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Chapter 30. Sixth Commandment: Marital Fidelity • 413
Shame may enter the relationship. Pope John Paul II notes there
is an instinctive shame that can ward off utilitarian sex. Shame leads
the woman to protect herself from the aggressive, lustful sexuality of
the man. In the opposite case, shame causes the man to resist a sexual
advance from the woman that is merely lustful. God calls for spousal
love as the remedy for moving beyond the sex appeal of the body alone
to its nuptial meaning, revealing the person as made in his image.
The Redemption of the Body
Pope John Paul II retrieves the nuptial meaning of the body by taking us
back to life before the Fall, to a time of original innocence and original
nakedness. The first man and woman did not experience any shame in
their nakedness because the attraction of male and female served love
alone. This was more than virtuous self-control. The man and woman
dwelt so intimately in their bodies that each body expressed to the other
the beauty of the human person and the image of God. Bodily sexuality
was integrated into the energy of spousal love.
Original Sin caused a rupture in the unity of body and soul. The
body now could
obscure
as well as reveal the person. Christ’s saving act
included the redemption of the body by which he restored the lost unity
of soul and body. This is a
process of restoration
, partly completed here
and fully restored in the next life. While there will not be marriage in
the future life, masculinity and femininity will endure. Pope John Paul
II relates this to consecrated celibacy and virginity in which the nuptial
meaning of the body is not denied. The body’s nuptial meaning serves
love in ways other than marriage.
We seldom do justice to the ways in which our bodies share in and
reveal our interior personal lives. We have drawn attention here to Pope
John Paul II’s meditation on the nuptial meaning of the body because
we believe it is a vision of sex, marriage, and the person best suited to
rebuilding a wholesome, faith-filled, and loving approach to these most
precious gifts.
15
15 See Pope John Paul II,
Love and Responsibility
(New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux,
1981); and his
Original Unity of Man and Woman: Catechesis on the Book of Genesis
(Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1981).