How We Know God Through The Body

© 2004

Outline of Talk: How We Know God through the Body

1. Introduction: The Most Important Words of the Universe: This is my body, given—Jesus says it in the Gospel.
   1. The Incarnation
   2. On the Cross, giving His life for His Bride
   3. To us, the Church
2. The Body reveals the person
   1. We have a soul—we know we are here because our bodies reveal us. (St. Paul’s teachings)
   2. We would not know others without our bodies to receive the other—our ears hear, our eyes see. We need our bodies.
3. The Body reveals God.
   1. Jesus says in Matthew 19: "In the beginning" showing what humans are supposed to be like.
   2. Genesis 2:18: "It is not good for man (Adam) to be alone."
   3. Genesis 2:25: "The man and woman were naked and unashamed." This shows that they knew that were to be gifts to one another. They knew because of the complementarity of the bodies that they can say, "This is my body, given," and so know the meaning of life which is to give.
   4. The body reveals God because the male and female bodies go together, and so a husband and wife form a "one-flesh union" (Eph. 5 and Gen 2), making a communion of persons. The deepest thing that can be said about God, "God is love" (1 Jn 4) has everything to do about God being a communion of persons in God’s very nature—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit loving each other from all eternity.
4. What this has to do with singles.
   1. We still are to be gifts. Sexual desire is the desire to love as God loves in God’s very being. We must love all those God puts in our lives. We are to bear fruit, just like the Holy Spirit is the uncreated "fruit" of the Father and Son’s love.
   2. We participate in Jesus’ forsakenness on the cross in a special way. Our loneliness is not for naught. We too are fruitful—for Jesus’ love on the Cross—"This is my body" bears much fruit in the world—eternal life for those who say yes to Him—and it is precisely in His loneliness that we become adopted sons and daughters. So the single must have some deep connection with Christ which gives us hope for our lives.
5. Conclusion-Practical applications for the single.

Monica Ashour can be contacted at mashour@tobet.org

The Theology of the Body Evangelization Team can be reached at info@tobet.org