For several months, I have been reflecting in these articles on the “original experiences” explored by Pope St. John Paul II in his Theology of the Body. Before moving on to other aspects of TOB, I want to ponder the crucial theme of gift, which is like a golden thread woven throughout the late pope’s work.
Like our first parents, we all come into the world by a power other than our own. None of us creates ourselves or bestows the gift of life on ourselves. Rather, we all come from Another. Our life, our being comes to us as an unmerited gift from God our Creator mediated through our parents. This points to a fundamental truth: all of creation depends on God for existence. Indeed, an important principle in Catholic theology that informed Pope St. John Paul II’s thought is that God is the only being that necessarily exists. He possesses His own existence and does not depend on anything or anyone in order to be. Rather, God exists for all eternity in a state of fullness and perfection. Even more, this state of fullness and perfection consists of an exchange of love without beginning or end among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that is so real and perfect that we can affirm with St. John the Apostle that God is love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8b). God Himself is a Divine Communion of Persons in which there is an eternal giving and receiving of Love.
When God creates, He does not do so out of any necessity but does so freely out of the superabundance of His love. Everything that He creates depends on Him for the gift of existence. This is true not only at the beginning of life but also at every moment thereafter. Indeed, all of creation only exists moment-by-moment because God continually wills it into existence. It is through His loving gift, that you and I exist right now. As my college chaplain once told me, “If God ever ceased loving you, you would cease to exist.”
This connection between love and existence is incredibly profound. It means that all things that exist — rocks, plants, animals, humans, angels — only exist because God loves them into being at every moment. One implication of this is that there is NEVER a moment in which God is not thinking about you specifically and loving you into existence. Every beat of your heart, every breath of your lungs, every second that goes by is a gift of love given to you by our God who is Love. Indeed the very ground of our being is the infinite love of God. Our first and most fundamental calling, then, is simply to receive God’s gift of life with gratitude, awe, and wonder.
Furthermore, we saw in our reflections on original solitude that all of the visible creation is further given as a gift of love to humanity. All creatures are meant to reveal — in the measure they are capable — something of the glory and majesty of God. God gave us the entire cosmos to remind us of Himself and for us to cultivate and make a home worthy of humanity, His most beloved creation in the visible world.
In our reflections on original unity, we saw that it was not enough for our loving Father to give us the world, but He also gave us to each other by introducing the sexual difference into our humanity. Through our maleness and femaleness, which are revealed in the body and affect the whole person to his or her very core, we are called and capacitated to form a communion of persons through spousal love. Through the total gift of self in marriage, the love of man and woman can be personified in the gift of their child, thus forming an icon of the Blessed Trinity.
In all of this, we see that the logic of gift defines the very structure of reality. In God, there is an eternal giving and receiving among the Divine Persons. The act of creation itself is also a sheer act of generosity in which creatures are given the gift of existence at every moment by God. Man most of all is the recipient of God’s greatest gifts — life, the cosmos, each other, and, ultimately, Himself. This logic of gift is thus fundamental for our understanding of God, the world, and ourselves. We will ponder this theme further next time and unpack its importance for our vocation.
Note: This article is part of a series of reflections on Pope St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body”.
Last month, I reflected on the logic of gift and how it is a golden thread woven throughout Pope St. John Paul II’s thought, especially his Theology of the Body. We saw how all of creation, including man, depends on God’s loving gift of existence at every moment. We also saw how the logic of gift even describes the inner life of God Himself who is an eternal exchange of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Let us extend those reflections to explore what the logic of gift has to say about our vocation and the role of the human body in revealing these mysteries.
To say that the very being of man is a gift to him from the Creator means that the logic of gift marks “the very essence of the person” (TOB 14:2). If gift characterizes the very being and essence of man, then his ultimate fulfillment must be found through freely making a gift of himself to others. According to Pope St. John Paul II, man cannot find fulfillment in isolation. Rather, he can find fulfillment “only by existing ‘with someone’ — and, put even more deeply and completely, by existing ‘for someone’” (TOB 14:2, italics in original).
This “existing for” another is what “self-gift” means. We make a gift of self whenever we engage in some act of self-sacrifice for others. Each of these acts of generosity in which we seek the good of the other before ourselves are acts of self-giving that contribute to the fulfillment of our being. However, the fullest expression of self-gift is when we make a “total” gift of self. Such “total” giving is properly called a “spousal” gift of self, whereby we enter a permanent, exclusive relationship of belonging entirely to another. Marriage is the primordial “place” given to us by God for such a spousal gift of self.
The human body bears witness to all of this. Our bodies show us that our life is a gift since we come from another and depend on others to exist. We are conceived and gestated in our mother’s womb, born of her body, and physically nurtured by her and others as we grow. Indeed, human beings are remarkable in the visible world in that the human body takes an extremely long time to mature and reach a level of relative independence. We need the physical and emotional care of others in order to survive to adulthood, only to eventually decline back into dependence on the physical care of others. Throughout, our bodies bear the signs of our relational history. Our belly buttons remind us of our mothers’ nurturing gift of self in her womb. Our physical features remind us of the gift of life we receive from our parents and ancestors who came before. All of this led Pope St. John Paul II to exclaim, “This is the body: a witness to creation as a fundamental gift, and therefore a witness to Love as the source from which this same giving springs” (TOB 14:4, italics in original).
Even more, we discover in our bodies our sexual identity as male or female. This sexual difference only makes sense when we think of the two in relation to each other. It shows us that man and woman are made for each other. Our maleness and femaleness enable us to make a “total” gift of self by which the two “become one flesh” through marital union. Pope John Paul II coined the term the “spousal meaning of the body” to refer to the human body’s “power to express love: precisely that love in which the human person becomes a gift and — through this gift — fulfills the very meaning of his being and existence” (TOB 15:1, italics in original).
What the saintly pope is telling us is that since every human person is a gift, the meaning of life is to give ourselves away as a gift to others. When we live a life of total self-giving, we act in accord with God’s wise and loving plan, the very structure of our being and essence, and the deepest desires of the human heart. I invite all of us to reflect on how we can embrace this way of life more fully as we continue our journey through Theology of the Body.
Note: This article is part of a series of reflections on Pope St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body”.
We saw in previous reflections that all of creation is a gift held in being at every moment by God, whose inner life is an eternal giving and receiving of Love. Since the very meaning of our existence is gift, and we are made in the image of God who is Love, the fulfillment of our being and existence is to give ourselves away in love (i.e., self-gift).When we make a “total” gift of self, we give our whole selves — body, soul, past, present, and future — to another. This most complete form of self-gift is properly called “spousal,” and the proper “place” for this spousal gift is marriage. The human body, which reveals our maleness or femaleness, shows us that man and woman are made for this kind of spousal gift of self. The body bears witness to the fact that man and woman are made to belong to each other in an exclusive, permanent way through which may flow the blessing of children.
Reflecting in this way on the human body and the logic of gift led Pope St. John Paul II to coin the phrase the “spousal meaning of the body.” This concept was crucial in his thinking about the human person, so much so that he used the term a total of 117 times in Theology of the Body, prompting the editor of the English edition to refer to it as “the single most central and important concept in TOB” (M. Waldstein, TOB, p. 682). Let’s unpack this concept further.
Referencing one of his favorite passages from the Second Vatican Council, Pope St. John Paul II wrote, “The body has a ‘spousal’ meaning because the human person… is a creature that God willed for his own sake and that, at the same time, cannot fully find himself except through the gift of self” (TOB 15:5). How do we “find” ourselves by making a gift of self?
According to the late pope, we discover who we are in how we are received by another, especially in those moments when we are truly “naked,” not necessarily physically but truly vulnerable with another, revealing our inmost self. In those moments of deep encounter, we “find” ourselves — for better or worse — in the other’s reception of us. If we are fully “welcomed” and “accepted” by the other as a gift, we discover the truth of our “giftness.” We learn, “I am a gift, a person to be loved, respected, treasured.”
In applying these insights to the encounter between our first parents described in Genesis 2, Pope St. John Paul II wrote of how the man and woman beheld in one another “a beauty that goes beyond the simply physical level of ‘sexuality.’” They looked on each other with a “deep availability for the ‘affirmation of the person.’” The man and woman saw more than just their sexual features but “through the body someone willed by the Creator ‘for his own sake,’ that is, someone unique and unrepeatable, someone chosen by eternal Love” (TOB 15:4). Though they were naked, they felt no shame because they perceived that they were completely safe in the person-affirming gaze of the other. They discovered that each of their bodies revealed a mystery we call “person,” and through their reciprocal self-giving and welcoming of one another, they discovered their true value as gifts to be treasured. In this way, our first parents discovered the spousal meaning of the body and its essential connection to man’s “original happiness” (TOB 15:5).
Indeed, we are all called to see in each other’s bodies a person who must be welcomed, accepted, even treasured, as a supreme gift from the Creator. By receiving one another in this way, we help each other “find” ourselves, discovering the truth of our “giftness.” We are then emboldened to reveal and welcome each other more and more deeply such that our “mutual gift creates the communion of persons” (TOB 17:3). Thus, the spousal meaning of the body means that through this giving and welcoming, accepting and finding, our bodies proclaim to us the eternal truth that “happiness is being rooted in Love” (TOB 16:2).
Note: This article is part of a series of reflections on Pope St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body.”
2. 다음의 주소에 접속하면, 1979년 9월 5일부터 1984년 11월 28일까지의 기간 동안 수요일일반 알현(Wednesday General Audiences) 강론 말씀들로서 가르치신, 성 요한 바오로 2세 교황님의 "Theology of the Body"(몸에 대한 신학)를, 순서대로, 학습할 수 있습니다:
5. The first account of man's creation, which, as we observed, is of a theological nature, conceals within itself a powerful metaphysical content. Let it not be forgotten that this text of Genesis has become the source of the most profound inspirations for thinkers who have sought to understand "being" and "existence." (Perhaps only the third chapter of Exodus can bear comparison with this text.)(3) Notwithstanding certain detailed and plastic expressions of the passage, man is defined there, first of all, in the dimensions of being and of existence ("esse"). He is defined in a way that is more metaphysical than physical.
To this mystery of his creation, ("In the image of God he created him"), corresponds the perspective of procreation, ("Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth"), of that becoming in the world and in time, of that fieri which is necessarily bound up with the metaphysical situation of creation: of contingent being (contingens). Precisely in this metaphysical context of the description of Genesis 1, it is necessary to understand the entity of the good, namely, the aspect of value. Indeed, this aspect appears in the cycle of nearly all the days of creation and reaches its culmination after the creation of man: "God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good" (Gn 1:31). For this reason it can be said with certainty that the first chapter of Genesis has established an unassailable point of reference and a solid basis for a metaphysic and also for an anthropology and an ethic, according to which ens et bonum convertuntur (being and the good are convertible). Undoubtedly, all this also has a significance for theology, and especially for the theology of the body.
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3) "Haec sublimis veritas": "I am who I am" (Ex 3:14) constitutes an object of reflection for many philosophers, beginning from St. Augustine. He held that Plato must have known this text because it seemed very close to his ideas. Through St. Anselm, the Augustinian doctrine of the divine essentialitas exercised a profound influence on the theology of Richard of St. Victor, Alexander of Hales and St. Bonaventure.
"To pass from this philosophical interpretation of Exodus to that put forward by St. Thomas, one had necessarily to bridge the gap that separated the 'the being of essence' from 'the being of existence.' The Thomistic proofs of the existence of God bridged it."
Meister Eckhart's position differs from this. On the basis of this text, he attributed to God the puritas essendi: "est aliquid altius ente..." ("the purity of being; he is something higher than ens"); cf. E. Gilson, Le Thomisme [Paris: Vrin, 1944], pp. 122-127; E. Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages [London: Sheed and Ward, 1955], p. 810).
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(이상, 발췌 끝)
Meaning of Man's Original Solitude - 1979년 10월 10일
2) "An essential (quidditive) definition is a statement which explains the essence or nature of things. It will be essential when we can define a thing by its proximate genus and specific differentia.
The proximate genus includes within its comprehension all the essential elements of the genera above it and, therefore, includes all the beings that are cognate or similar in nature to the thing that is being defined. The specific differentia, on the other hand, brings in the distinctive element which separates this thing from all others of a similar nature, by showing in what manner it is different from all others, with which it might be erroneously identified.
Man is defined as a 'rational animal.' 'Animal' is hisproximate genus; 'rational' is his specific differentia. The proximate genus 'animal' includes within its comprehension all the essential elements of the genera above it, because an animal is a 'sentient, living, material substance....'" The specific differentia 'rational' is the one distinctive essential element which distinguishes 'man' from every other 'animal.' It therefore makes him a species of is own and separates him from every other 'animal' and every other genus above animal, including plants, inanimate bodies and substance.
Furthermore, since the specific differentia is the distinctive element in the essence of man, it includes all the characteristic 'properties' which lie in the nature of man as man, namely, power of speech, morality, etc., realities which are absent in all other beings in this physical world.
(C. N. Bittle, The Science of Correct Thinking, Logic [Milwaukee: 1947], pp. 73-74.)
