Sons of Thunder

Reflections on authentic masculinity

Gabriel Olearnik

1

Outline

1. Preface

2. Father

a) “I believe in one God, the Father”b) “He who has seen me, has seen the Father”c) “I and the Father are one”d) St Joseph’s Wallet

3. Brother

a) “We must do the work of him who sent me” (part I)b) “We must do the work of him who sent me” (part II)c) Daughters of the same Father

4. Man

“Now this, at last, is flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone”

5. Bridegroom

“And the Word was made Flesh”- an introduction to the theology of the body

Scripture taken broadly from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

The "NIV" and "New International Version" trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica. Use of either trademark requires the permission of Biblica.

2

1) PREFACE

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:1-5).

Where is Adam? What is he doing whilst the serpent whispers? Later, Eve gives him the fruit as he stands next to her, and so the picture becomes clear. He is at her side, passive. He fails to defend his wife. He fails to fight evil. He fails in his duty and so sin enters into the world, and death, and hell.

As with the First Father, so with men today. Darkness engulfs us because men are silent and weak. We do not wish it, but we allow it to happen.

We are part of the Church, the Bride of Christ, and in Christ there is neither male nor fe-male, neither Jew nor Greek. Nevertheless, there is something inherent in our masculin-ity, and our masculinity together. Throughout history, men have gathered as brothers to support each other, whether be in the army of the Maccabees or the orders of chivalry, in the spiritual war of monks or the calling of the disciples of the Lord. There is a brother-hood of the spirit, which we are called to be part of, to be knights of faith. In that gather-ing we find our strength, who is both Man and God, Jesus the Son of Mary.

This world needs men with strength, with chaste hearts, with faith. It needs men who are willing to sacrifice for the good, who are fathers in spirit and flesh, who will defend the Church, our Mother, and raise up families and nations in the Name of Him who has loved us first. We have the august duty to “take up the strong and most excellent arms of obedi-ence, to do battle for Christ the Lord, the true King” (Rule of St Benedict).

We do not wish to bring the past back, even if such a thing were possible. Rather, we wish to use living tradition to heal the particular problems we face today. In the following reflections, we explore the role of men as fathers, brothers and bridegrooms. This is ur-gently needed. We must “awake, and strengthen what remains and is on the point of death” (Revelation 3:2).

To our sisters I say: we separate ourselves for a little while, not to exclude you but to make men worthy of you, to heal the sick, to strengthen the weak and remake what was broken. God Himself is a refiner’s fire, and He promises to purify the sons of Levi. The truly masculine is forged in the crucible of divine love. 

Sisters, all at once you will be able to perceive about you again knights and princes, and say with the Beloved in the Song of Songs:

3

“My lover is radiant and ruddy, outstanding among ten thousand” (Song of Solomon 5:10).

4

2) FATHER

a) “We believe in one God, the Father”

Let us return to the passage from Genesis in the preface. We are in the pre-history of the human race, at the point where evil enters creation with its corruptive power.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:1-5).

Original sin is entering the world. It is important to understand what this sin consists of. It is usually described as pride, a placing of oneself before God, human beings arrogating to themselves the ability to create good and evil. However, more than that, original sin is the destruction of the relationship between a human person and God as Father. John Paul II, in a startling passing from Crossing the Threshold of Hope, puts it this way:

Original sin is not only the violation of a positive command of God but also, and above all, a violation of the will of God as expressed in that command. Original sin attempts, then, to abolish fatherhood, destroying its rays which permeate the created world, placing in doubt the truth about God who is Love.

The Devil’s attack is one on the truth of God’s Fatherhood. Rather than perceiving the commands of the Father as a work of love, freely given and protective of our humanity, they are seen an arbitrary command of one who seeks to exploit that which has been created. The paradigm of a tyrant and slave is put in place, a pattern that is based on fear and hatred. The possible relationships are then narrowed to two: either servitude to the stronger will, or rebellion against the unjust master.

These are not mere theoretical distinctions but an everyday problem, which has damaged our language and concepts. If I use words like “paternal” “authority” “power”, without really knowing why, we begin to rebel, to twist away from these terms. That is not to say that paternity, authority and power cannot be abused. In the history of Israel, the association of God with Baal (the lord) and Moloch (the king) were not made, because of the association with despotism that these terms were associated (Introduction to Christianity, Benedict XVI). It is also possible that our relationships with our own fathers hamper our ability to see the Fatherhood of God. It is important to reject these misconceptions and also acknowledge that our own human relationships are imperfect, sometimes radically so. But if we believe, as the Creed says, in “One God, the Father, the Almighty”, we must approach these concepts in the correct way. Otherwise we remain trapped in the model of the tyrant-slave. The final rebellion against this is the denial of God entirely. Atheism is the last rejection of an unloving lordship.

5

The answer to this issue is faith, faith that God loves us and wills our good. It is right to reject the idea of a cold and distant paternalism. But the truth of God’s loving fatherhood, as revealed through His Son, must become a reality for us. Without it we are left in a fatherless void.

6

b) “He who has seen me, has seen the Father”

Previously we considered and rejected the idea of a cold, tyrannical father. But insofar as the rejection of this image is not informed by the truth, we are left with an absence of fatherhood, a deeper and underlying emptiness. We have destroyed, but we have not created. The fist has been removed, but it has not been replaced by an embrace. I think that it is important to linger for a moment in the absence and thirst for true fatherhood, which perhaps has touched us personally, as it provides us with the key to unlocking the following part of St John’s Gospel:

Philip said, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us." Jesus answered: "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. (John 14:8-10)

Philip expresses the deep desire of us all to see the Father, to see the God who is neither absence nor coldness, but love: “your face, Lord, I will seek” (Psalm 27:8). John Paul II develops this fundamental need in Redemptor Hominis (the Redeemer of Man):

Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it.

Original sin, as we previously seen, is the attempt to abolish the fatherhood of God. However, the Church teaches that original sin is now part of each individual’s makeup. Whilst it does not destroy our need for the Father, it weakens our ability to see it, perceive it and feel it. It is hard for us to believe in the Father, hard for us to hear his voice, hard for us to obey his commands.

The fatherhood of God begins to be re-introduced throughout the Old Testament. This fatherhood is not a vague benevolence, but has certain characteristics – God is One, Holy, Strong and Deathless. By slow degrees the Chosen People began to see that the King of the Universe’s features, the contours of his face. Let us look at each of these briefly in turn.

God is One. The basic prayer of Judaism is the shema: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is the One God”. This carries with it a number of implications, but one of the foremost is that God is the source of everything, the Creator. He does not create in partnership or through a sexual act, but brings all things into being through his word, his fiat:

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. (Genesis 1:2-3)

7

God is Holy. This means that he is utterly different, beyond us. In a way, one can speak of a divine madness: “God thunders wondrously with his voice; he does great things that we cannot comprehend” (Job 37:5). God is dangerous and unexpected. C.S. Lewis puts this in a distinctive way when he says “He is not a tame lion”. This unexpectedness manifests itself in miracles and wonders, when God shows the strength of his arm in destroying Pharaoh’s armies, for example. These two points together are of particular importance. God is not safe. He is not nice, or soft. Rather, he is good, which outstrips the realms of comfort or pleasure. Our palate is polluted by original sin and conditioned by our upbringing and culture. God is beyond that. He does not pander to us. He makes us anew, and calls us to share in his greatness: “It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect” (Psalm 18:32).

Finally, God is deathless: as the Creed has it- the Lord and giver of life. This is a particular type of strength, difference and unity. God is stronger than the power of death and sin, a power to which he is utterly opposed, for he is totally alive, totally real, and in this unity is resistant to the disintegrating force of death. Consider this exchange from the first book of Kings 1 when Elijah revives the widow’s son:

The Lord heard Elijah's cry, and the boy's life returned to him, and he lived. Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, "Look, your son is alive!"(1 Kings 17:22-23).

But the Old Testament is not enough. It is not enough for us to understand or to see God’s characteristics intellectually. We must, using John Paul’s language, encounter, experience and participate in the Father’s love. We have to hear it, see it, touch it with our hands (1 John 1:1). God, to be truly present, to follow his own logic, must become flesh, must become human, must become like us, for the Father to be revealed. “He [is] the carnal necessity of spiritual religion” (Dr. S. M.  Lockeridge, That’s My King). But this is not just a logical progression. It happened, Christ came: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us…full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

The Lord says: “He who has seen me, has seen the Father”. Indeed, the whole mission of Christ can be summed up in the word Father. In his life and teaching, Christ shows us the Father in a full a complete way. As John Paul II says: “the supreme and most complete revelation of God to humanity is Jesus Christ himself” (Dominum et Vivificantem Part I, para 5). We will examine how God’s full revelation in Christ illuminates the characteristics which he has already shown to Israel in the next reflection and how they should inform our own identity as fathers.

8

c) “I and the Father are one”

The essential message of Christ is to proclaim the love of God. In its particular aspect of Fatherhood this love has the attendant characteristics of fertility, potency, unity, and immortality. These words are not just a sketch or plan of a future glory. They bring it into being. Isaiah testifies: “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth…so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10-11, adapted).

Fertility is implied in this passage. Indeed, the first command of God after the creation of man is to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28) in other words, to be fathers. Again, I think it is worthwhile to reflect on this for a moment. Our primordial identity, our root identity, is fatherhood. Without this we cannot grow to the maturity and dignity which the original plan of the Creator envisages for us.

Christ’s example clarifies this point. His miracles create: the feeding of the five thousand, the changing of the water into wine at Cana, the haul of fishes in the nets. His parables use the same themes: the yeast growing the bread, the seed falling on the ground, the vine bringing forth produce that will last. All emphasise the fact that fertility is a blessing, and its lack an evil. Indeed, the only negative miracle is when Christ curses the fig tree for only having leaves, and not fruit (Mark 11). It withers.

Fertile lives are required of us. This does not mean that we need to have a family with many children! It is not a job we can do by ourselves, for a start. Nor does it mean that families that do not have children are cursed, or that the celibate vocation of priests and religious is far from God. But the starting point of physical fertility illuminates the spiritual reality. The Lord says “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last” (John 15:16). In our own way, we are required to bring forth children, physical or spiritual, and this bringing forth, this generation, manifests the love of God in the world. We are made to build, to grow- and not just to consume.

Linked to fertility is strength. Even in language we refer to a lack of strength as impotence. Christ’s strength, his kingship, is one which is bound up in service and suffering. Consider this passage:

Jesus called them together and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Matthew (20:25-28)

The power to overcome the evil of the world is the only lasting power, the only power that really means anything. Fatherhood means having the strength to sacrifice, at the

9

appropriate time, pleasure, career, health, life and reputation for the good of others. We can object, rightly, to a weak and ineffectual Christ. But nor can we have a tyrannical Christ. Christ is neither of these two illusions: he is the Lion of Judah. Our Lord really overcomes death and sin through his own suffering and death. Consequently, his apparent weakness is sealed with authority.

What is the source of this strength, this masculinity? It is Jesus’ communion with the Father. Throughout the Gospel, Christ is constantly praying, seeking solitude. He teaches us this pattern in the prayer Our Father. Later, when he prays “that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me”(John 17:22) this refers not just to our corporate unity as a Church, but also to our individual unity in the Father through Christ. In our prayer there is true life and power.

Finally, all our lives end. It is the realisation of the divine fatherhood and the continuance of that relationship which sustains life even after death. “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Entering into the relationship with God is the medicine of immortality.

Our age is afraid of fathers, divine fathers, human ones. The paradox is that it needs them more than ever. Through Christ we have the image of a perfect father, who should form the model of our own masculinity: strong for service, for creation and the defence of life. My actions should show the fatherhood of God, the love and responsibility of the Creator. Whilst God exceeds all our expectations and language, he has reserved the title of Father for himself when he says “call no one on earth your Father”. Whether we are husbands or single, priests or religious, we must become like him, imitate him, acquire a family resemblance: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

10

d) St Joseph’s Wallet

Many years ago I had my first history lesson. My class was given the wallet of a man whose body had been found in a ditch by the side of a nearby road. From the documents in the wallet we had to reconstruct who the man was and how he had died. We found bus tickets, letters, an appointment. The majority of the class came to the view that the man had a meeting in a nearby town, had missed the bus there and decided to walk, and in the darkness had been struck by a car. There were other possibilities- hints that he had been involved in a conspiracy, but the evidence was sparse. We were tantalized by the mysterious wallet.

Now, when we turn to St Joseph, we are faced with a similar problem. There are only fragments of text. We have none of his direct words. And our mental image of Joseph is often blurred and unattractive. Who is this elderly man in the company of the Virgin? Popular piety has often made Joseph into a granddad, “old Joseph”, who raises no uncomfortable questions about marriage. So what if we’ve found his wallet? If it’s his, he can have it back. There’s no point in wasting any time on the old bore. He has nothing of interest to teach us.

And yet, if when we actually open the wallet, the contents intrigue us. Why would God choose this non-entity as the guardian, as the father, of his Son? Why would people see a resemblance between Joseph and Christ? What does the relationship between Mary and Joseph teach us about marriage? Is it really a marriage at all? And, if we were placed in his situation, with a pregnant fiancé, how would we react? When God changes all our plans, do we accept them? Or do we dismiss them as “unrealistic” “unfit for purpose”?

Let us begin with the utter normality of Joseph. At the beginning of the Gospels, he is married to Mary, although they do not live together for about a year according to the Jewish custom. He is an ordinary man, a workman, perhaps a craftsman. He works, he marries, he wants to start a family. And although Joseph is an ordinary man, he is also a “just man”. Being holy is being just in the midst of the world, doing ordinary things with love.

If we think about it, this is the condition of the vast majority of the saints who have gone before us. All the just in every time and place before the coming of Christ, all the numberless slaves of the Roman Empire, the merchants and business owners mentioned in the Letters of St Paul, the citizens and learned teachers, the peasants and clerks and priests and faithful of Europe and beyond for two thousand years. We do not know their names and they have not been raised to the dignity of the altars. But they existed, and they left their mark on the world. Joseph does the same, wrapped in the silent cloak of history.

Next Joseph learns that Mary is pregnant, and wants to divorce her quietly, until an angel appears in his dreams and tells him not to be afraid, and to take Mary as his wife. This incident whirls into the kaleidoscopic fragments of our own lives. There is a long debate about whether Joseph knew that Mary had been chosen specially by God, or whether he

11

thought that she had betrayed him. In the absence of his own testimony, we can only speculate: the facts are there but we have no record of his inner world.

Nevertheless, we can say that the incident speaks to our own lives: we are afraid of the divine entering into them with its unpredictability, upsetting us with the unexpected call to vocation. We try to “deal with” it, we try to salvage our plans. Or again, we are placed in a situation where we might become fathers unexpectedly, and our reaction is to push the problem away. Or we have to deal with what appears to be the betrayal or incomprehension of someone we love, and the inability to understand the person we thought we knew.

Although it does not apply to the situation of Joseph and Mary, I have intentionally crossed the boundary of human weakness and sin in order to show the parallels of their situation with our lives. The essence of the reaction in all of these myriad circumstances is summed up in the first words of the angel to Joseph -“Son of David”. It is a royal title, subsequently used by Christ. More than that, it is an unexpected call to greatness, a call to trust in the goodness of God’s fatherhood and to conform to it. So when faced with a difficult decision about becoming a priest, a girlfriend’s pregnancy, the betrayal of a spouse, the temptation to divorce, we are called to greatness, to justice. The most unexpected thing about God is that he does not leave us alone. He does not force himself, but waits, invites, pesters. And he is always ahead of every situation and all our circumstances.

Finally, we are faced with paradox of the perfect marriage, which at the same time is unconsummated. This is an obstacle, but has a very simple root. Sometimes love is linked to sex, and sometimes love is refraining from sex. Sometimes a spouse is ill or requires another form of affection. Sometimes the spouse is the whole Church, a celibate love given to everyone, and using the energy of sexual restraint to offer oneself more fully. Sometimes we are divorced, and cannot marry someone we care about. Sometimes we are not married at all, and cannot express our love in this way. And yet, the love of Mary and Joseph is called a marriage, because the love is there, a consent of two souls, which will blossom into the living faith that each of us have.

This battered old wallet. It conceals the secrets of fatherhood and love and a quiet nobility. Of being forgotten by the world, and remembered by God. It is worth looking at.

12

3) BROTHER

a) “We must do the work of him who sent me” (part I)

Fatherhood, and an awareness of God’s fatherhood, is the first beam, the vertical, planted between heaven and earth. But this awareness also requires action and engagement with other human beings. Our world is increasingly isolated and lonely. We also need a strong horizontal beam, strong brotherhood, as well. The two rely on each other. The commandments complement each other- “Love the Lord your God with all your heart… love your neighbour as yourself”. If we love God, we will love ourselves in the right way. And if we love ourselves then this love will radiate to others.

Brotherhood amongst men begins as friendship. Friendship is something quite different from spending time or enjoying the company of others. C.S Lewis talks about friendship as looking in the same direction, of sharing the same fundamental values. This is helpful but does not go far enough. Friendship amongst men is always the result of action, of work. In Job we are asked the question: does not man have hard service on earth? (Job 7:1) Yes. But it is this hard service together, the work towards a common vision, that ennobles man and gives him the spirit of brotherhood. In soldiering we produce solidarity. We need work, good work to do, often physical in nature, work which is not just our own but joins with the others.

What are the alternatives? If we have too little work or responsibility, we inevitably weaken. Unemployment drains a man, makes him purposeless, drifting from one thing to another. On the other too much work is also destructive. Work, unless it is oriented to a higher purpose, drains the person and leaves nothing of worth behind. Finally, work that is done in an atmosphere of distrust damages the men doing it, even if the purpose is noble and the work appropriate.

We do not live in an ideal world, and it is not possible to avoid job layoffs, occasional extremes of work, or the actions or cultures of our workplaces, whether they are offices, factories, mines or monasteries. When it is within our power to avoid these or change the situation for the better, we should do so decisively, and guard against purposelessness, a elegant form of slavery or perpetual war. The particular action depends on the circumstances and discretion of the individuals concerned. If we cannot act, there is always work outside our professions, and we need brothers to do the work with us. “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them" (Matthew 18:20). This does not refer to prayer alone. It also applies to our work.

Is there work to be done? Yes, immense amounts. To proclaim the Gospel again, to create a new civilization. But in the concrete: dishes to be washed, clothes to be tidied, engine oil to be changed, wood to be cut, soil to be dug. There exists a “scandal of the particular”. If we exist, and believe in the Father, we each have a purpose: that is, we have a purpose as an individual ourselves and each other individual has a purpose. Which means the work needs to be done by me, and by you. If we want brotherhood, it will not make itself. You need to find the work that you need to do. Find your brothers. And fight.

13

b) “We must do the work of him who sent me” (part II)

What is the concrete work to be done? Certainly, for the last two generations, faith has been particularly neglected. As I said previously, the amount of work to be done is staggering: lifetimes and lifetimes worth, you could easily envisage a situation were all of us devoted ourselves to it 16 hours a day, with little sleep or rest. The scale of the challenge is impressive, and there is no-one else to do it, only us. So we must.

Faith, then. Imagine a great, formal dinner, with many important people and lavish food. I come late, having not helped in any way. I am dressed scruffily and unshaven. When I am greeted, I respond with minimal courtesy. When there is any discussion, I do not speak. If anyone else speaks, I display a bored expression and glace at my watch. If I am asked to help, I refuse. I do not eat anything, and refuse to drink anything. If anyone sings, I stay silent. Just before the dinner ends, I leave early and when asked about it I say “I don’t really know why I went, I felt I had to. It was very uninteresting, anyway”.

Now, is it a surprise that that my reaction to, say, going to Mass, is like the above? All my actions and thoughts have been leading to it. Is it not an entirely predictable result? If we do nothing, we are very likely to get nothing, to achieve nothing, and to end up with nothing. With no responsibilities, and just by doing what we like or feel like doing, we end up drifting through our lives, with half-heated pleasures, boredom, loneliness, and faint but insistent voice whispering about a lack of purpose to existence. Anyone who has experienced this, knows it.

The alternative is clear. We can come across the great and mysterious truth that we matter. That our actions matter. That feelings do not matter very much, because they are constantly changing.

What do I mean by this? Firstly, the things that I do, or do not do, profoundly influence the world, ourselves, and the people around us. They therefore have a sense and purpose, an effect on our condition in eternity, and they live on after our earthly death. I would like to pause here for a moment. It is one thing to accept this intellectually, and another to know it to be the truth. Because it is that realisation compels us to act. Secondly, how we feel about the work is of minor importance. I mean the surface feeling here, not an issue of conscience. Our duty always overrides our feelings. Otherwise we become the slaves of passing emotion, and our feelings override our duties, which is clearly wrong.

Returning to the work of faith: let us therefore put feelings to one side. Feelings can follow the work. In the apparently small but significant area of the Mass, let us come early and assist, and say the responses, and sing, and receive Communion, and stay for a while in gratitude. For this is “the source and summit” of our Christian life, the common meal which is the wellspring of all brotherhood, where we add the sacrifice of ourselves to that of our brother and Lord. I will allude to the testimony of Luke and Cleophas: they are tired, having walked to Emmaus, and:

14

As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus acted as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, "Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is al-most over." So he went in to stay with them.

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disap-peared from their sight. They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"

 They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together and saying, "It is true! The Lord has risen and has ap-peared to Simon." Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread. (Luke 24:28-35)

You see? It was only afterwards, once they had begun their journey, once they had begun to speak with God and with each other, when they had struggled to understand, that “their hearts burned”.

15

c) Daughters of the same Father

If there are brothers because we have the same Father, it follows that we have sisters who share also share that Father. Because God is the Creator, and in a direct way responsible for every life, every woman is a sister to you. Every woman, related to you or not, whether she has her own brothers or not, even the woman who is your wife, is also a sister, because the relationship with the Father is the first and most elemental. Christ says: “Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:35). Pope Benedict, in his book Christian Brotherhood, draws attention to this that in contrast to cults in the Near East, “it is an exclusively Christian idea that a sister has the right to stand as an equal beside her brother.”

A brother’s role is straightforward: he protects. He defends his sister from danger and disgrace. He must be strong, but there is a tenderness in the strength, a gentleness of putting the other first. In a way, the example of fraternal love for a sister is the school of both fatherhood and the bridegroom. Both take their starting point of protective power and employ it to defend either their family or their spouse. In practice, these two identities tend to interweave. The bridegroom is usually a father after a while.

What is the keynote of seeing a woman as your sister? Hosea’s maxim is a good one: “Say of your brothers, 'My people,' and of your sisters, 'My loved one’ (Hosea 2:1). In our lives the opposite drive is present, the fruit of original sin. Original sin, as we have already seen, tends to deny the fatherhood of God. Accordingly, if God is not the father of these women, they are not our sisters. And if they are not our sisters, it is up to us to determine who they are. We are released from our responsibility to defend. We can indulge our ability to use instead, to dominate. In a way, it is a great truth of feminism that it clings to the identity of sisters and the solidarity between them as a defence against male domination. But this leaves open the question- where are your brothers? And if you are all sisters, who is your father?

To build our brotherhood, to fulfill our role, it is necessary to look inward. It is easy to externalise evil, and to blame others. Indeed, this is the pattern of Adam. When asked by God why he disobeyed the command to eat the fruit, he says “The woman you put with me gave me the fruit”. The evil is always someone else, a person, a country, a company, a structure. It is never mine. The Times newspaper once had asked people what the worst thing in the world was. People wrote in saying hunger, poverty, war. G.K. Chesterton, the journalist, gave a better reply. He said “What is the worst thing in the world? I am”. Exactly! We have real power over our actions, real responsibility, and there is also real darkness in us. We must protect from external threats, but also from our own, internal, evil.

Women need our brotherhood, and respond to it. In other words, they need our real and costly masculine love. It is the corrective to use, to lust, to violence, to seduction, to power, to misogyny, to hatred, to the alienation between the sexes. More that that, it applies specifically to the relationship between spouses. It may seem surprising to the modern ear that Tobit and Solomon, for instance, call their wives “sister”. But the very

16

closeness of the marriage bond requires even more protection and subtlety, because it is more open to abuse. We can insult any women, but we can betray our wives. Brotherhood is a necessary and essential step to being bridegroom and father. It alone guarantees the longevity of relationships, breaking the model of lust, boredom and a slow and painful unraveling.

17

4) MAN

“Now this, at last, is flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone”

These are the first words of Adam when he sees Eve. They can be seen as the first love poetry, or a shout of joy. But they are also a confirmation of identity and of mission. It is only in the context of Eve that Adam is a man. It is only in the context of Adam that Eve is a woman. Without the other sex, how can we explain ourselves? Without left, how can we define right?

With that starting point, masculinity, or, our identity as men, can proceed in three main ways. It can be built in opposition. We can say that anything that is male is superior, anything feminine, inferior, effeminate. And this is a common tendency in history, explicit in Greek civilization and implicit now, where we reject the “bleeding sex” and build on male strength, which results misogyny and a tendency to prefer men, even in sexual matters. The second option is to destroy difference, and create a human equality. This avoids the hatred of misogyny but creates a flat, sterile world, where the distinctions, attraction and finally the identity of the sexes are erased. Both misogyny and erosion are present in different degrees in our world today and in our experiences.

It is important to see the failure in a definition of masculinity which is based only on male power. But it is also crucial not to destroy masculinity by confusing equality with equivalence. When, in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare says “Two houses, both alike in dignity” he is may not just be talking about the Montgues and Capulets, but about the sexes. Alike in dignity, but not the same, and we need both.

A question arises: why can we not construct men and women as we see fit? The difference between male and female is not cosmetic. It is the foundation for being and therefore identity. In the deepest sense, we are created as beings with a sex: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). Our differences, and our complementarity, embody part of the truth of God’s own life and create an irreducible core which we can either cultivate or attempt to destroy.

It is the third option is that Adam chooses: complementarity. The differences between the sexes are essential, but complement each other, as one flavour brings out another. The choice is then between an overpowering intensity, flavorlessness or harmony. Harmonisation requires the presence of both types of humanity, in their difference and similarities.

And our masculinity does need to be refined by women. Shaping, the finishing touches, the civilizing force. We learn to become men by imitating men. But we reach our perfection by alloying strength with beauty. A mature man can say that he needs female approval, needs female affection, needs to attract female attention. Half the things that men do are so that women will notice them, though often a pretense is made that we look

18

for wealth, or power, or success on their own account. No. It is more humble to admit that this is our plumage, a flourish for women’s’ sake.

Although this desire can be corrupted into materialism or exploitation, it is our original condition – it is not good for man to be alone! The need for the other is both humility and blessing, a shaft of light in the dark prison of our egos. Admitting the desire has allowed a feminine shaping to flower in Western civilisation. This is true when it relates to mothers and sons, like Augustine and Monica, or Constantine and Irene. It is true in spousal love, progressively developing romantic love through the troubadours and securing marriage as a permanent union which only death unravels. It is true in the spiritual friendships of Jerome and Paula, Francis and Clare, Jordan and Diana, John and Teresa. It is true in the founding text of the Polish language, Bogurodzica, where it is understood that chivalry is not just a horse and lance! By introducing the lady, we have courtesy, and chivalry thus avoids being merely being the path of male strength, the way of the sword.

We should not therefore be surprised to find the same pattern in the life of Christ. What better example of a civilizing influence than the marriage at Cana? The wine has run out, and the time has not yet come. But Mary, with a mother’s touch, calls Jesus to act. Or again, the Samaritan women at the well, where he brings forth living water. We can multiply examples: the women with the alabaster box of perfume, the sisters of Lazarus, the women of Jerusalem during the Passion, Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection. The point is that Christ loved women, and needed women. His mother, in particular, brought the best out of him. It is telling that his speech is often like the Magnificat, and his silences resemble the occasion when “…Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).

Let us then admit that we need the finesse, the grace and serenity, that comes from women. Admit that we need beauty to supplement our strength, that we need beauty to smile –at us. For in this beauty, and this shaping, this shaping together, we see more clearly ourselves as the image of the love of God. Not with an abstract, distant love, but one which is close and coming soon, in both our masculine and feminine. It is not coincidence that the Bible ends with the the Spirit and the Bride both saying “Come”. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

19

5) BRIDEGROOM

“And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” Reading this book was one of the most peculiar incidents of my life to date. In it there seemed to be no distance between what the author said and what I had directly experienced. It had the tangible nature of a touch. This is unusual, because normally there is a gap between the words and the reality. If I compare, for instance, the colour of a blushing cheek to a rose, this is only an approximation. The red of a flower is deeper and more intense than that of flesh. A Caucasian face has a variety of shades, colours from cream to pink- it is only with an act of imagination that we can compare a rose with it. Good art relies on making this distance between concepts as short as possible. But the fit, like the colours of the face, is never quite right, never exact. Except, in this case, it was. The book was Love and Responsibility by John Paul II.

Together with a further 129 addresses given to us by the Pope, this book forms a corpus of teaching of singular importance: a theology of the body. Simply- theology, the study of God. Body – our bodies. Theology of the body – what our bodies tell us about God.

Can our bodies tell us about God? Some observers are skeptical. God does not exist, or he only spiritual (which is interpreted as being unreal). In practice, both these positions come to the same conclusion: no. Our bodies are meat, to be produced, shaped, enjoyed, discarded. They are tools, toys, perhaps prisons. We deal with our bodies, and in death we leave them behind. Our bodies have no deeper meaning: they just are. In the last analysis, our bodies are not important. They are the grass which springs up in the morning and withers by the evening. They have nothing to say. There is a wonderful German word for this “Fremdkorper”- the alien body, the body which is ours, but not “us”.

This position, which is often held, either explicitly or without thinking about it, is probably the greatest error that can be made in relation to authentic Christianity. Again, for clarity: it is about as wrong as it gets. As we have seen in the previous reflections, Christ shows us the Father. How? By God becoming a body, incarnate. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us…full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Moreover, he does not leave it at that. He redeems us by the sacrifice of this flesh and the wounds he suffers. He rises in flesh to destroy our death. He sanctifies his flesh in his ascension and he remains with us in his flesh through the sacrament of the body and the blood.

Flesh. Flesh, flesh, flesh, flesh, flesh. Beyond any doubt, Christianity is the religion of spirit becoming flesh, of flesh signifying the reality of God and his love. So our flesh matters, incomparably so. And has a message- it should tell us and others about the truth of God. But it does not have to. We can misuse our bodies, contort them to deform the truth, become the anti-sign.

The fact that our flesh has a message and an orientation towards God is borne out in the sacraments. Baptism- to cleanse. Confirmation and last rites- to strengthen and anoint.

20

Holy orders and marriage – to unite bodies of the marriage partners in spousal love. Confession – the words which destroy sins. In every case, a physical act, a consent, a movement is required to convey a spiritual benefit. Without a body to receive, the sacraments do not exist. The flesh manifests God’s love. It is the hinge of salvation (Tertullian, Resurrection of the Dead).

If the first keynote of the theology of the body is that our bodies matter, the second is “the law of gift”. This is central. We, and our bodies, which are an integral part of us, are given to us to be given as a gift to others and to God. Gift means totality. It embraces the whole of another person, along with their fertility. Again, in the person of Christ the gift is the nothing less that the whole person of God, unified, holy, strong and full of life. In so far as our actions are gift with these characteristics- they are good. In so far as they are lack any one of these, they are deficient. Our bodies are important. But they are not just for their own sake- they exist to be given, sacrificed. Christ did so, and every martyr imitates his offering.

These realties: of the importance of the flesh and radical self-giving, affect every person and almost every social issue. Pre-martial sex. Adultery. Contraception. Homosexuality. Abortion. Marriage. Divorce. Pornography. Identity. In-vitro fertilisation. Euthanasia. Without a prism for viewing these issues through the orientation of our bodies to God, and the sign they are about his truth, no full and satisfying answer can be given.

By appealing to the highest truths about our bodies which shape us as human persons, we can strive for the highest, for relationships which sanctify. For it is not enough to see human beings, and sex, as “special”. This lowers us to the level of subjectivity- what does special mean, anyway? It’s meaning changes depending on our mood or environment. It means we drift through five, ten, fifteen, twenty relationships, unable to commit, unable to rest, breaking lives. Special? Special is not special enough. We aim for the sacred. The unity of God with his people- that is the meaning of Christ as Bridegroom.

Now, let us have no illusions. This is the highest and the hardest path. To the extent we are prepared to trust God with the truth about our bodies, that it the extent to which we believe. But, for all the difficulty, it is a real union, a practicality, that in a way and by degrees, we can really achieve in this life. We can really make peace and joy part of us. I warmly recommend the works of John Paul to you. We need them to orient ourselves to our Father, to our true patria- to be the fathers of the world to come, where all things will be made new. This is our faith, our hope, and our love.

“Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus…thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him. If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us: If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:1-14, abridged)

21