Catholics Love Sex
In sex we become like God. We will never do anything else that so clearly makes us divine.
Here Deacon Michael speaks about " the wonder of the miracle of the humanity of Christ." He speaks of his own love of babies and how in them he sees God.
Bringing in his love of history, Michael speaks of the lust of King David for Uriah the Hittite's wife, Bathsheba. That lust brought forth a baby who died. Yet later David and Bathsheba, as husband and wife, had other children, one of whom was Solomon. Babies are signs of God's favor, despite our own unworthiness.
Written by Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael
IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG WHILE YOU ARE LISTENING:
As I was saying, integral to the readings that we've had this week is sex. The human aspect of sex. We see it very vividly. I mean, notice in the first reading, the Song of Songs [the book of Ecclesiastes], man, if I had a nimble tongue like that when I was young, man, I could have charmed the girls. You notice how it goes through each of the senses. All of the senses are encompassed in this Song of Songs.
The reality of what we have. We have in yesterday's reading, where we have the virgin will be with child. We have Elizabeth and Zachariah, without children. We have Sampson. We have all of these things and I was talking earlier about how they were outside the normal. There was something different, and through that entire ancestry of Jesus Christ, there were constantly instances of relationships resulting in children were outside the normal. This is exactly what we have with Mary, exactly what we have with Elizabeth.
But there is another fundamental aspect of it, and I have to take it from the perspective of being a man, of being a father. One of the other aspects that is not talked about here is the father. Joseph, Zachariah, Sampson's father. Men do not bear children.
But I was talking about my daughter. I can... I just did it... I can remember, snap, just like that at any instant, the first time I held my daughter. I held her on my arm, she was a long gangly one, her head was right here [in his hand] and her legs were dangling off of my arm and I looked at that child and went, Ooooh!
That's another aspect of what we are talking about. With the birth of Christ, with the birth of John the Baptist, the reaction of the world, of fathers, but more than that, the world, to a baby. It is very difficult, especially when the baby is asleep, for anybody to go, "Oh, gag, I hate babies!"
They are so soft and wonderful. They are just so beautiful when they are asleep. They are just wonderful. Now maybe Frank doesn't agree with me, I don't think that is the case, I know he loves his children, but that is the reality, the human reality of what we are talking about.
And that is an aspect of Christmas. Because one of the things, and John Paul II, in his theology of the body is talking about the same thing, and I talk about it regularly. If the totality of what we experience in our lives, the totality, is a gift from God, every aspect is a gift from God to give us the opportunity to sanctify ourselves so we have the opportunity to spend all eternity with Him in Heaven, what we see in this situation is that with the birth of a child, God is giving that exact situation. The totality, the wonder of parenthood, the totality and wonder of babies, the totality of our very existence, of being an old man and all of a sudden of being a father and have your wife, who is an old woman, by that time she was probably at least 25 years old, be an old woman having a baby.
All of these things are demonstrative at Christmas of the wonder of the miracle of the humanity of Christ. Because it is through His humanity that the totality of our existence becomes a means of our sanctification. And that humanity entails all aspects of our lives. Irregular births, irregular relationships, the relationship between David and… her name, it just popped right out of my mind... Bathsheba, that was irregular, but look what came from it. The relationship between Zachariah and Elizabeth was totally regular until it was made irregular by old people having a baby.
The relationship between humanity and God is born from an irregular relationship. God impregnated Mary. Mary became the mother of God.
And it is in those totality of those things that is represented by the birth of Christ that we celebrate on Christmas, that we find our sanctification. Through the humanity of Jesus as represented by this birth. And it encompasses everything.
And the readings this week have tried to make us understand that what is there about humanity that makes it unique? One of the crucial things, "Oh, men can think; we are made in the image of God; we are able to do all these things." Yes, we can train monkeys to do things. We’ve trained grasshoppers that do things that look like thinking.
Those are things that are very distinctive, but what is there about God, the creator of heaven and earth? There are only God and us who can create a soul. That's it. And how do we create a soul? Sex. So… I have a friend who is a Baptist, and one time he says, "You know, you're so lucky to be married to a Catholic, you know, I'm married to a Baptist and her church, my Baptist church tells her "No!" with regard to sex. The Catholic church tells women, "Yes!" with regard to sex. He says, "It must be wonderful being Catholic!"
No, its wonderful to be human. To be able to take every aspect of our existence to sanctify ourselves including the most fundamental of all, sex, by which we create a human soul. By which we participate in the miracle of the creation that we've got through our Lord at the creation of Adam and Eve. The wonder of participating in the act that allows us to move on the path through Jesus Christ to the eternity of Heaven with God.
In this relationship, however we wish to describe the relationship, of what aspect, like I said, it’s babies, it resonates to me, but it is all defined by love. The love between a man and a woman, the love between a father and a child, the love... everything comes from the fact that Jesus Christ was born in his humanity and became human like us and made everything in our lives a means for our sanctity. And that is one of the greatest wonders that we celebrate at Christmas because we see the fruits of Jesus Christ. We see the baby in the manger. I can assure you that I wouldn't have cared if He was the savior of the world, I would have gone up and said, "Can I hold him?" I love to hold babies. I really do. That is the love that we celebrate. That is the miracle of the humanity and the divinity of Christ in our Lord Jesus Christ.
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