body, and Theology of Love “interwoven”? Love, at its highest order, is self-gift or communion. God is Love because He is the perfect, eternal Communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In His image, we are created for communion, for love, and the body is the means of our gift of self. There is no other way we can love but through our bodies. The family is the “School of Love” and “domestic church” where we not only learn about Love (wisdom), but how to become Love (practice). So interwoven are these that none can be truly understood isolated from the others. In simplest terms, Love is the goal. The body is the means. Family is the school. Over the past eighteen months Pope Francis hosted four world convenings on the family: 1) “Pastoral Challenges to the Family in the Context of Evangelization”,  an Oct. 2014 select gathering of bishops 2) Humanum (www.humanum.it), an ecumenical symposium 3) “Love is Our Mission: The Family Fully Alive”, the 2015 World Meeting of Families 4) “Jesus Christ Reveals the Mystery and Vocation of the Family”, an Oct. 2015  universal gathering of bishops.

All of these were focused on the wisdom and practice of living the fullness of family life in the modern world. Expectations are that he is in the process of developing a pastoral statement on the munus (latin: role, task, mission, vocation, high office) of the family that will acknowledge the real challenges and threats to family life today, and offer an encouraging exhortation to persevere in this noble vocation.

Sharp public criticism notwithstanding, I believe Pope Francis is building on the great legacies of Pope Benedict and Pope St. John Paul II, in his own way. His emphases on evangelization, encounter, accompaniment, missionary outreach, and mercy must not be understood in isolation, but interwoven with the wisdom of his predecessors. Borrowing the thought of a recent commenter, John Paul taught us the “what”, Benedict taught us the “why”, Francis is teaching us “how.” While certainly an oversimplification, there is power in simplicity. God is mysteriously simple—He is “Our Father in Heaven”. God is Love. God created us from Love, for Love, and to Love in communion with Him and each other. God created us male and female so our bodies would proclaim love-in-communion as our origin, history, and destiny. This communion of persons is a life-giving communion with the power to expand the lover and the beloved from a couple to a family. A new person—who never existed before—is the fruit of personal communion who will live forever. This is a proclamation of our sexual powers in both sign and deed! The “hidden” power of NFP is that it teaches the wisdom and practice of knowing and mastering our sexual powers. God is the Author of life who has chosen to share his authority with us as co-creators, as stewards. This stewardship calls us to full knowledge, discernment, and freedom to order our sexual powers to love-in-communion. But this is not just a power to co/pro-create but to ensure the eternal good of this new person. This is the essence of authority – to bring something into existence and then to ensure its good. We often need decades of formation to reach our true good: eternal union with God in Heaven. God created the family as the sign and means of human “education”: Education in the classical sense of “educare”—to “draw out” or become. The family is where we receive the information that we are children of God with a mission to “love the Lord God” and to “love our neighbor as ourselves”. Here we first hear the story of our divine origin and destiny to be in union with God forever. The family is where we receive the formation of how to love. The virtues come alive with every conflict, friendship, affirmation, discipline, suffering and joy. We come to know who we are through our interactions—good, bad, and ugly! For decades, we are “drawn out” to “become” who we are by the daily call to make the gift of ourselves to others. We learn mercy, forgiveness, gratitude, patience, prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, and all the virtues in the messy sights, smells, sounds, tastes, and touches of our family life. We learn it here in the “School of Love”. This domestic church must be interwoven with the Family of God for both information and human formation. Each—and both—are the occasion for our true transformation that only comes from the Holy Spirit. God not only “knits” us in our mother’s womb, but also weaves us in life and love for eternity. Love is the goal. The body is the means. Family is the school.