Theology of the Body:Purity and Piety

St. Pelagia: Harlet turned Saint

O.K. everyone, in my last post I kinda committed myself to reading and discussing the Theology of the Body. Man, what was I thinking? Blessed Pope John Paul II (JP II) was a theological and philosophical giant and there is so much good stuff in his whole TOB series. The first 60 plus talks just set up the foundation for the meatier talks much later in the series. So what I want to do is condense down TOB into chunks that really address areas that men struggle and must understand to enrich their lives. 

I offer you two sources this week for reading, listening and reflection. The first is JP II himself in his Wednesday audience entitled  "The Pauline Doctrine of Purity as Life According to the Spirit," and the second is a clip of a lecture by Christopher West entitled Theology of the Body: Into the Heart: Purity is NOT Puritanism.  The video brings up a situation that a lot of men experience in their lives and provides us with a good jumping off point. In it, West recalls the story of St. Pelagia and St. Nonnus, Bishop of Edessa and how Pelagia was converted by the bishop because when he looked at her, it was not with lust, but with purity and respect for her humanity. 

Our Lord tells us in the Sermon of the Mount that if we even look at a woman in lust we have committed adultery in our hearts. So many men struggle with this aspect of our lives. We are told that it is natural to look at women as sex objects because it is just evolution and it is built into our genes and the natural instinct to procreate. Even if we don't look at every person with lust, do we often even look past the physical? Do we see their human dignity? JP II once said that the problem with pornography is not that it shows too much, but too little. 

JP II helps us to flesh out the concept of Purity a little more in TOB. He helps us to understand that  the Apostle Paul tells us our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit. And since piety is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, it has a distinct relationship with the virtue of Purity. 

According to the Apostle's words, the Holy Spirit enters the human body as his own "temple," dwells there and operates together with his spiritual gifts. Among these gifts, known in the history of spirituality as the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (cf. Is 11:2, according to the Septuagint and the Vulgate), the one most congenial to the virtue of purity seems to be the gift of piety (eusebeia, donum pietatis).(1) If purity prepares man to "control his own body in holiness and honor" (1 Th 4:3-5), piety, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit, seems to serve purity in a particular way. It makes the human subject sensitive to that dignity which is characteristic of the human body by virtue of the mystery of creation and redemption. "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you.... You are not your own" (1 Cor 6:19). Thanks to the gift of piety, Paul's words acquire the eloquence of an experience of the nuptial meaning of the body and of the freedom of the gift connected with it, in which the profound aspect of purity and its organic link with love is revealed. (http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/jp2tb56.htm)

The holy father then helps us to understand (as West also lectures about) that purity is not simply not having sex, or rejecting the physical. Purity is the authentic and proper understanding of our bodies as God originally intended. 

Although control of one's body in holiness and honor is acquired through abstention from immorality—and this way is indispensable—yet it always bears fruit in deeper experience of that love, which was inscribed from the beginning, according to the image and likeness of God himself, in the whole human being and so also in his body. Therefore, St. Paul ends his argumentation in chapter six of the First Letter to the Corinthians with a significant exhortation: "So glorify God in your body" (v. 20). Purity as the virtue is the capacity of controlling one's body in holiness and honor. Together with the gift of piety, as the fruit of the dwelling of the Holy Spirit in the temple of the body, purity brings about in the body such a fullness of dignity in interpersonal relations that God himself is thereby glorified. Purity is the glory of the human body before God. It is God's glory in the human body, through which masculinity and femininity are manifested. From purity springs that extraordinary beauty which permeates every sphere of men's common life and makes it possible to express in it simplicity and depth, cordiality and the unrepeatable authenticity of personal trust. (There will perhaps be an opportunity later to deal with this subject more fully. The connection of purity with love and also the connection of purity in love with that gift of the Holy Spirit, piety, is a part of the theology of the body which is little known, but which deserves particular study. That will be possible in the course of the analysis concerning the sacramentality of marriage.)http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/jp2tb56.htm (Emphasis added)

I would like to encourage everyone to first watch the video and then read the TOB link I posted above and below. I found I had to re-read it a few times to really let it sink in. I think we can find some answers to how we should look at others and how we can find purity through piety. Please check out the sources in this post and respond with you comments, questions or how you are dealing with this in your own life. Have fun!

TOB: The Pauline Doctrine of Purity as Life According to the Spirit