WONDERFULLY
HUMAN
1. Arturo Toscanini, the renown Italian conductor
of La Scala and the Met, warmly recalled
a very special day in his youth. “I kissed my first girl and smoked my first cigarette
on the same day,” he said. “I have not had time for tobacco since.” [2] Other people may advance
brutal clinical horrors for eschewing tobacco, but Maestro Toscanini's reason to
abandon smoking is the better, wonderfully human and compelling.
2. Although many of us are unfamiliar with the story
of Maestro Toscanini's life, we do appreciate the simplicity and innocence of his
youthful recollection. The conductor's words invoke the excitement, romance and
the head-over-heels discovery of love and enchantment experience by young men
and women everywhere.
PERSONAL AND PERILOUS
3. Today, such simplicity and innocence are dismissed
by many as hopelessly naive. It is no exaggeration to say that using sexuality and
sex to project personal identity and power, hostility and insecurity is
commonplace. In recent years, we have witnessed the disintegration of the traditional
family, the destruction of the unborn the rise of a generation of rootless children.
Single-parent poverty and neglect, disease
rates, fertility loss and sexually-related medical claims have sky-rocketed. Layered
over all this is a relentless attack on masculinity, manhood and fatherhood by educators
and media elites.
4. It is a given that entertainers and broadcast
media routinely collaborate to exploit sex and sexuality for publicity and profit.
This chorus of voices far outweighs the relatively few public voices urging modesty
and abstinence. Sex and sexuality are exploited by television, cinema, print media,
and the world-wide web to an unprecedented degree. Yet, no matter how extensive
or commercial all this exploitation may be, the abuse of sexuality is always very
personal and perilous.
GREAT WOUND
5. All personal decisions accrue unforeseen consequences
which can never be erased. The debate and controversies over sexuality and sex,
however, actually may be symptomatic of a more pervasive problem. It is not one
choice, or a few, or even many wrong choices, however, but rather the wrong personal
decisions of a multitude of people that threatens the moral order and stability
of our nation.
6. Many believe that our society suffers from a great affliction, a
great wound caused by a mass of persons who obsessively exaggerate their individual
autonomy and prowess while simultaneously belittling their obligations to the society
which supports them. Most pathetic are people who loudly extol their addiction
to sex with unashamedly shallow and servile candor. Coarse, indecent, and lacking
essential modesty, they aggressively pursue sexual gratification without procreation,
multiple sexual partners, cohabitation, serial marriages and divorces, contraception
and abortion, and not least the use of sexuality and sex to dominate other people.
POWERFUL DRUG
7. Countless people testify to the same truth. When
one stops being accountable to others for personal behavior, the more hungry and
miserable he becomes, eventually finding himself thrown out and trampled underfoot by even his own lawless cronies. People with destructive behaviors,
however, are not content with self-inflicted wounds. They have to hurt others
and justify on some level of lawlessness why they do it.
8. No one commits a serious offense without justifying
the sin to himself in some way. There is no escape from this phenomenon. Self-deception
is the most powerful drug available to human beings. Manufactured in the pharmacy
of one’s imagination, it rewires the human brain. This self-deception—powerful evidence
of humankind’s primordial fall from grace—pulls people into the all-embracing fiction that
sin has meaning.
9. The tell-tale indication that a sinner has not
purified his warped conscience is his headlong compulsion to publicly denounce the
moral law that informs his conscience. Hence practitioners of promiscuity loudly
criticize moral norms as pointless and anachronistic, going so far as to
proselytize the non-existence of evil or advocating capitulation to it in order
that one may, what? Transcend it! At this point sin emerges as a hydra devouring
all good within its reach—human lives, families, health, livelihoods,
compassion and many other things.
GUEST-HOST RELATIONSHIP
10. Not being a passive entity, sin seeks a guest-host
relationship in order to grow. Being a potent and aggressive disorder, sin desires
to make man its host, seeking a human soul as its ideal habitat. Indeed, with respect
to man, sin is species-specific. Sin is unique in that it demands the knowledge
and consent of its host to perpetuate itself. It replicates itself in a cycle of
commission, justification and denial.
11. When a person denies the truth, he offends
the dignity of his conscience. By committing shameful behavior, he heaps
indignities on his conscience. A conscience may be unformed and unable to speak
clearly within the awareness of a human soul. And it is quite possible, indeed
it has happened countless times, that a conscience is suppressed to such a
degree that it loses its voice before
the deafened intellect and will. It speaks, but it is ignored or not heard.
MANY AND UNPREDICTABLE
12. Nevertheless, if one’s conscience cannot
speak, it certainly may groan. The person who suppresses his conscience does
not have the last word. The truth remains the truth. And the conscience that
groans compels the person to deny—however
cleverly or crudely—that he has done anything wrong. The very act of bargaining
with evil in the hope that collateral good will absolve it is the sign of a
conscience groaning in misery. There are the consequences that follow.
13. The manifestations of sin are many and unpredictable.
The quality of a person’s life may be steadily eroded by chronic, lesser sins, or
he may suffer the rapid, catastrophic rupture of his relationship to God by
committing mortal sin. Regardless of the scenario, sin saps man’s eternal life.
Moreover, sin blocks man’s constructive impulse to cleanse himself spiritually and
actually induces him to purge himself of God! Satan, every human being’s mortal
enemy, absolutely cannot be placated. His ultimate aim is bring all human beings
to eternal death in his abhorrent hellish darkness.
WILLING AGENT
14. Satan is sin’s chief practitioner. His mission
is to concoct futility and despair. Because he dispenses evil with extravagant claims
and velvety softness, he is doubly a deceiver. Regardless of whether he inveigles
one to petty lying or incites another to commit notorious murder, it is all the
same to him. The deceiver has succeeded in wrecking countless lives.
15. Sin, too, seeks its own company. One small sin may not
appear to be powerful. But when clustered together, many small sins are strong enough
to dangerously weaken the intellect and will of any person. Unfortunately, human
beings are an often willing agents in the spread of sin. The host welcomes the
agent of his own contamination. By leading others to accept and commit sin, he helps
to create contagion.
16. Hatred is sin enfleshed in man. Hatred makes man
feverish with power and disorder—love is corrupted by manipulation, trust is adulterated
by duplicity. Family and friendship bonds rupture. The deceiver is not indifferent
to his own abominable mission: He desires that not one soul escape his deadly grasp. Satan is hatred
personified, and hatred is incapable of docility. To the contrary, hatred is all-devouring and the deceiver is
wholly interested in obtaining any soul on which his ravenous appetite may feed for eternity. Occasionally,
however, the deceiver judges an exceptional soul as a particular test of his formidable
powers. This distinction is never an honor. For such an afflicted spirit, it is a struggle
for his very life, and his example will mean the rise or fall of many close to him.
GREAT CLARITY
17. The Word of God shines as a brilliant light in
opposition to this quagmire of sorrow and futility. Every person should govern himself,
“knowing that you also have a Master in heaven”. [Col 4:1]
The sanctification of human sexuality begins in the conscience. It
begins precisely at the point where one is tempted to forget or actually denies
that sexuality is God's sacred gift to human beings:
DO YOU not know that you
are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If any one destroys God's
temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and that temple you are. [1Cor 3:16-17]
God wants every human being
to set his “personhood” to right order. It is for a spiritual reason that the immortal
soul is sovereign over mortal flesh—to cooperate with God in the unfinished work
of the human person’s salvation, humanity’s sanctification and God’s glory.
18. The holiness of God is the Spirit who testifies
to God’s unselfish will. In the fullness of time, he sent his only son to ransom
all who have fallen and are tempted by sin. When man compares his sinfulness to
God’s pure love, he experiences profound sorrow for his sins. With great clarity,
he discerns the deceiver’s many disguises. Sorrow exposes the hidden root of sin.
The Spirit is the ax laid to this root [cf.
Lk 3:9], the fire which burns every withered branch. [cf. Jn 15:6] The Spirit refines gold in the holocaust of a
person’s own sorrow, leading him into the bracing light of eternal truth. There
man knows the futility of groveling to the world.
CLEANSED OF SIN
19. Christ is love, and his love alone possesses
power to create and restore. He is love’s origin and our human destiny. Our Lord
wants us to love as he loves. God wants us to be good as he is good. God wants us to
seize Divine Love and to cling to it. He
desires to give to every individual and the community of man from his
storehouse of goodness. Each must
accept his true mission—to give his humanity unselfishly to God and to others as
Christ taught. The sign of our acceptance is not the reign of personal pride but
the surrender of our purified will to God. His love renews sinful men by leading
them to be reconciled to each other. But first we must be reconciled to Christ whose
love is holy.
20. Man’s destiny is communion with God, giving himself
unselfishly to God—in private prayer, examination of conscience, and repentance
for sins through, with, and in the sacramental celebration of the Church.
Cleansed of sin, man is fashioned by God as an instrument of his will. God empowers
him to build and restore relationships in his name. Those who are restored—”born,
not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” [Jn
1:12-13]--are invited into the Body of Christ, a firmament in the midst of the waters,
a watered garden in the midst of the desert.
DEMONSTRABLE IMPACT
21. God's gift of sexuality is an essential prerequisite
for human beings to grow in the image and likeness of Christ. We think we know
why sexuality is indispensable for relating authentically and intimately to one
another, but beyond the obvious much remains hidden. How a person’s sexuality
is crucial to his relationship with God is truly a mystery, one which requires
the devout Christian to seek the best of teachers—the Holy Spirit. We do know
if God had not gifted human beings with sexuality, we would be unrecognizable to
ourselves or to others or Jesus, fully divine and fully human. No human being would
be truly unique. We would have no need whatsoever for relationships. We would not
be human.
22. Clearly then, sexuality is the essential, generative,
and subsistent activity of human flesh intended by God to exist in harmony with
and serve the immortal soul. The Sacrament of Baptism reconciles the age-old enmity
between sexuality and spirituality. Hence, the apostle teaches us that our bodies
are temples of God’s glory. [cf. 1Cor 3:16-17;
6:19] God challenges every human creature
to make this astonishing discovery for himself:
Prayerful abstinence from sex has a demonstrably positive impact on a person’s
overall well-being. The experience of faith is deepened, given sight, proven by
practice and sealed by admirable words and deeds.
ECOLOGY OF PERSONHOOD
23. In days to come, what will the Lord Jesus say when
he returns to settle accounts with those to whom he has entrusted this treasure
of humanity?
FOR TO every one who has
will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what
he has will be taken away. [Mt 25:29]
24. That man's creaturely existence is graced by extraordinary
gifts—humanity, personhood, dignity, sexuality, faith and reason, to name but a
few—is well documented. Nevertheless, the stewardship of the uniquely human gifts
is taken for granted by most persons. It is imperative that an ecology of personhood be acknowledged and
understood. Any definition of goodness must encompass the primacy of the virtue
of chastity in all healthy human relationships and the practice of celibacy for
anyone not married—especially our youth.
25. All creation anticipates the day that the uniquely
human charisms are sanctified and presented to God, not dissipated and annulled,
but returned to him in the fullness of their powers:
CREATION ITSELF will be set
free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of
God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until
now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the
Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
For in this hope we were saved. [Rom 8:21-24]
MORE EXCELLENT
EXPERIENCE
26. By faith, the Body of Christ believes that God's
Spirit who changes the substance of bread and wine of the altar into Our Lord's
Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity likewise possesses the power to regenerate human
beings. Wheat and grape, God's gifts to humankind, are transformed into bread and
wine by man's skillful hands. Placed on his table, they symbolize the nourishment
and conviviality to be found in his home. Yet the Church enjoys a still more excellent
experience of God’s providence.
27. Having received bread and wine for the Preparation
of the Gifts in the Eucharistic celebration, she elevates them reverently to God
for his supernatural blessing. The Church prays that the Body of Christ may unite
itself sacrificially to the passion, death of the Lord Jesus Christ. By faith, the
priest celebrant’s laying-on of hands over the eucharistic gifts reveals God's power
to act decisively and sacramentally for the good of the Church in the world.
28. By faith we profess that the Holy Eucharist, the
living pledge of the resurrection to come, is given to the Church’s members as a
promise of eternal life to come and for their health and longevity of life in this
world. The Lord who confers countless graces and miracles, while not demanding them
of us, asks only that we grow into his glorious likeness one degree at a time. [cf. 2Cor 3: 17-18] Let us pray for the Holy Spirit to purify us from
everything that is inferior or dishonorable, that we may be a “vessel for noble
use, consecrated and useful to the Master of the house, ready for any good work” [2Tim 2:21-22], so that all may “give glory to
(the) Father who is in heaven”. [Mt 5:16]
__________________________________
[1] Cycle A /Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time /Isa 58:7-10 /1Cor 2:1-5
/Mt 5:13-16.
[2] Robert Byrne, ed.,
1,911 BEST THINGS ANYBODY EVER SAID (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1988) 30.
