Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

Awhile back, I did a short series on the human person. In one of the articles, I touched on the relationship between the human person’s ultimate end and that which we often confuse for it. To be more specific, I discussed how man’s ultimate happiness is to be found in his participation in Trinitarian Communion and the way that consumption in the material world often disguises this end and often diverts us from the path leading to it.Given that we have come to the end of the Christmas Octave, the liturgical time in which we commemorate the Incarnation that made possible our incorporation into Trinitarian Communion by means of the Hypostatic Union, I thought I would jot down a few more thoughts on this topic based upon reflections from other theologians, especially John Paul the Great’s theology of the body catecheses.

John Paul reminds us that we were made in the image of a Communio Personarum, a community of divine Persons. However, unlike divine Persons, human persons were created with a potency, a capacity, to cooperate in perfecting themselves. This perfection is described as holiness. What holiness means is that we achieve total self-possession by cooperating with grace, through prayer and practice of the virtues, such that we are able to readily and totally give ourselves to God first and then to others. This need for total self-gift for human holiness, read human happiness, derives from the fact that God is Love. John Paul shows what this means by using the tradition of the Trinitarian Processions to find that Love means total self-gift (see our About post for more of an explanation of this). Thus, on earth we are given the task to develop the habitus, the habit, by which we can totally give ourselves to God. But John Paul reminds us that we cannot give that which we do not first possess.

This task remains for us as long as we live out our lives in this fallen state. Here on earth we must cooperate with grace, which is the partaking in the divine nature (see 2 Peter 1:4), through the Sacraments in order to overcome our fallen desires. In our fallen state, our appetites for the goods which satiate the needs of the material aspects of our being become disordered when they do damage to the higher goods which perfect our whole personhood. For example, our desire to have communion with that extra donut when we know we ought not becomes problematic when we habitually give into our desire for this material good. Doing so deprives us of the self-possession necessary if we are to give our whole selves to God. While, this might seem a minor example, the principle is the same for more grave examples. In fact, the habitual submission to lesser temptations, makes it more and more difficult to resist graver temptations.

Notice above that I characterized eating the donut in terms of a communion. Eating is the predominant form of communion available to the aspect of our nature that we share with lower life forms. In this “communion” we take up the lower organic materials and incorporate them into our own bodies. This, however, is not the true communion for which our whole being pines. The communion by which the lower life forms give way to the higher life forms is called consumption. Consumption is solely a temporary satisfaction of an affectivity or appetite by which the lower forms are annihilated by the higher.

It is no surprise then, I suppose, that Adam and Eve’s fall is depicted in terms of consuming the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. This is what I mean. Though it is not a necessary result, creation arises out of the overflowing of Trinitarian Love, from total Self-gift. Created being, because it’s archetype is in God, must reflect God’s perfection in some manner. The Early Church Fathers, especially Pseudo-Dionysius, characterized the manner the entire cosmos reflects its Trinitarian archetype as the eternal cosmic return to the Father, where all that was given by the Father will ultimately all return to Him. They saw this truth firmly revealed in Scripture when all creation will be recapitulated in Christ.

Adam and Eve, who on behalf of all of visible creation, were called to freely complete this eternal return after the archetype of Trinitarian love, by totally giving themselves back to God in trusting thanksgiving for their existence. This free act of total self-gift was destroyed when instead of trusting in God and receiving as a gift all He intended to give them for their happiness, they decided they needed to “take” instead. They were tempted to believe God was withholding from them something that they needed for their fulfillment, for their ultimate happiness. This taking seems to be presented as the antithesis of the gift. Instead of returning themselves to God and bringing forth a communion with Him, they chose another path. Notice, they not only take, but they consume. Consumption has now replaced communion as the dominant mode by which mankind is motivated and, thereby, so often deceived into replacing the true good with apparent goods.

With the Fall, we lost original communion, original grace. God reconciled this grave situation through a new creation. To transcend the infinite gulf between God and man, a rupture opened up by an act of consumption, indicating self-trust at the expense of divine trust, God became Man. On behalf of all creation, the God-Man returned to the Father all He was given, which included His human life. The Cross is, par excellence, a manifestation of Trinitarian love. It is also the singular saving act of human total self-gift because it has an infinite character due to its having been performed by a divine Person. With the Cross, humanity now has renewed access to divine nature. However, this access comes only through each person’s incorporation into the Incarnation. We must become new creations as Jesus told Nicodemus and as St. Paul advised, through Baptism. Baptism incorporates us into the Mystical Body of Christ, which is the Catholic Church. In the Church we are wedded to divinity through the Bridegroom and through which we become what we eat. We are the Mystical Body of Christ because we consume Him, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Eucharist. Only by this act of consumption can we have real communion.

As I mentioned above, consumption incorporates lower life into higher life. Communion, rather, weds lives together. In the Eucharist we can see the way that God redeems consumption, showing us that the material aspect of our humanity is a good if kept in the proper order. In Holy Communion we consume God, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, but instead of bringing him down into our nature, we are brought up into His. We become divinized. Neither person is absorbed into the other, but we are wedded to Christ and thereby, incorporated into Trinitarian love.

Through this communion, we are given the strength we need to overcome the “man of lust.” That is, man in the dispensation of sin in which he is subject to the threefold lust of which St. John the Divine speaks: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. These are an ever present temptation. We are continually tempted to try to satisfy our desire for communion with God with consumption of food, drink, and other pleasures of the flesh. We are tempted to distort the life giving love of marital communion with the consumption of another soul in selfish sexual intercourse for the sake of pleasure or the sake of binding another to ourselves in seeking a sense of security or self-worth. We are tempted to replace our trust in God with a misplaced faith in the gods of science who promise us health, wealth and power, even power over life itself.

It is only through authentic communion with God in Christ that we can prepare ourselves for our ultimate communion with God in heaven. Sacramental communion gives us access to grace and the supernatural virtues, which alone heals, elevates and perfects nature. Grace alone can perfect the natural virtues of prudence, temperance, justice and fortitude whereby we gain the total self-possession we need to escape slavery to our passions so that we can become slaves to Christ. It is through prayer where we perfect our thirst for total self-giving by which we become holy.

In the end, the only consumption upon which we dare rely for our salvation is Holy Communion.