Sex is a religious event

		A Culture  of Life  Christopher West

When the Church speaks about sex, she is speaking about a religious event! According to John Paul II, when we speak of the "great sign" of the sacrament of marriage we are speaking about the entire work of creation and redemption.

Sex plunges us headfirst into the Christian mystery. There's no getting around it: "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?" (1 Cor 6:15).

By becoming "one flesh," spouses establish themselves and their family as the domestic church, a Church in miniature. Thus the Church isn't intruding into the bedroom. Christian spouses are bringing the Church into the bedroom with them.

Image of God

Sex is sacred. It's holy - more so than our fallen passions sometimes wish it to be. If we think sex is somehow "better" with God out of the picture, we have it totally backward!

The joy of sex - in all its orgasmic grandeur - is meant to be the joy of loving as God loves. The joy of sex - in all its orgasmic grandeur - is meant to be a foretaste in some ways of the joys of heaven: the eternal consummation of the marriage between Christ and the Church. Christ gives us his plan for sex through the Church not to be a "kill-joy" but a "bring-joy."

"If you keep my commandments," he said, "you will abide in my love. . . . These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full" (Jn 15:10-11). So if you want the most awesome, joy-filled sex possible, open wide the doors to Christ - including (and especially) the bedroom door.

The pope and the bishops are simply witness to what God has revealed with the authority that Christ has given them. We always have the freedom to embrace it or reject it.

Teachings of John Paul II

The message they speak about sexual morality is not their own, it's God's. God created sex. He knows why he did, what it's for, how it can bring great joy when it's respected, and how it can bring great misery when it's abused. Some find it ironic that the Church hierarchy ("hier-archy" literally means "sacred order") are "old celibate men."

But anyone who doesn't think celibate men can know anything about sex has never read anything Pope John Paul II has written about it.

My wife will not mind my saying that I've learned more from this "celibate old man" about the nature, beauty, and meaning of sex than from anyone else on the planet. His are the insights of a man who has plumbed the depths of his own masculine soul to make sense of his sexuality - and what he discovered there was the spark of the divine.

My own life experiences - first as an unchaste teenager and young adult, and now in my own marriage - only confirm what he has to say.

'Needed perspective'

Celibacy affords a desperately needed perspective. Many people have become so intoxicated by sexual indulgence that they can't see the forest for the trees. Granted, for some, forgoing genital sex for the whole of their lives may cause them to eschew their sexuality altogether (not a healthy thing, to be sure - nor is it expressive of an authentic call to the celibate vocation). For others, the choice of lifelong celibacy propels them all the more to come to terms in their own soul with what sex is all about.

Pope John Paul II is a man who has clearly chosen the latter. His sacrifice of genital sex is our gain - if we have the courage to listen.

Christopher West is a research fellow and faculty member of the Theology of the Body Institute in West Chester, Pa. His column is syndicated by www.OneMoreSoul.com and reprinted from his book Good News About Sex and Marriage: Honest Questions and Answers About Catholic Teaching (St. Anthony Messenger Press).