Put Out Into the Deep: The New Evangelisation - Talk 8 (Final)

By Jack Chui

I finally get around to writing about the 8th and final talk of the Theology of the Body series hosted each Wednesday night for 8 consecutive weeks. I was late to the last seminar and missed half the video but it seemed to me according to the heading in the notes that it was just going to be about spreading the word on Theology of the Body and the truth about our bodies. So rather than recount the notes which I didn't think were too exciting, I will try and sum up the whole TOB course and what it means to me.

My three key take outs:

1. Lust is a Battle - vs. love is a great counterfeit. It is such a great struggle to combat lust, or the using of another's body for self-seeking pleasure. It can be difficult to see the joy of unconditional love when lust is so tempting. This battle is a constant one and an impossible one to win...
2. We need more of God's help - but we can win the battle if the Holy Spirit helps us. I learn than in marriage, to sustain the love between a man and a woman, it is better to humbly ask God for Him to love my partner more through me than for me to do it from my own will. It reinforces the idea that I continuously need God and that it will be so much harder, likely impossible without Him.
3. The Heavenly Marriage - the early marriage and/or sex is not the be all and end all to life because there is a greater marriage in Heaven that we are called to. If we can look forward to this then its not so important to seek marriage here on earth as much as it appears to be the most happy thing in the world to find love in a partner and get married.

All in all, I wasn't too surprised by or excited by the content of the talks, mostly because I had heard part of it before and in a way I was/am living its message through most of my life. After some shortish relationships which broke my heart I stayed single for 8 years in a way determined to make sure that the person I would choose next would be my last. I was very passive in looking for the right girl, to the point of disinterest. Yes, there was pressure from my parents to find someone because they were concerned for my long term 'loneliness', but I was lucky I moved to Melbourne from Sydney and so don't live with with my parents and so don't face the pressure so much. So, I could say, I have waited patiently for the right girl if there is one.

I wasn't very concerned about not being able to find the right person because I had come to a comfortable stage in life that I would be happy being single and continuing this way for a long foreseeable future. I had ministry, sport and enough friends to keep my faith up. My faith was growing to trust God more and more that He would look after me, and look out for my best interests. I'm lucky perhaps, that I've had such a 'posivite' (can't find a way of saying 'goodie goodie') upbringing, but its a great blessing that I've somehow stuck close to God/Church for quite some time.

Now, things are different because for almost a year, I have been in my most steady relationship in my short life. With TOB, I hope to discern about marriage and live to God's initial plan for His creation to the best of my ability. I have learnt more about this now in TOB, and while I have been living most of it for some time, I pray that my partner can live it too and that together we can help be a model to encourage others to do the same. Its going to be hard, as I/we fight a losing battle against the world's ways, but it is one that I think I can lay my life down for. Please pray for me, that I can remember what I learned, practice and be true to it, and help encourage others to know of God's plan for our bodies, sex and life.

Theology in the Bedroom: Love, Sex & Fertility - Talk 7

By Jack Chui

Sexual Honesty

Most of this talk centered around explaining why the Church holds a stand on controversial topics related to sex. These are topics like:

• Contraception
• Pre-marital sex
• Homosexual acts
• Pornography
• Masturbation
• In vitro fertilisation

Not all of these were answered, but left as a thought question post the talk. The way to answer these moral questions is to answer the following - Is this an authentic sign of God's free, total, faithful, fruitful love or is it not? Each of the above should fail in at least one of those four criteria. We are only bitter towards the law when we desire break it...

Contraception was particularly focused on because I think a lot of Catholics struggle with this one. Contraception was not intended to prevent pregnancy - there was always a 100% reliable way of doing that - to abstain. So it was invented so that we wouldn't have to abstain. Unfortunately, it promotes a society that does't have to say yes to abstaining - it promotes sexual addiction so that men and women can indulge in lust. Not free...

Contraceptive sex denies the total gift of self because it gives all of the body EXCEPT my fertility. Fertility is the original blessing of God on humanity

Contraception is also not faithful because it violates the marriage vows of being open to new life/children.

Sex should be both life-giving and love-giving - we should not divorce the two.

Responsible Parenthood

its a myth that the Church teaches that couples are obligated to have as many children as is physically possible. The Church calls couples to a responsible exercise of parenthood. That is - "to prudently and generously decide to have a large family, or for serious reasons and with due respect to the moral law, choose to have no more children for the time being".

There are two accepted forms of 'contraception' in the Church - abstinence and Natural Family Planning (NFP). NFP is acceptable because it is in keeping with the nature of sexual intercourse as a renewal of the couples wedding vows. Never does a couple using NFP do anything to sterilise their acts of intercourse. If pregnancy does not result from their acts of intercourse, it's God's doing, not their doing. Every time such a couple have intercourse they can honestly pray, "Lord, your will be done."

Some random notes on Marriage

Simply getting married doesn't automatically guarantee sexual honesty. Sexual sin is a dodging of the cross - because true love hurts too much. The first step to a healthy marriage is faithfulness - how healthy would a marriage be if s/he were unfaithful to their wedding vows? Sex is like a renewal of the marriage vows expressed bodily.

The marriage or love vows is actually a forging of God's love rather than our own, because its impossible to love by ourselves all the days of our lives. We are called to participate in this love - stay close and 'convert' into it --- towards God's love. This is an ongoing daily conversion.

Children are not a right, they are a gift. The child is a sacramental expression of 'one flesh' of marriage - the child is the flesh! Spousal love prepares us for parental love. We need to continue spousal love when having children - I can be a better father by being a better husband to my wife.

Authentic Chastity: From Legalism to Liberty - Talk 6

By Jack Chui

Chasity vs Sexual Freedom - what two opposites which are misunderstood...

Chastity is actually the expression of sexual freedom.

Society can make us think of chastity negatively as a long list of 'thous shalt nots' and sexual freedom as the breaking apart of those rules. However, this promotes an 'anything goes' attitude and addiction. Is a habitual masturbator free when they can't say 'no' to their next ......?

True freedom is not liberation from the external 'constraint' (rules) that calls me to be good, but from the internal constraint that hinders my choice for the good --- to be able to say no (or being chaste) is the true sexual freedom!

In relation to masturbation, I know it is truly a grace from God that needs to be asked for constantly to say no. The same goes to the temptation to fight lust or using someone for our own gratification. We are just too weak on our own to say no sometimes, but with His power, it can be done. It must be just the way we were designed to keep us needy and reliant on God... =)

The guiding principle of all Catholic moral teaching is the dignity of the human person. Persons must never be treated as objects of use or a means to an end. We have to see the dignity of the human person so that we are compelled to do what it takes to love that person rightly.

What is love? A feeling, physical attraction, emotion? Pope John Paul II says that these are the 'raw material' of love and there is a tendency to regard them as love's 'finished form'. These 'raw materials' if not properly held together may not add up to love, but to its direct opposite - lust. I can have a feeling or physical attraction to any girl on this planet but does that mean its love?

The opposite of love is not actually hatred, but rather to use the other as a means to an end. This lust is a pale cheap imitation of love. For love to take root, above all we must firmly set our will on the person's good, utterly refusing to indulge lust --- this involves integrating the feelings, physical attraction and emotions with the 'dignity' of the person. This is a call for self donation (for the good of the other) rather than self gratification (for the good of self).

Quoting the notes -

Chastity is not an 'annihilation' of sexual reactions or pushing them into the subconscious where they await an opportunity to explode. Chasity is a matter of sustained long term integration of sexual values with the value of the person. The person who wants to succeed in mastering sexual impulse and excitement, must be committed to a progressive education in self control of the will, of the feelings, of the emotions; and this education must develop beginning with the most simple acts in which it is relatively easy to put the interior decision into practice (i.e. to be able to say no).

Faith is the key to this - lust may feel like the real thing, but this is where faith must prevail.

Love reaches maturity when it turns from "how the other makes me feel" to "who the other person is". Its the recognition of the other's uniqueness - their unrepeatability. They cannot and should not be compared/measured to someone else. Authentic love is attracted not just by 'attributes' or 'qualities' of a person, but for the person's value. The qualities are repeatable and they help us get to love, but if it stops there then a permanent shadow is cast over the permanency of the relationship (they can be replaced by someone else with the same or better 'qualities'. These 'attributes' or 'qualities' can also change or disappear over time (like breasts =P)

One love that can satisfy our yearning - Jesus. Love on earth can only approximate this love.

The Two Become "One Flesh": Living the "Great Mystery - Talk 5

By Jack Chui

"Be subject to one another out of reverence of Christ. As the Church is subject to Christ, so wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her" (Eph 5:21, 24-25)

Apparently the above passage is one of the hardest to accept for particularly for women - it can send shivers down their spines... From my point of view, and I'm bias because I'm male, the men have it just as hard if not harder than ladies.

The talk from Christopher West raises some good points.

• First, "Be subject to one another" is a call for mutual subjection. When St. Paul was writing to the Ephesians, male domination was the norm. Male lust is twisted into male domination of female - it was not part of God's plan. St. Paul is seeking to restore the original order before sin.
• "reverence of Christ" - mutual attraction. We men are in reverence of the mystery of the female body. Females are an image of Heaven on earth. Woman becomes the most holy dwelling of the most High God like Mary.
• Wife is a symbol of the Church and the husband is a symbol of Christ. For men, then our call is be like Christ. He came not to be served but to serve - to lay down His life for His Bride (Mt 20:28). Women are called to be obedient to their husbands just as all of us are called to be obedient to Christ. This can work, when husbands love their wives like Christ loves the Church. It is a receiving or experiencing of love.

Pope John Paul II writes this about the sexual act:

If a husband is truly to love his wife, "it is necessary to insist that intercourse must not serve merely as a means of allowing [his] climax... The man must take [the] difference between male and female reactions into account... so that climax may be reached [by] both... and as far as possible occur in both simultaneously." The husband must do this "not for hedonistic, but for altruistic reasons." In this case, if "we take into account the shorter and more violent curve of arousal in the man, [such] tenderness on his part in the context of martial intercourse acquires the significance of an act of virtue"

--- and who says priests don't know anything about sex =P

This next bit is meant to explain the sacredness of marriage but I don't' quite get it so I'll just write a bit of it. The purpose of the sacraments is to unite us with Christ the Bridegroom and "impregnate" us with divine life. Marriage is a model for all the sacraments. This is why the Church so diligently safeguards the meaning of marriage. Redefining marriage redefines humanity because it obscures the earthly sign of the marriage that we are called to the eternal marriage with God.

There are 4 characteristics which distinguish authentic love from the counterfeit.

1. Free gift of self
2. Total - without condition
3. Faithful - I will never leave you
4. Fruitful - life-giving because love by its very nature is life giving

These are expressed in the questions during marriage at the altar:

• Have you come here freely and without reservation? (Free & Total)
• Do you promise to be faithful till death? (Faithful)
• Do you promise to receive children lovingly from God? (Fruitful)

The sacrament of marriage is complete after the vows are taken AND the marriage is consummate (or once sex has taken place). Sex/Intercourse is where the words of the wedding vows become flesh. "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." (Eph 5:21-33). Intercourse renews the marriage vows through the language of the body.

Marriage is a sacrament ministered by two people and doesn't involve the priest like it is for all the other sacraments. Sex is sacramental - it is the indefinitive expression of the marital act. We are called to bring the Church into the bedroom...

The Heavenly Marriage: The Joy of Christian Celibacy - Talk 4

By Jack Chui

May not be so much personal thoughts here as I don't have so much to add to the points I took out of this talk - which is just half way through the 8 week course. I'm taking so much in and remembering most of it that I think I might be rehashing some stuff that I've written before. But anyway ---

God's plan for us continues despite our sin. The sin was like a detour, but it did not change the ultimate destination. So what is God's plan or our destiny? The Heavenly marriage or the "Marriage of the Lamb" (Rev 19:7). God ultimately wants to marry us and be in union with Him forever in a way that is greater than sex as we know it.

So there are two marriages - one on earth which we know of, and the other more mysterious one in Heaven. Which one should we be aiming for? Well, if we know about the Heavenly marriage then that one for sure! Knowing this will definitely take off pressure to get married and have sex here on earth because there is an even greater one that will last for eternity. Earthly marriage is only a foretaste or preparation of for Heavenly marriage. It is like a weak icon of what Heaven is like and so like all icons in the church, it should not be worshiped lest we lift marriage/sex higher than God.

Sex is the closest thing to Heaven on earth, but it can also be the closest thing to hell... when it is not lived as God intended. The abuse and misuse - the self destruction can wound us because sex can take us to the heights of glory.

"In the beatific vision, God will give himself totally to man, and we will respond with the total gift of ourselves to him." - taken straight from the notes. In the Heavenly, marriage, one way to picture it is that all of us that ever lived will come together and be in union with God forever - so we will be with our brothers and sisters which are many parts forming one big big body =)

A celibate person freely forgoes sexual relations in order to devote all their energy and desires to the union that alone can satisfy. They "skip" the earthly marriage in anticipation of the Heavenly marriage - and so boldly proclaim that "the kingdom of God is here". Its unfortunate that our society sees celibacy as repressive , that people who don't have sex because they can't get any as losers... They should be held with the highest regard because they are a great witness to the greater communion that is to come. Celibacy boldly proclaims our ultimate meaning of sexuality - it points us to a greater sexuality. Celibacy is not a rejection of sexuality, but a living out of the deepest meaning of sexuality - union with Christ and his Church (Eph 5:31-32).

Celibacy can only be lived when we are redeemed (or saved) by Christ and so experience "liberation from lust". The Christian vocations of celibacy and marriage only make sense through this liberation. Its difficult to understand this 'liberation' but one way I can put it is to remember the ultimate marriage is the one in Heaven, rather than the one on earth.

 Jesus upped the ante when he said that even if men look at women with lust, that we commit adultery in our hearts. So marriage is not a legitimate outlet for lust - it is not a free for all in marriage even. There is particular responsibility on men because we are the initiators - it is written into us to initiate the gift and for women to receive. We need to see each other continually as a gift.

Redeemed as Male & Female: Christ Restores God's Plan - Talk 3

By Jack Chui

We have to understand how bad the original sin is to understand how great His redemption is

This time I will try and write about what the talk meant to me rather than just regurgitate my notes because I think I understood this talk more than the last talk.

"Original Sin is like the breath of God being expired in us. Jesus came to breathe back in His life with the Holy Spirit." So how does the Holy Spirit do this? --- In short to change our hearts so that we can love.

The Church can feel like its just an institution which dishes out a long list of rules, most of which we don't know and therefore don't abide by, and some we don't follow even if we know them. Its tough following rules --- remembering them is hard enough but there's something human in us that sometimes wants to push the rules to the limit and ultimately to break them if we can get away with it.

If "you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law" (Gal 5:18). The Holy Spirit came to lead or change our hearts so that we can be free from the Law. If we can love God and the Church enough, then we will automatically abide by the law without having to think much. Its like me and going to church on Sundays - I don't think of it as a chore, a killjoy to sleeping in or a boring waste of time, because if I love God/Church enough, I'll just want to go - be drawn there. The Holy Spirit in this way provides freedom from the long list of rules. Free because we have no desire to break the laws.

I'll say it doesn't happen in all areas of my spiritual life though. I still struggle to pray - one can say, if I love God enough, I'll pray more often... but unfortunately, prayer for me is something that I'm drawn to when I'm desperate... Sloth =(

So how might I overcome this laziness or other sin that we/I might have? By the gift of redemption.

If we give God our lust, He will give us the true love. Its like exchanging the counterfeit for the real thing!

Sin is just a twisted version of the good that comes from God. But if we give it to God, He can give us the 'untwisted' version.

This is a hard one for me... My laziness in prayer translates into laziness to just give it over to God. I don't seem to care enough about myself and perhaps others (because I'm asked to pray for them) because there's nothing bad happening to me to want to pray for myself. It sounds like the right way to go though - this however can only be given to God in prayer... Either way, I've been told that prayer is a discipline and that its not easy to keep up, even for the best of us. I pray that the Holy Spirit can change my heart to love God and His people enough to pray more.

This fight may be a continual one for me, and Christopher West ends this talk on the topic of the "master of suspicion". I am a master of suspicion because I don't fully believe in the transforming power of God to change my prayer life. I've tried many times, and there are periods where I'm quite prayerful, but then it lapses again. I need this redemption to give my sin to God continuously because I'm not redeemed once, but constantly...

It is the same with lust - just because I seem to be getting more control of it with the Holy Spirit's help, there will be times when it can be real struggle. God forgives and knows this. All He asks is for me to keep my eyes on his Son and try not to look away.

Created as Male & Female: God's Original Plan - Talk 2

By Jack Chui

Theology of the Body - Talk 2. Is about going back to where it all began... to the very beginning in Genesis and the intention of God's whole creation of us as people - man and woman. We need this because history has morphed what sex really is about. There are different views of sex now - depending on who you hang around, but JPII in TB tries to enlighten us on what the truth is meant to be (as best he humanly can) in a series of his reflections of Genesis.

One big caveat of Genesis is that the book shouldn't be taken literally and should be appreciated as a symbolic representation of a deeper understanding. It written in symboli lanugage to help us understand a deeper spiritual truth. I didn't actually understand the book or at least the story of creation like this but after the 2nd talk, this makes more sense for me. God inspired the writer of Genesis to write a story of creation in a way which we humans could understand it at the time --- and a that time us humans didn't know a lot =P

A lot of the below are just notes which I've written. All of it is good, but not all of it makes perfect sense or is understandable to me (some things have to be a mystery right =P) I didn't take a lot out that was mind blowing or anything so best I can do is just rehash the bits I found useful - which is most of it. The reflections are apparently very deep so this only scratches the surface, but I think its good enough for me...

JPII talks about 3 fundamental truths of Genesis.

1. Original Solitude - Man is "Alone" in the World

A-Dam is actually the Hebrew word for "man". So when Genesis mentions "Adam", its more that God is talking about 'man' or people rather than a person called Adam...

"It is not good that the man should be alone" Gen 2:18. This is a reference to human beings (male and female) are "alone" in the visible world as a person. We (humans) are spiritual because God 'breathed' into Adam. Adam realises he's "different" from the animals. We have freedom - the capacity to choose between good and evil. Animals do not have the capacity for evil or love. Man is "spiritual" - Freedom and Love are spiritual.

Adam discovers a lot of the above by looking at his body. He's different to the animals by their look, but similar in other ways - yet he still reached the conviction that he was 'alone'. Maybe a blunt way of putting this is that as a male, he wasn't just hard wired to go and have sex with all the other female animals...

2. Original Unity - Called to Live in Relationship

Man can't be alone, because we need someone to actually love...

"Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh" Gen 2:24.

Becoming 'one flesh' refers not only to the joining of 2 bodies but is a "sacramental" expression which corresponds with a deep spiritual communion of persons. A sacrament makes visible what is invisible - something a wedding ring is to marriage. The sexual plan is not the result of sin - it was the plan from the beginning - "be fruitful and multiply", "and God saw that it was good". Men and women were designed to live in the image of God - relationship/sex is the original blessing of creation! Our bodies were meant to reveal the inner mystery of life of the Trinity.

* Does our society view our fertility as a blessing or curse?

3. Original Nakedness - Naked with Shame

The key for understanding God's original plan for man and woman. (I'm not sure how this is meant to be "key" but I'll take it from JPII =). God created sexual desire to be a free gift of love - to express love.

"And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed" Gen 2:25

We experience sexual desire only as the desire to love in God's image. It signifies the original good of God's creation. There's no shame (or fear) in love.

A man's body makes no sense by itself - with woman 'things' just fit! Man and Woman were pure - they saw God's goodness in their bodies. Jesus loved us by giving his body - we are called to be a gift to each other and sex is meant to be a self donation for the good of the other.

So why don't we believe (or at least society) believe in the above?

!! Original Sin - Questioning the Gift

God is the 'creator' and we are the 'creation'. We are the receivers from God just like women are receivers in the act of sex. The serpent targets the woman because She represents humanity to open up God's gift - God wants to impregnate our humanity with his divine life - us humans.

Because we are the receivers from God so we are supposed to discover good and evil. Instead, eating the apple has 'opened our eyes' and so now we start to create or determine what is good and evil. We conceive God as a slave driver - or a killjoy, when in fact, God is perfect love.

God's love 'died' in our hearts, sexual desire became inverted - self seeking. We desire sex for selfish pleasure. Eve covers her body because it is so very good, to protect her dignity against lust. Lust is sexual desire without God's love. Lust causes us almost to stoop back to the level of animals, yet we still know we're called to more - we're called to love.

Theology of the Body: An Education of Being Human - Talk 1

By Jack Chui

The Australian Catholic University is hosting a Theology of the Body series of videos by Christopher West over 8 Wednesday nights which I just started going to. Writing my thoughts of each week on this blog will be a good way keep my learning and share with everyone what I learn / take out especially for those who don't have a chance to attend one of these sessions.

I've watched the videos before in STAY when it we did it over 8 weeks or so, but this time I have the accompanying study guide so I can write notes as I watch the video with others rather than just listen and take in what's being said. It helps me focus more because watching without taking notes or studying for me can make it hard to concentrate. I'm attending again because I'd like to know more about sex (who doesn't...?), relationships and all the challenges that go with it - its just interesting =)

So on to it. I'm not going to recount everything - that would be too long, just the things that struck me and that I took out.

The first talk is like all first talks an introduction, but one which I jogged my memory of the things I took out from the only other time I watched it. What is the Theology of the Body (TB) all about? In one word - sex. Christopher West agrees that the world revolves around it, and so does the Church in fact - where would we all be without sex? TB was started as a series of talks in the 1990's by the late Pope John Paul II which tries to explain the truth about sex (the way the Church sees sex). But its quite complex and very deep, that it took 10 years for someone like Christopher West to study all 129 talks and bring it to the mainstream church in a way that more people (us low laity people =P) can hopefully understand it. That will be my aim for the next 8 weeks.

The aim is to understand what God intended sex to really be and therefore what His whole creation is meant to be. Unfortunately its not obvious as it probably should be because our understanding of sex is a bit 'corrupt' (lacking a less blunt word to use here). Chris West summed up his Catholic education on sex in just 3 words - Don't do it! I think a lot of us cradle Catholics can relate to that. So most of us would then get our sex education from places like MTV to sum it up as a central place. So this TB is to be a breath of fresh air that's to counter the progressive direction society is heading and putting out there - the truth (as I see it and believe it to be). To quote the notes "If the task of the 20th century was to rid itself of the Christian sexual ethic, the task of the 21st century must be to reclaim it".

Not to stay on this point any further, but I can understand a bit how the world has progressed as it has on sex. Its not easy to talk about sex (its hard for me just to type those words) and the Church has had an even harder time talking about it. Would the world be in a different place had the Church been more open about sex --- I don't think so. I'm well aware that we're fighting a losing battle. But God doesn't give up on us - and neither does the Church =)

The truth of sex is not obvious because God is not obvious. God is a mystery - we will never be able to understand God because we're so far below Him. We can't see God, but what we can see is Jesus - God in human form. Our bodies / human flesh is the very "logic" of Christianity. God is revealed through our bodies.

God reveals the 'mystery' to us in the bible. There are many images of God's love in the bible, but the 'spousal' image is used far more than any other. The bible begins and ends with marriages - Adam & Eve and Christ & His Church. God's eternal plan is to "marry" us - He stamps this image of love and communion in our very being by creating us male and female - to become one flesh. This man and woman idea which God designed is a replication of "love" as God sees it or wants to reveal to us. Its the same model as His Trinitarian love between Father and the Son which produces the Holy Spirit. Our body proclaims a great mystery - it reveals the meaning of the universe. We were built and designed for love and the union of man and woman is to proclaim the image of God.

What I learn - While sex is a great thing, it's unlikely that God's idea of love when we reach heaven is going to be the best unending orgasm. Its going to be much much better than that! In a way we can't imagine. But for us little creatures (great at the same time to Him) with our limited understanding, sex (as part of a relationship) is a foretaste of the love that God has for us all in the end. How exciting .!.!.!

Still more questions to be answered but they can't all be done in the first talk. To be answered in future!

Feel free to leave questions or thoughts in the comments section =)