Welcome to TOB Tuesday! Every week we’ll spend a few minutes together reflecting on an aspect of St. John Paul II’s monumental work, Man and Woman He Created Them, otherwise known as the “Theology of the Body.” Our goal will be to unearth St. John Paul II’s original and sometimes earth-shattering insights on the human person, marriage, gender, the meaning of life and, oh yes, why the heck we even have a body.

So let’s jump in with both feet on that exact topic – Why do we have a body anyway? I’m so glad you asked. To answer, I’d like to quote a story from an Aussie friend of mine, Dr. Jared O’Shea. In an article he wrote on God, eros, and religious education (I know, not your most common trio), Jared begins with the comments of an elderly and well-seasoned Catholic teacher who exclaimed to him in an exasperated tone, “I was always made to feel as if all that mattered was my soul, and that my body was little more than some kind of prison that I had to punish and subdue so that I could leave it behind and become something like an angel. It never really made sense to me. Why did God make us this way if what he really wanted was an angel?”

BINGO! How many of us have felt this same dilemma – If, when I die, only my soul goes to heaven then why expend all this energy trying to chase the “world, the flesh and the devil” out of my body? Yeah, yeah, I get that the Church teaches that all this mess is the result of Adam and Eve eating the “forbidden fruit,” but couldn’t God have works things out a different way? After all, he’s God? What’s the point of it all anyway?

If you’ve ever thought anything close to this, even just once, then congratulations! You were encountering the natural-born philosopher in you, yes you. Whenever you ask “why” questions or want to know the meaning of something, then your irrepressible philosopher is making its voice heard within you; and that is a very good thing. You, me, every person we meet, is made for meaning. We are made to know not only how something works but why it exists.

However, we live in a world that has stripped the body of its meaning. We are taught to be embarrassed about asking such silly questions as why the body exists. Instead, we are wildly applauded, pats on the back all around, for considering the body only in its functional capacities, with the top 3 reasons for having a body being: 1) for the survival of the species; 2) for carrying out the unitive and procreative aspects of sex; and 3) for pleasure and self-gain. Depending on your frame of reference, the order of importance of these three answers can change dramatically or #2 can be left out altogether, apparently without any loss to society or the history of mankind.

While not denying that the body can carry out any of the above activities, St. John Paul II reasons from a very different perspective – the body has a deep and profound meaning as the expression of the person, In the “theology of the body” he says cliply, “Look, a body that expresses the ‘person’!” In other words, if I were to follow you around for 24 hours and watch your body and your actions, I could learn a great deal about you. Just think about it for a moment – if I were to follow you from the moment your alarm went off to the moment you fell asleep (and not just when you climbed into bed because one’s actions in bed are highly revelatory of our person as well), what would I conclude about who you are?

I encourage you to try this experiment on yourself for one day. At the end of tomorrow, take 5 minutes before bed and review your day and write down what your body revealed about you. Who are you? What do your actions reveal about the kind of person you are? Are you patient? Temperamental? Industrious? Minimalistic? Self-disciplined in eating, exercising, and speech habits? A “go with the flow” kind of person who doesn’t self-exert or rock the boat too much? Are you money driven? Relationship driven? Keep-the-peace driven? Entertainment driven? Ideas driven? Are you a believer in God? In politics? In the good life of comfort and affluence? In helping your neighbor? In “live and let live”? What did your body (and its actions) reveal to you about you?

You might also want to try this experiment on others, although not in a nosy kind of way. Take a break from being tuned into music or podcasts or the radio and instead tune into looking, really looking, at people walking by, at your work colleagues in the lunch room or in a meeting, at a mother and child at the grocery store, at your students during recess, at college kids hanging out on campus. What are their bodies and their actions saying about them, about who they are?

We’ll come back to the meaning of the body and its ability to reveal the person next week. Until then, thanks for joining me this week, and remember…you are a gift!

© Katrina J. Zeno, MTS