Michael Waldstein

The Power of the Experienced Beauty of Love: The Question of Method in the Theology of the Body
There are two legs of the method followed by TOB: ! 1) Experience (John of Cross after all is doctor mysticus) - Christian experience. What ! does it look like and feel like to be a Christian? ! 2) A sharp and clear perception of the beauty of love. Again, this is heavy in Saint ! John of the Cross. The combination of the two is very powerful. An experience without beauty does not help in discovering the path of life. The grasp of a beauty that is distant, not related to us, is not attractive either. If you can have an example of beauty that is veriable in your experience (i.e. a combination of 1) and 2) above), then that can have a powerful effect on your life. Beauty has a persuasive power that cannot replace that of the truth but is nevertheless essential. As John Paul II wrote: It is this vocation to love that naturally allows us to draw close to the young. As a priest I realised this very early. I felt almost an inner call in this direction. It is necessary to prepare young people for marriage, it is necessary to teach them to love. Love is not something that is learned, and yet there is nothing else as important to learn! As a young priest I learned to love human love. This has been one of the fundamental themes of my priesthood my ministry in the pulpit, in the confessional, and also in my writing. If one loves human love, there naturally arises the need to commit oneself completely to the service of fair love, because love is fair, it is beautiful. Crossing the Threshold of Hope, pp.122-123 JPII was moved by this beauty of love and it impelled him to commit to the service of love. Therefore beauty is of crucial importance for JPII. What is beauty? There are two aspects, according to Denis the Areopagite: 1. Hoi armestia: harmony 2. Hai aglaia: splendour, radiance Harmony not just a geometric shape from which I infer truths. No, we react to eg the smile of the audience. There is a radiance within that unites the parts of your face into a coherent whole. It shapes the harmony.

Michael Waldstein

A look at some art: Titians Ariadne meeting Bacchus. Ariadne not looked at by Bacchus... Compare also Titians Assumption in Sta Maria dei Gloriosi dei Frari - God looks at Our Lady but she does not look into his eyes. Her sense of anticipation is powerful - reaching upward gesture. There is an active receptivity. Titians Sacred and Profane Love: Profane love is all dressed up; sacred love is naked. Her face is unguarded and open. She is abandoning herself to we dont know what. Unprotected. No fear. On the rst page of TOB catecheses, JPII wrote: Tota pulchra es Maria. This was on the Feast of the immaculate Conception, 1974. Art is almost a bridge to help express beauty. Jesus holds a bird in Leonardos BVM and Child. We are trained to look at bodies as value-free facts that are best apprehended by measurement and mathematical means. Like this since Bacon. Bacon brought in a revolution of scientic method: human knowledge over nature. Science is everything for him. But if science is your goal then mechanics and a cold view of the world will take rst place! As time went on, the impression was created that science was the royal road to knowing bodies. Science gets at the facts. It is value-free. This is the fundamental misperception with which we are struggling in the twenty-rst century. In this world view, there can be no guidance given from body as to what we are supposed to do, how we should behave, because the body is seen as raw datum. TOB is an attempt to point out that in your experience of the body, the body is in fact different from a piece of mechanistic machinery. Hans Jonas compared our contemporary spiritual situation with that of ancient gnosticism. Matter is evil; it is the kingdom of the devil. These gnostics would say that the most insidious plan of the devil is sex, because by it, spiritual substance is captured and power is exercised over that spiritual part of ourselves. The path of our life is to escape from that kingdom of the devil which is the kingdom of bodies. Jonas says that our situation is even more desperate than that of those heretical gnostics, because in a diabolical universe you at least know where to go get out! Our universe is completely indifferent because it is value-free and a bottomless pit. Hence it is even worse than the gnostic world.

Michael Waldstein

This is shown, for example, in why people are so profoundly blind to e.g. the difference between homosexual and heterosexual sexual behaviour. The body itself makes no difference to so many people. For JPII: the body is personal. Look at Christian art e.g. Titian and you will see this. More commentary on Titian: On the picture of Holy Family Joseph expresses a pure mans face. Deeply thoughtful and temperate. The body can express millions of things. e.g. In Austria you kiss a woman on the back of the hand but if she was to turn her hand over that would have a completely different, erotic, meaning. Sacramentality may well have the ring of an abstract theological formula, yet it bespeaks a reality in which a spirituality of marriage can discover its true foundations. The sacrament of marriage, just like the other sacraments, exists.... stubbornness of heart. Cardinal Lehman, Contemporary Perspectives on Christian Marriage, p. 99 Key text on beauty in TOB 57:3 Sebbene il mantenimento del proprio corpo con santit e rispetto si formi mediante lastensione dalla impudicizia e tale via indispensabile tuttavia fruttica sempre nellesperienza pi profonda di quellamore, che stato iscritto dal principio, secondo limmagine e somiglianza di Dio stesso, in tutto lessere umano e quindi anche nel suo corpo. Perci san Paolo termina la sua argomentazione della prima Lettera ai Corinzi nel capitolo 6 con una signicativa esortazione: Gloricate dunque Dio nel vostro corpo (1 Cor 6,20). Audience, Wednesday 18th March 1981 Although the maintaining of ones own body with holiness and respect is acquired through abstention from impurity and such as way is indispensable nevertheless it always bears fruit in the deeper experience of that love which was inscribed from the beginning, according to the image and likeness of God himself, in the whole human being and therefore also in his body. Therefore Saint Paul ends his argument in in rst Letter to the Corinthians with a signicant exhortation: Glorify God, therefore, in your body (1 Cor 6,20). (JF personal translation)

Michael Waldstein

JPII links PIETY with PURITY. [Tobias and Sarah too - the prayer they offer before going down for night?] God himself is thereby gloried. Purity is the glory of God IN the human body. Glory has seven fundamental aspects: 1. Gods glory is LIGHT not DARKNESS: Ezekiel 1,13-14: The appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of re or like torches. Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning ashed out of it. The creatures sped back and forth like ashes of lightning. (and another text too...) 2. It is not self-enclosed; it shines and is present everywhere (Habakkuk 3, 3-4): God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. His glory covered the heavens and his praise lled the earth. His splendour was like the sunrise; rays ashed from his hand, where his power was hidden. 3. It is not impersonal, but the light of Gods face (Ps 44,3): It was not by their sword that they won the land, nor did their arm bring them victory; it was your right hand, your arm, and the light of your face, for you loved them. And 2 Cor 4,6: For God, who said, Let light shine out of darkness, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. 4. Glory transforms what it strikes (2 Cor 3,18): And we, who with unveiled faces all reect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. 5. Glory brings joy through its beauty (Is 9 1-3, 28,5) Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of 4

Michael Waldstein

Naphtali, but in the future he will honour Galilee of the Gentiles, by the way of the sea, along the Jordan. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy; they rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as men rejoice when dividing the plunder. And Is 28,5: In that day the LORD Almighty will be a glorious crown, a beautiful wreath for the remnant of his people. And Baruch 5,1: Take off the garment of your sorrow and afiction, O Jerusalem, and put on for ever the beauty of the glory from God. 6. It is compelling (Phil 3,7-8): But whatever was to my prot I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ. 7. It is inexhaustible (Eph 3,16-19): I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be lled to the measure of all the fulness of God. Conclusion Subjectivity in St John of the Cross: O lamps of re! in whose splendours the deep caverns of feeling that were once obscure and blind, now give forth, so rarely, so exquisitely, both warmth and light to their Beloved. There is exactly the same personal subjectivity as in Gaudium et spes 24.3: Indeed, the Lord Jesus, when He prayed to the Father, that all may be one. . . as we are one (John 17:21-22) opened up vistas closed to human reason, for He implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God's sons in truth and charity. This 5

Michael Waldstein

likeness reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully nd himself except through a sincere gift of himself. Gaudium et spes, 24,3 JPIIs Commentary on St John of the Cross says the same thing. Hence JPIIs inuence on the writing of this section of Gs is virtually indisputable. The gift in marriage: If I sell you a house then it is yours. So when I show up a week later and again say, the house is yours, thats unnecessary. But in marriage, the gift must be repeated over and over again, or else the marriage will die.