Free Love True Love

Free Love, True Love
Free Love
True Love
Rediscovering Love & Intimacy in John Paul II’s
Theology of the Body
FR. JOEL O. JASON

Nihil Obstat:
Most Rev. Bernardino C. Cortez, D.D.
Auxiliary Bishop of Manila
Imprimatur:
+ Gaudencio Cardinal B. Rosales, D.D.
Archbishop of Manila
Free Love, True Love: Rediscovering Love and Intimacy

in John Paul II’s Theology of the Body
by Fr. Joel O. Jason © December 2007
2nd Printing April 2008
ISBN: 978-971-93992-0-9
Philippine Copyright by Fr. Joel O. Jason

San Carlos Seminary, Edsa, Guadalupe Viejo, 1200
Makati City, Philippines
Tel. No. (63 2) 8958855 Fax (63 2) 890 9563
e-mail: frajoel@mydestiny.net, frajoel1969@yahoo.com
For information and inquiries, pls. contact:

Ministry for Family and Life
Archdiocese of Manila
LAYFORCE: San Carlos Pastoral Formation Complex, EDSA, Guadalupe,
Makati City, Philippines
(63 2) 8906187; 8958855 loc 306 telfax: (63 2) 8960584
email: familyandlifeministry@yahoo.com
Requests for information should be addressed to:

SHEPHERD’S VOICE Publications, inc.
#60 Chicago St., Cubao, Quezon City, Philippines 1109
Tel. No. (632) 411-7874 to 77
e-mail: sale@shepherdsvoice.com.ph
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

except for brief quotations, without the prior permission of the
publisher.
Cover Design by Rey P. de Guzman

Layout by Sem. Ser Allan G. Bodoraya
This book is dedicated to
my late father, Panfilo and my mother, Ligaya,

the Jason, Collins and Trance families
the seminarians at San Carlos Seminary
Auntie Molly and Betty
all my co-workers at the Ministry for Family and Life
of the Archdiocese of Manila
FREE LOVE, TRUE LOVE

Contents
Foreword by
Cardinal Gaudencio B. Rosales, D.D. . . . . . . . . . . i
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
One: Laying the Foundation:

A New Ethos of Love and Sexuality . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Two: The Great Sacrament:
A Marriage Made in Heaven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Three: The Original Experiences of Man and Woman 23
The Experience of Original Solitude . . . . . . . . . . 25
The Experience of Original Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
The Experience of Original Nakedness . . . . . . . . 32
Four: The Rediscovery of Love and Chastity . . . . . . . . 37
Five: The Redemption of Sexuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Six: The Humanness of Love and Sexuality . . . . . . . 57
Seven: The Life-Giving and Love-Giving
Significance of Sexuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Eight: With This Body, I Thee Wed:
The Significance of the Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Concluding Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79
Foreword
E
ven before he assumed the papacy, Pope
John Paul II had already pondered important
themes concerning human sexuality and
these reflections were eventually published
in his book, Love and Responsibility. Given his
keen interest on the topic, it is probably not surprising
that in the early years of his pontificate, he devoted
several general audiences to presenting and outlining
his Theology of the Body. From 1979 to 1984, in about 130
talks delivered to crowds gathered for the Wednesday
general audience at St. Peter’s Square, Pope John Paul
II addressed several important issues about human
sexuality. In the process, he highlighted the Church’s
teaching that human beings, in their embodiment,
i
Foreword
reflect the image of God and that the human body is

indispensable to one’s vocation to love.
In this book, Fr. Jason presents, in a clear and lively

manner, the key points of Pope John Paul II’s theology
of the body. He combines his firm grasp of the late
pontiff’s thoughts on human sexuality with his stories
and his own experiences of ministering to couples and
families. The result is, thus, a work that speaks to men
and women of today, a work that addresses many of
their important concerns about love and intimacy.
We live in a world where there seems to be a strong

tendency to “commodify” human beings, that is,
to see men and women — and their bodies — as
commodities. It is hoped that through Fr. Jason’s
engaging presentation of Pope John Paul II’s theology
of the body, readers will rediscover and recover the true
sense of their worth as embodied persons, and thus, be
able to love — freely and truly.
+ GAUDENCIO B. CARDINAL ROSALES

Archbishop of Manila
21 November 2007
Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
ii
Introduction
F
ather, have you ever experienced how it
is to be in love?” This is the one question
people never miss throwing at me every
time I give talks, preach at retreats or lead
recollections. And I’ve heard that asked of
me in varying tones and contexts. Sometimes in pity.
(Ouch!) Sometimes seductively. (Hmmm….) But most
of the time just out of plain curiosity.
There is nothing really wrong with that question.
But innocent though it may be, it carries with it certain
assumptions.
First, it implies that priests become priests
because we don’t have any interest in love. Or if we
do, our hearts have stopped loving the day the bishop
laid hands on us at ordination. This also suggests that
iii
Introduction
priests choose celibacy because love doesn’t attract us

at all. (This celibacy issue is important to discuss but
that will be the topic of another book.)
Secondly, since love is supposed to be the territory
of “non-priests” and “non-celibates,” they must know
everything there is to know about love and sexuality. I
agree... but then again, do they really?
Let’s do a word association exercise. I will mention
words at random and all you have to do is to remember,
write down or draw if you want, whatever it is that
immediately comes to your mind. No censorship, no
editing. Ready?
What comes to your mind when you hear these
words: Man? Woman? Male? Female? Sex? Sexuality?
Body? Love?
I’ve done this often to countless numbers of
people and I always get more or less the same reaction
on their faces. Dumb question. Why do you even ask? But
when I ask them for feedback, I receive more or less
the same confusion and difficulty at identification.
“Is there a difference between man and male,
woman and female?”
“Aren’t they just interchangeable words?”
As for sex, sexuality and body, I get either a
malicious or embarrassed smile or a dismissive,
“Never mind. I wasn’t able to write anything,” which
actually means, “What I wrote down is not fit for
public consumption.”
iv
And as for love, it’s always the ever sublime, “Love

is blind.”
The words enumerated above are simple and
commonplace. We use them every day when we
talk of love and sexuality. But why the difficulty at
identification and differentiation?
Let me share with you an anecdote that I hope
won’t scandalize you. (Remember, to the pure,
everything is pure but to the impure, nothing is pure.
See Titus 1:15.)
An American missionary priest working in a
province in the Philippines presided at a wedding. He
wanted to deliver his homily in the vernacular, in this
case in Tagalog. He wanted to stress the importance
of prayer in married life but he couldn’t remember the
Tagalog equivalent.
He passed by a group of men who were drinking
by the roadside and politely asked one of them, “Ano sa
Tagalog ang prayer?” The man, a little intoxicated and
quite surprised by the question, could not remember
and could only mutter repeatedly, “Kuwan, kuwan.”
So the priest went ahead thinking that prayer is kuwan
in Tagalog.
1
“What is prayer in Tagalog?”
2
“kuwan” – 1. Tagalog word used to designate something indeterminate. May be
translated as “it” or “something like.” 2. In street parlance could also mean the sex act.
v
Introduction
So came the homily. The priest looked intently

at the couple and plainly said in his perfect Tagalog:
“Upang magtagal ang inyong relasyon, kailangan mag-
kuwan kayo palagi.”
The couple looked embarrassed. The priest
continued, “Sa umaga pagkagising, mag-kuwan. Bago
kumain, mag-kuwan. Bago matulog, mag-kuwan.” The
bride remarked in embarrassment, “Father, mamamatay
kami diyan sa pinagagawa niyo.” The priest responded
with greater emphasis, “Bago mamatay, mag-kuwan pa
rin!”
The priest was sincere and he meant well. He did
not want to sound scandalous or to raise confusion and
embarrassment. He simply didn’t know what he was
saying. But more importantly, he didn’t know what
he was saying because he learned the meaning of his
words from a drunken bystander in the streets.
Could it be that we also learned the meaning of
the words we enumerated above “from a drunken
bystander in the streets”?
3
He wanted to say, “If you want your marriage to last, pray always.” What he actually said
in Tagalog was “If you want your marriage to last, do it always.”
4
He wanted to say, “First thing in the morning, pray. Before eating, pray; before retiring at
night, pray.” What he actually said was, “First thing in the morning, do it. Before eating, do
it; before retiring at night, do it.”
5
“Father, if we do what you say, we will die.”
6
He wanted to say, “Before dying, all the more, don’t forget to pray.” What he actually said
in Tagalog, “Before you die, do it still.”
vi
No wonder we are confused. No wonder we smile

with malice and embarrassment. No wonder we define
love like it was taken straight from a slum book.
For the late Pope John Paul II, an important
question we could ask ourselves is, “What does it
mean to be a man? To be a woman?” “What does it
mean that I am created male or female?” “Why do I
have a body and why is the male body different from
the female body?”
These are not dumb questions. The way we
understand the meaning of these words determines
the very meaning of our existence as persons called to
love and be loved. And we do not derive our response
to these questions from a drunken bystander. No.
We take them from the words of Jesus as revealed in
Sacred Scriptures. We get them from the God who is
Love, from the God who became a man, from the God
who took on a body and a human heart and loved
humanity with that heart and that body. That’s why
John Paul II speaks of a Theology of the Body.
Theology (from theo – God; logos – science) simply
means the study of God. In our bodies, in being male
and female, God has inscribed His plan for man and
woman and their call to be one flesh in marriage.
The Theology of the Body is a series of 129 talks
delivered by Pope John Paul II from 1979 to 1984
during his weekly Wednesday General Audiences in
Rome. In 2006, it was compiled into a book entitled
vii
Introduction
Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the

Body, translated and edited from the original Polish by
Michael Waldstein. Quotations from the Holy Father
will be taken from this work.
The Pope’s Theology of the Body is a voluminous
work of theology. I will not be presenting an academic
treatment of the whole Theology of the Body here.
(That will be the subject of another book.) This reader-
friendly and popular presentation of the Pope’s
thoughts will simply be a revisiting of love and human
sexuality inspired by the truths presented by the Holy
Father’s deep reflections on the words of Christ and
the Genesis creation accounts as revealed in the Sacred
Scriptures. My first serious encounter with the Pope’s
Theology of the Body was in 1999 when I was asked to
take graduate studies in Rome. Right there and then
I knew I was holding in my hands a gold mine. The
truths that spoke through the pages just resonated in
my heart. I pray it will do the same in yours.
Fr. Joel O. Jason, SThL

16 October 2007
29th anniversary of John Paul II’s
election to the papacy
viii
ONE
Laying the Foundations:

A New Ethos of Love and Sexuality
“Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and the Pharisees, you will never
enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Matthew 5:20)
“You blind Pharisee! First cleanse the inside of the cup and of the plate, that the outside
also may be clean.” (Matthew 23:26)
couple was celebrating their 50th wedding

anniversary. They went to a priest friend to
renew their vows. Edified by their fidelity
to each other, the priest asked the man, “All
these years, did separation ever enter your
mind?” The man replied, “Separation? Never. Murder?
Many times.”
Imagine pushing that anecdote further.
1
Laying the Foundations: A New Ethos of Love and Sexuality
The priest asks, “So why didn’t you murder your

wife?”
“Oh, if only I could!” the man replies. “Why
couldn’t you?” the priest insists. The man replies,
“Hello? Haven’t you heard of prison?”
That’s an imaginary anecdote but the message is
real. There are men who, if not for the possibility of
prison, would have murdered their wives long ago
and vice-versa. There are men who, if not for the fear
of sexually transmitted disease, would have long ago
patronized prostitutes. I know of a religious priest
who remains “chaste” for totally unchaste reasons.
Friends, it’s not only about what the law (ethic)
says. It is about what the heart (ethos) desires.
When we hear the word moral or morality, what
comes immediately into mind is a set of rules and
norms that obligates a person to action or inaction. But
while rules and norms are indispensable in regulating
moral behavior, there is more to moral living than just
the cold set of laws to follow. In fact, it can happen
that behaviors that are actually immoral in character
can hide behind the veil of “legality” if one is clever
enough to play around the letter of the law.
The new Catechism of the Catholic Church
promulgated in the pontificate of John Paul II,
introduced its section on Christian morality with the
line:
2
Christian, recognize your dignity and, now that

you share in God’s own nature, do not return
to your former base condition by sinning….
Never forget that you have been rescued from
the power of darkness and brought into the
light of the Kingdom of God. (CCC § 1691,
italics mine)
The Need for a New Ethos for Sexuality

“Recognize your dignity,” says the moral section of
the Catechism. Laws by themselves do not and cannot
change human hearts. It is the reorientation of one’s
set of values in one’s heart that brings about genuine
conversion.
How sterile morality will become when it is
reduced to a set of rules and laws to follow! Moral
action is more than simply following laws.
It’s about recognizing our dignity.
It’s about pursuing actions with the consciousness
that one does this or that particular action because it
promotes authentic human good.
This is what John Paul II means with the “new
ethos” of morality. Ethics refers to the external rules
and norms that are meant to safeguard the ethos of
morality. Ethos refers to one’s inner world of values —
what attracts and repulses man. Ethos is recognizing
man’s dignity not only from the force of external law
3
(ethics) but from the interior attraction of the heart. John

Paul II puts it succinctly:
The new ethos is a “living morality,” in

which we realize the very meaning of our
humanity.
Look at the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-

7). It’s nothing else but an invitation to discover the
new ethos of morality. Paraphrasing the Sermon on
the Mount, Jesus, in effect, is saying, “You have heard
the commandment and what it externally obligates
you, ‘Thou shall not commit adultery.’ But now I tell
you what it internally commands you, ‘He who looks
lustfully at a woman has already committed adultery
with her in his heart’”( Matthew 5:27-28). Simply put,
Jesus is saying, “You have heard the ethic, but now I
give you the ethos.”
He who truly loves his wife has no need of the
commandment, “Thou shall not commit adultery,”
because there is no desire in his heart to commit it. He
does not experience it as a command. This is what the
Bible describes as freedom from the law (see Romans 7).
7
John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, Michael Waldstein,
trans., (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 24:3), p 227.
For the sake of brevity, subsequent citations from the book shall henceforth be rendered
“TOB” for Theology of the Body, followed by the date the Pope delivered the address.
4
St. Paul in his letter to the Romans is not proposing

anomy or the absence of laws (from the Greek a
– without; nomos – law). He is proposing autonomy,
i.e., the internalization of the law within oneself (auto
– self; nomos – law).
John Paul II calls it the ethos of redemption. It is
where the objective norms (ethics) become one with
subjective desires of one’s heart (ethos). When ethos
and ethics become one, we understand that human
freedom is not liberation from any external constraint
that calls us to do good but liberation from the internal
constraint that prevents us from choosing the good.
Author and lay theologian Christopher West put it
so insightfully, “True freedom is not liberty to indulge
our compulsions, but liberation from our compulsion
to indulge.”
We need not fear the commandments of Christ.
They do not rob us of our joy. Rather, they make true
joy possible. Jesus assured His disciples, “If you keep
my commandments, you will remain in my love…I
have told you this so that my joy may be in you and
your joy may be complete” (John 15:10-11). The words
of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount are not words of
condemnation. They are rather words of invitation for
us to embrace and recognize our dignity.
5
“I’m Only Human, Born to Make Mistakes”

Cecilia has known of her husband’s womanizing even
early on in their marriage. The guy also has three
children with two other women.
“What are you doing about this?” I inquired.
“Father, as long as he comes home to me and my
family, it’s OK,” she replied.
Before I even managed a word, she quickly added
with calm resignation, “What can you do? It’s normal
nowadays right?”
In a way, that’s true. It has become normal
nowadays. Why, you can even be elected president of
the country in spite of this. But then again, is it really
normal… or just factual?
It’s factual that men abuse their women. It is
almost everyday news stuff. But it is not normal. That
babies are left in garbage cans by their own mothers is
factual but not normal. What am I saying here? Normal
is a special kind of word. It comes from the root word
norm.
What is a norm? It is an ethical, moral standard. It
refers to how things are intended to be. Therefore, we
must be careful not to automatically “normalize” what
is factual. Not everything that is factual is normal.
Terence J. Keegan, O.P. said, “Christian moral
behavior is distinctive precisely because it is Christian,
i.e., what one does follows upon what one is (agere
sequitur esse, i.e., action follows being). How we talk
6
about what a Christian does will therefore depend on

how we talk about what a Christian is.”
The Need for an Adequate Vision of Man

This is why John Paul II calls our attention to the three
states of man (humanity). Original Man (see Matthew
19:3-9), Historical Man (see Matthew 5:27-28) and
Eschatological Man (see Matthew 22:23-33).
For the sake of simplicity and clarity, let us call the
three states our Origin, our Present and our Destiny.
Our Origin refers to man and woman prior to
Original Sin, living out God’s plan for marriage “in
the beginning.” Our Present refers to our fallen state,
affected by sin but redeemed by Christ. Our Destiny
refers to our vocation, what we are called to be in the
Resurrection.
Our origin refers to what is actually normal or
normative. As the saying goes, “I’m only human, born
to make mistakes.” Yes, our present is marked by sin
but the echo of our origin remains in the human heart
and still is operative. We are affected by sin but I dare
say not infected by it.
To be affected is to be weakened, to be stalled by
something. To be infected means to be corrupted at the
very root as to be helpless in the face of it. The original
(from origin) experiences of the first man and woman,
John Paul II insists, “are always at the root of every
human experience” (TOB, Dec. 12, 1979). Sin has not
7
totally destroyed God’s original plan. This means if

we keep our origin in sight, there is a power available
to us in Christ that will enable us to rise above our
present state. And to the measure that we keep our
origins in sight will decide how we will be able to reach
our destiny.
This is the same origin Jesus appealed to when He
responded, “In the beginning, it was not so” (Matthew
19:8), as a correction to the Pharisees who have
normalized lust and divorce in the man and woman
relationship.
We are not presenting an unrealistic ideal here.
This doesn’t mean that the man who keeps his origin
in sight will not fall. He will. But to paraphrase what
one sneaker ad says, “If he falls down seven times, he
will stand up eight.”
It’s different with the man who has normalized
his present. He is already fallen at the very beginning.
And he has no desire to stand up.
I remember an insightful anecdote that lay
evangelist Bo Sanchez once shared.
There was an elephant in a zoo named Jumbo who
became an attraction to people. His foot was tied to a
simple rope yet for some reason he never attempted
to break free from it. The caretaker revealed a bit of
history about the elephant. When he was still a tiny
baby, little Jumbo pulled and pulled against the rope,
to no avail. The rope was strong enough to hold him
8
captive. Finally, after countless tries, the baby elephant

became resigned to his fate. All effort was useless.
Now Jumbo is big and strong. But while he could
easily break free from the rope with a snap like all
other elephants of his size and strength, he doesn’t.
He has normalized his “weakness” and forfeited his
identity as a strong and mighty animal.
He was not bound externally. He was bound
internally — in the mind, in the heart.
Experts call that condition a learned helplessness.
I’d like to call it the little Jumbo syndrome. And even
people can be affected by this. That is why the Catechism
encourages us, “Christians, recognize your dignity.”
In Christ, we have great power and dignity in being
human.
That’s the reason why we need an adequate
vision of man. By “adequate” here, I don’t mean the
minimalist “that will do” mentality. On the contrary,
adequate means an understanding and interpretation
of man in what is essentially human. It is a reflection
on man in his concrete and integral totality, based on
that which, in the rich reality of the human person,
is most characteristically human and thus worthy of
man.
An adequate vision of man frees us from the
despair of normalizing our fallen state and enables us
to have confidence in our origin. Unless we do this, we
have lost the battle even before it has begun. We will
9
forever be in chains, fastened by flimsy ropes. We will

be nothing but Little Jumbos.
The Need for an Adequate Vision of the Body

Man is not only body. Neither is he only spirit. Man is
not a spirit trapped inside a body. Neither is he a body
invaded by an alien spirit. An adequate vision of the body
recognizes man in the totality of his being, i.e., a unity
of body and spirit. The Catechism § 365 teaches us,
“The unity of soul and body is so profound…. Spirit
and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but
rather their union forms a single nature.”
For John Paul II, “The body, in fact, and only the
body, is capable of making visible what is invisible….
It has been created to transfer into the visible reality
of the world the mystery hidden from eternity in God,
and thus be the sign of it” (TOB, Feb. 20, 1980).
The body therefore is not a mere instrument that
is incidental and has nothing to do with the interiority
of the person. It is called to make visible the invisible
reality of the human soul. This is important because
the way we understand who the human person is will
decide the way we understand what love and sex is.
Look at the human person as a pure spirit, and you
fall into hyper-spiritualization, a repression of anything
and everything sexual.
10
Look at the human person as a pure matter and

you succumb to hyper-sexualization, characterized by
excess and indulgence.
But see the human person in the unity of body
and spirit and we discover the beauty of sublimation.
Sublimation comes from the word sublime, something
that is sacred, holy. Sex is sacred and holy because it is
a sacrament of something far greater than itself.
What does it symbolize? That brings us to our
next chapter.
11
12
TWO
The Great Sacrament:

A Marriage Made in Heaven
“God has revealed his innermost secret: God himself is an eternal exchange
of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us
to share in that exchange.”
(Catechism of the Catholic Church § 221)
Y ears ago, I was blessing the house of a friend.

Their family was very religious. At every
corner was a religious painting or image.
There was even a mini chapel where they
do their family devotions. When I entered to bless the
masters’ bedroom, right beside the couple’s bed was a
table converted into a mini altar, with a big Bible and
the image of the Sacred Heart of whom the wife was a
devotee.
13
The Great Sacrament: A Marriage Made in Heaven
I have a confession to make. (I hope they’re not

reading this.) With a half-smile on my lips, I blessed
the bedroom with a not-so-holy thought running
through my mind. I wonder how they manage to do the
marital act with Jesus looking nearby. Then I continued
on with the Lord’s Prayer…
If you are smiling and thinking the same
naughty thought with me, welcome to our fallen
world where we say, “Here is my sex life and there is
my spirituality and never the twain shall meet.” We
have taken God out of our bedrooms. But Scripture
says, “God is love and he who abides in love abides
in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16). If God
is not there, then what is it that is happening in our
bedrooms?
How often have we heard it said, “Why can’t
the Pope just speak on religious matters?” Friend,
the Church speaks passionately about sex precisely
because sex is a religious matter.
Can I say something bold here?
God does not blush at the sight of a husband and
wife in the marital act. He will not look away — unless
something else, someone else or something different is
actually happening in the marital bed.
When God said in Genesis, “Be fertile and multiply;
fill the earth and subdue it“(Genesis 1:28), He was
practically telling Adam and Eve to have sex.
But not just sex the way our fallen world knows it.
14
Let’s Get Physical

I cannot forget a line from the 2002 film Frida which
depicted the life of the surrealist painter Frida Kahlo
played by Salma Hayek. Painter Diego Rivera, Frida’s
lover who eventually became her husband, was a
womanizer. Frida caught him in bed with one of his
nude models and she confronted him. He retorted,
“What’s the matter with you? It’s just a fuck. I give
more meaning to a handshake.” That last line still
rings in my ears.
The problem with our world is not that it
overvalues sex. It undervalues it. We are totally
clueless. No wonder a handshake gets more serious
treatment. If Diego’s remark is any indication of how
the world appreciates sex, then sex is nothing but
recreation, a stress buster after a day’s work, a contact
sport, a physical activity.
Why do we understand sex this way? Here’s my
theory: because we learned about sex from a “drunken
bystander in the street.”
Now here’s a proposal. How about hearing from
the One who invented it?
Let’s Get Metaphysical

God is love. He is love not only because He loves us
but more precisely because His inner life is a life of
love and communion between the Father, Son and
Holy Spirit.
15
The quote from the Catechism above calls it an

eternal exchange of love and we are called to participate
in that eternal exchange.
If we look at the beginning and end of the Bible,
we will discover that both books speak of a marriage.
Genesis speaks of the marriage of Adam and Eve
(Genesis 1 and 2). The Book of Revelation speaks of
another marriage — the marriage of the New Adam
and the New Eve, i.e., Christ the Bridegroom’s
marriage to His bride the Church (see Revelation
19). The marriage of the new Adam and the new Eve
describes the end of history when all of humanity will
have been united with Christ.
Quite plainly, God’s eternal plan is to marry us.
The prophets foretold, “On that day, says the Lord,
she shall call me ‘My husband,’ and never again ‘my
Baal.’… I will espouse you in fidelity, and you shall
know the Lord” (Hosea 2:18-22).
And to make that plan clear, visible and so plain to
us, He created humanity male and female so that in the
difference but complementarity between masculinity
and femininity, we will be moved into a communion
and establish that one flesh unity. “For this reason,” the
Bible says, “a man shall leave his father and mother
and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become
one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).
This is what sex, or the one flesh unity in marriage,
witnesses to. That’s why the Bible describes marriage
16
as “a great mystery.” St. Paul, speaking of marriage,

quotes Genesis and adds, “‘For this reason, a man
shall leave father and mother and be joined to his
wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This is a
great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and
the Church” (Ephesians 5:31-32).
Sex, that one flesh unity spoken of in the first
marriage in Genesis 2:24 is a sacrament on earth of the
heavenly one flesh unity which all humanity is called
to. That is why sex is not just any kind of act. It is a
special kind of act. In fact, it is the only act in marriage
we call marital.
We do not call dishwashing or cleaning house
marital. Even a handshake is not called marital. There
are many things couples do together in marriage
but only sex is properly called the marital act. Why?
Because God intended it to be an icon, a sacrament of
the heavenly marriage which all of us are called to. It
goes beyond the physical. It is metaphysical.
No wonder lovers speak of heaven as a place
on earth. Whenever couples celebrate their one flesh
unity in free, total, faithful and fruitful love, they
proclaim in their body the heavenly one flesh unity
that awaits all of us. That’s why John Paul II speaks of
a “language of the body.” The body speaks a language.
It becomes prophetic i.e., proclaiming a truth. Not only
is it prophetic, the Pope even calls it liturgical (see TOB,
July 4, 1984). What is liturgy? An act of worship!
17
But just as we can speak the truth with our bodies,

we can also speak lies with it. Look at the kiss of Judas. It
is the same with the sexual act and our bodies. Honesty,
not prohibition, is the essence of the Christian sexual
ethic. And so we must continuously discern between
false and true prophets — that what is sacred does not
become sacrilege, what is true does not become a lie,
what is liturgical does not become blasphemous.
Remember the story I began this chapter with? If
I did the house blessing now, the half-smile will not be
there. The naughty thought will be not be there too. In
their place will be the conviction: “This is holy ground.
God should have a place in every bedroom.”
Just a word of caution here. John Paul II speaks
of a “limit of the analogy” (see TOB, Sept. 29, 1982)
regarding the earthly one-flesh unity and the heavenly
one-flesh unity. We must not confuse the analogy. We
should look at sex in terms of heaven and not heaven in
terms of sex. Sex in marriage reveals something about
God and His eternal plan to marry us. It is not God
who reveals something about sex. Therefore, we must
not think of heaven as an eternal sexual encounter.
Heaven remains “transcendent” says John Paul II. St.
Paul in his epistle could only describe it as ”eye has not
seen, and ear has not heard… what God has prepared
for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). We must
not confuse the symbol and the symbolized. When we
do so, we turn the icon into an idol.
18
When an Icon Turns into an Idol

Johnny has always wanted to join a cruise but he
couldn’t afford it. By a stroke of luck, he won an
economy ticket for a cruise at a company raffle. So off
he went.
Every meal time, he would ease his hunger with
the coffee and biscuits offered for free at the entrance
of the grand buffet hall. How he longed to use the
fine silver and feast lavishly with the rest of the cruise
passengers. But he eventually got used to his crackers
and biscuits; after all, they tasted good.
At the end of the cruise, a passenger who
often saw him with his frugal meal remarked, “I’m
impressed by your self-control. Are you on a diet?” A
little embarrassed, he admitted nonetheless, “Oh no,
mine was just an economy ticket.” Shaking his head,
the man volunteered, “Didn’t you know the buffet
meal is included in an economy ticket?”
Just like Johnny’s story, the one flesh unity in sex is a
foretaste of the heavenly one flesh unity we are called to.
We are actually called to partake in the “buffet table”
and not be content with the crackers and biscuits,
palatable as they can be.
Have you ever wondered why the Bible gives
a stern warning against sexual sinners? Paul’s letter
to the Galatians is very plain, “Now the works of the
flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity… drinking
bouts, orgies, and the like. I warn you… that those
19
who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of

God” (Galatians 5:19-21; see also Ephesians 5:5-7).
It is not because sex is bad. No. God made sexual
desire and it is good. The warning is for those who
have made an idol out of the icon. When we do this,
we are saying we don’t want the real thing — what
it symbolizes. We are content with the symbol. If
sexual desire is to be an icon pointing us to yearn for
heaven, we forfeit our place in heaven because we
have confined the satisfaction of our yearnings to its
earthly symbol.
Remember what Jesus told the Sadducees: “At
the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in
marriage but are like the angels in heaven“(Matthew
22:30; see also Luke 20:34-36). Why? Because we are
now in the heavenly marriage where Christ is the
Groom and all of us are His bride. The symbol ceases
to be because we are now face to face with what is
symbolized.
In heaven, faith will no longer be needed because
we are already face to face with the object of our faith.
Hope, too, will no longer be of use because that which
we hope for is fulfilled. St. Paul in Corinth wrote,
“So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the
greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13). Only love
will remain, because in heaven, we will revel in that
eternal marriage where Christ “may be all in all” (1
Corinthians 15:28; see also Colossians 3:11).
20
G.K. Chesterton was known to have said once

these words to the effect, “Every man who knocks at
the door of a brothel is actually looking for God.”
Think of the girl who shops compulsively for
shoes despite having 300 pairs already. She is actually
looking for something money cannot buy.
Think of the bulimic guy who gorges on food,
induces vomiting, so he can eat again. He is actually
longing for the “bread that will nourish him unto life
eternal” (see John 6).
Remember the woman who has had seven
husbands (see John 4)? She was actually looking for
the love that truly satisfies.
How can we avoid making an idol out of the
icon?
Going back to the plan of God might help. Let’s
travel back in time…
21
22
THREE
The Original Experiences

of Man and Woman
“If you want to know what lies on the road up ahead,
ask those who are on their way back.”
(Anonymous)
friend of mine sent me an anonymous anecdote

entitled “Things Mama Taught Me.” Let me
share with you some lines from it.
Mom taught me about... ANTICIPATION.

“Just wait ‘til your father gets home.”
Mom taught me about... RECEIVING.
“You’re going to get it when we get home.”
Mom taught me about... GENETICS.
“You’re just like your father.”
Mom taught me... to meet a CHALLENGE.
23
The Original Experiences of Man and Woman
“What were you thinking? Answer me when I talk

to you. Don’t talk back at me.”
Mom taught me... the WISDOM OF AGE.
“When you get to be my age, you will
understand.”
And my all time favorite... JUSTICE.
“One day you will have kids, and I hope they turn
out just lke you, then you’ll see what it’s like.”
You can’t miss the writer’s wit and sense of humor.

Neither can you miss the clever sarcasm and subtle
resentment of the young against traditional values
and parental authority that he poked fun at.
It can be difficult at times to look back at what
was in the beginning. Sometimes we assume that
everything that is past is no longer valid and that which
is present is what counts. The late bishop Fulton Sheen
calls this assumption the “chronological arrogance of
the modern age.”
But as we saw in Chapter 1, going back to our Origin
is not simply a sentimental trip back to the years gone by.
Our Origin brings us back to what actually is normative
or normal, what is expressive of God’s original plan. In
speaking of the original experiences of man, the Pope
begins the reflection with the words of Christ Himself
in His dialogue with the Pharisees who questioned Him
about divorce. Jesus, in His reply, brought them back to
our origin when He said, “Because of the hardness of
24
your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives,

but from the beginning it was not so” (Matthew 19:8).
What can we learn from the beginning? Read on…
THE EXPERIENCE OF ORIGINAL SOLITUDE

“Man… is the only creature on earth that God willed for its
own sake.” (Gaudium et Spes § 24)
All By Myself
After the creation of the world and everything in it,
God created man from the dust of the earth. Then
we read that crucial divine affirmation. God Himself
observed, “It is not good that man should be alone. I
will make him a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18). So
God created all the animals to accompany Adam but
none proved “suitable for him” (Genesis 2:20).
The man was still lonely because there was
nobody to love. This is the first experience of original
solitude. Note that the man was not really physically
alone. He was surrounded by countless creatures. But
man was “alone” because he alone was a person in the
visible world.
After naming all the animals, all he discovered
was what he was not. Note here that the word used
for man in Genesis 2:18 is the Hebrew adam, meaning,
humanity. This tells us something.
Original solitude is not only a sentimental
experience of loneliness by a man without a woman.
25
Original solitude is humanity’s realization of his

dignity and superiority among the rest of the animals.
In the words of the Pope, man (humanity) “gains the
consciousness of his own superiority, that is, that he
cannot be put on a par with any other species of living
beings on the earth” (TOB, Oct. 10, 1979). Humanity is
all by himself.
This is from the beginning. This is what is normal.
This makes us wonder why, in our present world, we
hug trees and outlaw cruelty to animals but legalize
the killing of human infants and the elderly. It’s
something to think about…
To Love SOMEBODY
Because humanity alone is created in God’s image (see
Genesis 1:26), humanity alone is called to a special
relationship with God. This is the first meaning of
original solitude. In his “solitude” in the world, man
discovers not only who he is but also whose he is.
Man apart from his Creator will be a lonely
creature. There is something in man that man alone
cannot fulfill. No wonder the saints proclaim, “Our
hearts are restless unless they rest in Thee” (St.
Augustine). This explains why earthly marriage is an
icon of the heavenly marriage to which all of us are
called. Man is called to love not only somebody but
also, and more so, Somebody.
26
To Love Somebody… Not Some Body

There is a second meaning to that solitude spoken of in
Genesis 2:18. Indeed Adam, the male, was also lonely
because Eve was not yet there. He could have happily
mingled with the rest of the animals in the garden.
He could have found warmth and companionship
with the kangaroos and the elephants. But he was still
lonely. Why? Adam was not only looking for a body.
Any body would not suffice. Adam was looking for
somebody, a person just like him.
This explains his joyful outburst after a futile
search. At the sight of Eve, Adam exclaimed, “This
at last is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh”
(Genesis 2:23). In the plan of God, that somebody
was not just any body, nor was it just anybody; it was
somebody who was Adam’s perfect complement —
bodily, psychologically, spiritually. Adam was a “body
among bodies” prior to the appearance of Eve but
there is something different and awe-inspiring with
a person’s body. A person’s body reveals a spiritual
reality — personhood (see TOB, Oct. 24, 1979). That’s
why Adam would not settle for just any body. It had
to be a body that reflects personhood.
This brings us to the second original experience.
THE EXPERIENCE OF ORIGINAL UNITY

Sometime, somewhere, I read this story. There was this
husband who was very quiet. While the wife treasured
27
conversations, he treasured reading the papers. One

time, the man left a note on the bed saying, “Wake me
up at 5 a.m. Thanks!”
The wife was furious but the man was already
asleep.
The next morning the husband woke up… at
10 a.m. Angry that his wife didn’t wake him up, he
turned to her but saw a note on the bed board saying
“Honey, wake up. It’s 5 a.m.”
Men and women are different — in many ways. In
our fallen world, this difference is the subject of many
jokes on the “war of the sexes.” But in the beginning,
it was not so.
In the beginning, the recognition of the difference
and complementarity between man and woman
afforded an experience of original unity. The Bible
says, “For this reason, a man shall leave his father and
mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall
become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).
Put it this way. If I have a sandwich and you also
have the same one, would I bother sharing with you
what I have? Probably not.
But if I have a sandwich and you have a drink,
I would probably share with you my sandwich in
the hope that you would share your drink with me.
The recognition of our “difference” paves the way
for our “communion.” Similarly, the recognition of
the physical difference but complementarity between
28
male and female becomes the vehicle for establishing

the communion of the one flesh unity spoken of in
Genesis 2:24.
As we have seen before, the body expresses spiritual
realities. The physical difference and complementarity
between male and female made them realize that they
are called for communion, to be a gift for one another.
Man exists, “with someone” and “for someone” (see
TOB, Jan. 9, 1980). John Paul II calls this the discovery
of the nuptial meaning of the body: “the power to express
love and by this love, become a gift for the other”
(see TOB Jan. 16, 1980). Were it not for that physical
difference and complementarity, the two would have
been content in their own individual worlds.
John Paul II says, “Man becomes the image of God
not only through his own humanity, but also through
the communion of persons, which man and woman
form right from the beginning” (TOB, Nov. 14, 1979).
Just as God is a communion of Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, man and woman image that communion here
on earth.
If there is one thing that two male bodies cannot
do, it is to be truly united in one flesh. At best they
could only be beside one another but not united in one
flesh. It is the same with two female bodies.
The body as male and female plays a crucial
role here. It is not incidental in the marriage analogy.
Consider the anatomy of the marital act. The male
29
“initiates” the gift of self, the female “accepts” the

gift.
If our bodies speak theology, isn’t that what God’s
gift of Himself is all about too? God initiates the gift
of salvation. But that gift is not forced. Humanity has
to accept that gift. That’s why Christ is the Groom and
we are His bride.
Take away the male and female and you take away
also the image of Bridegroom and the bride. Without
forgetting the “limits of the analogy” (see p. 18), the
earthly union of the sexes (made possible by physical
difference but complementarity between male and
female), is a sacrament on earth of the heavenly one
flesh unity all of us are called to in the end times.
Original unity points to the ultimate unity with God
who is our destiny.
The Bone of Contention

An aged couple, both 60 years old, was walking along
the beach. The husband stumbled upon an ancient
bottle and released the proverbial genie inside. In
gratitude, the genie offered to grant the man three
wishes.
The cunning and greedy husband wished for a
fleet of cars and real estate and, voila, he got them.
Then he asked for a truckload of money, and there
it was.
30
(By this time, the genie was already irritated by

his selfishness and materialism.)
Then he asked for a wife 40 years younger than
him and, alas... he became a hundred years old!
The Genesis story of the woman created from
the rib of man (see Genesis 2:21-22) has always been
the bone of many contentions. Some interpret it as
symbolic of the natural superiority of the male species
over the female and thus explains the perpetual
“disunity” between man and woman.
This is a gross misreading of the text. The creation
from the rib signifies that “woman is created… based on
the same humanity” (TOB, Nov. 7, 1979). The “image
of the rib,” taken from the side of man, means that
only woman can and should stand side by side with
man because she too is God’s image and likeness.
Furthermore, the deep sleep spoken of in Genesis
2:21 is tardemah in Hebrew. Tardemah can be likened to
being in a general anesthesia, a state induced so that
the physician can work without disturbance on the
patient.
Similarly, when Adam awoke and found Eve, it
signifies that he had nothing to do with the creation of
the woman. That is why it was God who “brought her
to the man” (see Genesis 2:22). The woman is wholly
God’s creation and shares the same humanity and
dignity as God’s image.
31
THE EXPERIENCE OF ORIGINAL NAKEDNESS

“The man and his wife were both naked, yet
they felt no shame” (Genesis 2:25). The original
experience of nakedness free from shame is the key
to understanding God’s intention for the man and
woman relationship.
But this is difficult in our times because of extreme
exaggerations we have fallen into. One culture covers
the woman from head to toe because she is a temptress.
The other extreme virtually strips her naked and
exposes her every erogenous zone.
But in the beginning it was not so.
The Naked Truth about Nakedness

“The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt
no shame” (Genesis 2:25). Why were Adam and Eve
free from shame? Because they did not experience
the other’s look as a threat to their nakedness. In all
naturalness, they experienced real intimacy as into-
me-see.
In her nakedness, Adam saw Eve as a person
expressed through a body and not simply a body
of a person and vice versa. Therefore, there was no
compulsion to lust and to use the other. In the words
of the Holy Father, “they see and know each other…
with all the peace of the interior gaze” (TOB, Jan. 2,
1980). This is sexual desire in the purity of its origins.
It is no less exciting and definitely more meaningful
32
because it does not reduce the other to a thing for one’s

sexual pleasure.
Why is it that couples do not feel the need to cover
themselves in front of each other? Because the spouse
has no intention to objectify the other. At least that’s
what we expect to be happening. Later on, we will see
that even in marriage, it could be otherwise.
With the entrance of sin, the first couple “realized
that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together
and made loincloths for themselves”(Genesis 3:7).
When sin entered the picture, they covered themselves
and felt shame in their nakedness (see Genesis 3:8-
10).
When we allow lust to enter the picture, the
other’s look becomes a threat to one’s nakedness.
The desire to bless the other becomes a desire to grab
and to possess, to gratify oneself. Sexual desire is
corrupted. Notice that Eve covered herself from her
husband Adam and vice versa. Lust can distort love
even within marriage.
The Naked Truth about Shame

So the solution to recovering nakedness free from
shame is to throw away all our clothes, right? Well,
it’s not that simple. Recovering it requires a progressive
transformation of the heart and covering up is a necessary
step in that direction.
Shame as an experience is not altogether negative.
33
The instinct to cover up or the need to put on clothes

can play a positive function in our present world. Why
do we cover ourselves almost automatically when we
are exposed to a stranger? It’s not because our bodies
are bad or shameful. On the contrary, it’s because it’s
beautiful, so beautiful as to be sacred.
We only veil that which we consider sacred.
That’s why we veil the Blessed Sacrament. We secure
our private journals from the prying eyes of others.
We veil our bedrooms because what goes on in there
is private and sacred.
Because the echo of nakedness without shame
remains in us, we remember our innate dignity. Shame
as covering up is not prudery. It serves as a form of
natural fear or self-defense against the possibility of
being treated as a sexual object by an anonymous third
party (see Love and Responsibility p. 179). At the same
time, it is an instinctive expression of our positive
desire to be treated as persons and not as objects. John
Paul II calls this instinct positive shame. Positive shame
is actually synonymous with the value of modesty.
The Shameless Truth about Shamelessness

Nakedness without shame (Genesis 2:25) is not the same
as shamelessness (see Love and Responsibility, p. 186 ff).
Shamelessness is actually a distortion of nakedness
without shame. Shamelessness is the irresponsible
baring of the human body and exposing it to the
34
possibility of being treated as an object. The nakedness

of shamelessness is the willful reduction of the person
to his or her body parts. Shamelessness is imprudently
exposing the naked human body to the “degradation
of the lustful look.”
This is the philosophy behind all forms of
immodesty, exhibitionism, voyeurism, lewdness
and pornography. Here, the human person becomes
nothing more than a commodity for another’s sexual
pleasure. No, the problem with pornography is not
that it shows too much of the human person. The
problem with pornography is that it shows too little of
the greatness of the human person and of the body.
35
The Rediscovery of Love and Chastity
36
FOUR

“God created man in His own image and likeness; calling him to existence
through love, He called him at the same time for love.”
John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio § 11
Man “cannot fully find himself except through the sincere gift of
himself.”(Gaudium et Spes §24)
L et me share with you some of my “love

encounters.”
A Love to Lust a Lifetime

I was once counseling a young husband. He had been
married for three years and he was having intimacy
problems with his wife.
“Do you love your wife?” I asked.
“Yes Father,” he mumbled.
“So what’s the real problem?” I inquired.
In anger, the guy blurted out, “I’m frustrated sexually.
My wife is not good in bed. Why can’t she be like my ex?”
37
That man is frustrated because he goes into the

sexual encounter not intending to seek the good of his
wife. His primary goal is his orgasm.
A Love to Last a Lifetime

I was talking to a young couple wanting to learn Natural
Family Planning. In one of the sharing sessions, the
husband good-humoredly but honestly shared that
during their honeymoon night, his bride felt a little
shy and inhibited. She was a virgin and saved herself
for marriage.
“So did you get frustrated?” I asked innocently.
Almost surprised by my question, he said, “Of
course not, Father, I love my wife. “
That man went into that encounter not looking
for his orgasm. If at all, it was only secondary. He
went into that encounter to seek the good of his bride.
Pope John Paul II has a term for it. He calls this “self-
donation, the sincere gift of oneself.”
Looking back at my encounter with those “lovers,”
I discovered a nugget of wisdom. I’m going to sound
like a sex guru here but I’ll say it anyway.
Good sex does not necessarily lead to love. Any
man, or woman for that matter, can visit a paid sex
worker and have the best sex he has ever had, but no
relationship is necessarily built. In most cases, one
doesn’t even bother asking for the other’s name.
38
I recall a story of a woman named Sarah in the

book of Tobit. She was a very beautiful woman.
Men desired her beauty. But for some reason, all her
husbands would die on the wedding night. Seven
men had already suffered the same fate in the bridal
chamber (see Tobit 7:11). Without probing into an
investigation on why all the men die, could this be
Scriptures’ way of telling us that a loveless sexual
encounter is as good as a lifeless sexual encounter? No
wonder all seven men died.
But Tobiah was different. He was a decent man.
He wanted not only the beauty but the person of Sarah.
His prayer during the wedding night gives us a clue
into his real intentions. “Lord, you know that I take this
wife of mine not because of lust, but for a noble purpose.
Call down your mercy on me and on her, and allow us
to live together to a happy old age” (Tobit 8:8, italics
mine).
They did grow old happy together.
A love-filled sexual encounter is a life-giving
sexual encounter.
Now if good sex does not necessarily lead to love,
love always leads to “good” sex (i.e., “not-always-
technically-good-but-qualitatively-getting-there”). In
the case of guy #2 above, genuine love made up for shy
and inhibited sex. And as a matter of fact, genuine love
can even make up for sometimes absent sex. Read on…
39
I Wanna Know What Love Is

I read the story of Wawel and Mila Mercado in a
major daily. I’ve actually met them once. Back in 1997,
their lives changed forever when an amniotic fluid
embolism in the brain after Mila gave birth to their
only daughter, Therese, left her forever paralyzed and
unable to speak. The damage to her brain also caused
Mila to lose much of her motor functions. She has to
be fed and cared for by two caregivers. Wawel was
devastated but not frustrated.
He still takes Mila out in public and even brings
her to join fun runs — with Wawel pushing Mila on
her wheelchair. They actually won a 2nd place medal
once. A line in the newspaper article struck me. Wawel
said, “I’ve never felt ashamed to take Mila out in
public.” What he said next struck me more. “I tried
my best at first for us to live as husband and wife, but
I found it so unhealthy,” he said. “By its very nature,
romantic love is conditional. It expects something back
in return. We have had no sex life since Mila became
mentally handicapped.”
Despite all that, Wawel remained passionate
about his wife. What a contrast to Guy #1 who’s
frustrated at his wife because she doesn’t perform like
his ex. Behold the difference between true love and its
counterfeit.
Genuine love longs not only for the good that
the other can give. Guy #1 wanted something from
40
his wife and the wife could not give it according to

his specifications. So his “love” drifted somewhere
else. Genuine love longs to promote the other’s good.
And promoting the other’s good brings the greatest
of fulfillment.
I once read a definition of love which I paraphrased.
Love is when the other’s good, well-being and concerns
become as important and, if need be, more important than
my own good, well-being and concerns.
True lovers are not masochists; they also take
pleasure in the good that the other brings. But that’s
only secondary. Ultimately, the pleasure of a genuine
lover does not consist in the presence of pleasant
feelings or sensations. It can even persist in their
absence. A genuine lover’s pleasure is simply the
good of his beloved. John Paul II goes on to say that
authentic love does not say, “I long for you as a good” but
rather ,“I long for your good” (Love and Responsibility, pp
83-84).
When a “Man” Loves a Woman

What is marriage? Marriage is when a man loses his
“bachelors” and a woman earns hers “masters.” Joke.
It’s typical of the fallen world to measure
manhood in the capacity of the male to stay on top
(no pun intended), to dominate. In some cultures,
manhood is achieved when a boy makes his first
“hunt” in the forest. In the economic world, a man
41
must “make a killing” in the business world because

it’s a dog eat dog world out there, a rat race.
Sadly, the same violent mentality pervades our
understanding of sex and the male-female relationship.
Listen to our sexual vocabulary and the vulgar
designations given to the male sex organ: a “weapon,”
a “rod,” a “tool.”
When a guy fancies a girl, he says, “I want to bang
her.” I know of some fathers who initiated their sons
into “manhood” by their first sexual conquest. It is no
coincidence that most curse words are also words
associated to the sexual act. (I need not put them here
otherwise my work might get censored!)
Love is self-donation and the sincere gift of oneself.
But why do we have these “violent” and dominating
images for sex and the man-woman relationship
and consider them normal? I’d like to volunteer an
explanation. It is part of the symptoms of our “little
Jumbo syndrome” (see p. 9).
Love without the Spines

Have you ever seen a porcupine? Porcupines are
rodents with a coat of sharp spines, or quills, which
defend them from predators. In some species, the
whole body is covered by as much as 30,000 spines
that are poisonous. There is only one area where the
porcupine is vulnerable because of the absence of
spines — the genital area.
42
This says a lot. The porcupine cannot “love”

with its violent spines. The porcupine can only love
with its non-violent side. It can only “love” when it is
vulnerable. If this is true with porcupines, all the more
is it true with humans.
Our culture’s idea of a man is one who conquers,
one who dominates. This is why we cannot understand
St. Paul and his letter to the Ephesians. In that epistle, he
wrote something that may make women label him as a
male chauvinist. He said, “Wives should be subordinate
to their husbands as to the Lord…. As the church is
subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate
to their husbands in everything” (Ephesians 5:22-24).
If we interpret this call to submission with the world’s
vision of man as one who conquers and dominates,
then women are right in condemning St. Paul. But
what is the meaning of that submission?
Author Christopher West in his book Theology of
the Body for Beginners (p. 84) explains the meaning of
that submission. Wives are to put themselves under
(sub) the mission of their husbands. And what is that
mission? It is given in the next verse: “Husbands, love
your wives as Christ loved the Church” (v. 25). And how
did Christ love the Church? He died for her. Paul, in
effect, is saying, “Husbands, be ready to die for your
wives. Wives, allow your husbands to die for you.”
Counterfeit men would kill just to satisfy their lust.
Real men would rather die than to satisfy their lust.
43
When Jesus was presented to the angry mob bloodied

after being scourged, Pilate declared, “Behold, the
man” (John 19:5). Unknowingly, Pilate presented to us
God’s vision of what a man should be. For the biblical
man, love is self-donation for the sake of the other.
Lust, on the contrary, is self-indulgence at the expense
of another.
“Four” This Reason…

The Bible speaks of a love that drives man to become
one flesh with his wife: “For this reason, a man shall
leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife,
and the two shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).
We can identify four qualities of this love which
are characteristic of the love of Christ. Here I once
more refer to Christopher West’s Theology of the Body
for Beginners (p 91).
First, Christ’s love is free. John 10:18 says, “No
one takes my life from me; I lay it down of my own
accord.”
Second, it is total — until the end. “He loved them
to the last,” says John 13:1.
Third, it is faithful. Jesus said, “I am with you
always till the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20).
And, lastly, it is fruitful. “I came that they may
have life” (John 10:10).
If human love is to mirror the love of Christ, it has
to be free, total, faithful and fruitful.
44
Any couple who remembers their wedding day

will easily recognize that the free, total, faithful and
fruitful love of Christ is the very vow they committed
to in marriage. Standing at the altar before God, the
priest asks the bride and the groom, “Do you come
here freely (free) and without reservation (total) to give
yourselves to each other in marriage? Do you promise
to be faithful until death? Do you promise to receive
the children (fruitful) which God may give you in this
marriage?” To all of these the bride and groom say “I
do.”
The free, total, faithful and fruitful love of Christ
is what the body is called to proclaim in the sexual
encounter. With their bodies, husband and wife actualize
the meaning of their words, “I take you as my wife/as
my husband ” (see TOB, Jan. 5, 1983). The marital act
is a renewal of the meaning of the vows of marriage.
This is why the sexual act is fittingly called the marital
act. It’s not only something that men and women
do; it’s something that married people do — people
committed in free, total, faithful and fruitful love.
These four qualities stand as the key to interpreting
the honesty of all our sexual expressions.
Let’s Wait a While… Before We Go Too Far

I once presented this free, total, faithful and fruitful
love paradigm to a group of young adults. After the
presentation, one guy approached me. He wasn’t
45
confrontational but he wanted to know how this

concept stood with his desire to “go all the way” with
his girlfriend.
“I can’t wait, Father. Why do I have to?” he asked.
“If you cannot wait,” I replied, “what does that
say about your freedom? If you cannot say ‘no’ are you
really free? If you cannot say ‘no’ to sex, you are not
having sex, sex is having you. Even within marriage
itself, there are times when couples must say ‘no’ to
themselves and to others. But that doesn’t make them
any less loving. In fact, it makes them more.”
The young guy countered, “Well, you said love is
total. Sex is the fullest expression of love, right?”
I said, “Are you telling me she is the person you
want to spend the rest of your life with?”
“I’m only 17, Father,” he reasoned, “nobody is
talking about marriage here. We just met three months
ago.”
“Precisely, you have your life ahead of you,” I
continued. “You don’t even know if you’ll still be
together next year, or next month. So what are you doing
thinking about an act which is the ‘fullest’ expression
of love, which has a lifetime of consequences?”
“But I’m not seeing anyone else. At least I’m
faithful,” he replied.
“For now, yes, but after her, what (or who)? Do
you know that right now you are telling me that you
find nothing wrong in sex between people who just
46
met three months ago? What does that say about your
capacity for faithfulness?”
“Well it’s different once you’re married,” he
retorted.
“Don’t you see the contradiction?” I asked. “Right
now you’re telling me that you find nothing wrong
in having sex with someone who is not your wife
or who you’re not even considering to be your wife.
What makes you think that will change once you are
married?”
Honesty, not prohibition, is the essence of the
Christian sexual ethic.
To Chase or to Be Chaste
Chastity comes from the Latin castigare, that is, “to
castigate or to tame.” We need to tame our passions
and instincts not because they are bad but because, left
to themselves, they can bring us in the direction we do
not want to go.
Eating, for example, is good but without
temperance, we can fall into unhealthy eating habits
that may eventually ruin our health. The sexual instinct
is good, but of itself, it has the tendency to reduce the
other for my sexual satisfaction.
True love cannot grow without the virtue of
chastity. But what is chastity?
A man came home vowing to be renewed after
his Life in the Spirit Seminar. On the road, he saw his
47
former drinking buddies. He prayed hard, “Lord, cover

my eyes.” He passed right by them. A few meters after,
he saw his former gambling buddies. Summoning
strength, he prayed once again, “Lord, cover my
eyes.” He passed right by them. Then at the end of the
road, he saw a very beautiful woman. Without second
thoughts, he prayed, “Lord, cover Your eyes.”
Chastity is not just “covering our eyes“ or “looking
away.” I’m not saying that we can imprudently look at
what can be occasions of temptations. Yes, “looking
away” has a legitimate value. The Book of Sirach
teaches, “Avert your eyes from a comely woman; gaze
not upon the beauty of another’s wife” (Sirach 9:8). It’s
what we classically call custody of the eyes or avoiding
the possible occasions of temptation. But that is not
yet true chastity. John Paul II calls that a “negative
chastity.” We need to mature from that. Otherwise, we
will forever be looking away, looking at the ground
or looking at women’s foreheads instead of their eyes
(and not to mention looking at pornography when no
one is looking).
True chastity (“positive chastity”) requires the
transformation of the heart so that one may reach the
point when one can actually look and not be easily
swayed by the tendency to reduce the other into body
parts. This is what John Paul II means when he said
that chastity “frees love from the utilitarian attitude”
after a “sustained long term integration of sexual
48
values with the value of the person” (see Love and

Responsibility, pp. 170-71).
Continuing on, John Paul II writes that emotions,
feelings and physical attractions constitute the “raw
materials for love”(pp. 146 ff) but may not necessarily
mature into love. If not oriented properly, they may
even grow into its direct opposite — use.
The opposite of love is not hate but use. A man
who knows how to say all the right words and how
to push the right buttons doesn’t hate the women he
entices. He is using them. Chastity is that virtue that
integrates the raw materials of love with the dignity of
the person. That’s why chaste love is always faithful
and exclusive: its object is the person who is “unique
and unrepeatable.” When love reaches the person,
it is forever. Lust, on the contrary, has the qualities
of a person as its object. And because qualities are
repeatable and are found in varying degrees in many
other persons, it’s always drifting and unfaithful.
The battlefield of love and lust is in our hearts.
Chastity is not about loving less. It is about loving
more. We should not fall into the mistake of calling
lust as love. Unless we discover this, we will forever
be on a chase, missing out on what one chastity writer
called the real thrill of the chaste.
49
50
FIVE
The Redemption of Sexuality

“The one who lives...‘according to the flesh’… ceases to be capable of this
freedom for which ‘Christ has set us free’; he also ceases to be suitable for the
true gift of self…” (Pope John Paul II)
O ne of the first books I read in the seminary

was something I chose, not because I liked
it, but because I was intrigued by the title. It
was called Being Sexual and Celibate by Keith
Clark. I wondered how one could be sexual and, at the
same time, celibate. I finished reading the book but I
don’t think I really understood the message.
Today I am a professor in the same seminary. I
teach Moral Theology, Social Doctrines, Theological
Virtues, Bioethics, and Sexuality and Integrity.
51
I always get teased about that last course. Some

even ask what we need that for in the seminary. But
I understand the teasing and the curiosity. When we
hear the word sexuality, we immediately equate it with
sexology.
Let’s make some clarifications. Sexology is all
about the science of sex, the Big “O” and locating the
G-spot. Well, I am not a sexologist and the only G-spot
I know and propose to locate is the spot that God has
to have in human sexuality. That’s why it is taught in
seminaries — and everywhere else, I believe.
A Radical Understanding of Sexuality

Warning: I am going to make a radical definition of
sexuality here. “Radical” comes from the Latin radix
meaning “root.” So I will look at sexuality based on its
Latin roots. See why it is radical?
Sex comes from the Latin secare. It means “to
divide, to separate.” This is why we separate the sexes
according to male and female. But secare also means
“to cut, to wound, to sever.” Fittingly, human sexuality
can be understood as one’s willingness to be cut, to be
wounded, to sacrifice for the sake of one’s beloved.
Now this is not JP II. This is JOJ (those are my
initials if you don’t know). Could this be one of the
reasons why, in God’s covenant with Israel, the
wounded genital (i.e., circumcision) was the symbol
of the covenant?
52
Remember the terms of the covenant: “I will be

your God, and you will be my people” (Exodus 6:7)?
Could God be also telling His people, “If you want to
be my people, you have to love as I love — with a love
that is sacrificial?” The “wounded” genital therefore,
would be for the male, the physical reminder of his
readiness to be wounded for his beloved. For women,
the onset of womanhood is signaled by the shedding
of blood (menstruation). Besides the biological and
medical reason, could this be understood also as the
physical symbol reminding a woman that love will
hurt at times? That to love genuinely will sometimes
entail, figuratively and literally, the shedding of one’s
blood?
If we understand sexuality this way, being sexual
would cease to be confined to the level of genital
activity. That’s why Jesus is very much a sexual person.
That is why we speak of being sexual and celibate. Not
all of us are called to be genital in our loving but all of
us are called always to be sexual in our acts of loving
— genital or otherwise.
Close Encounters of the “Sexual” Kind

I was in an immersion seminar on the Theology of the
Body in Quarryville, Pennsylvania, USA. A Franciscan
brother who lives in the Bronx in New York shared
this story. I took the liberty of changing some details.
He was driving and it was raining hard and so
53
he stopped by the side of the street. From nowhere, a

woman jumped into his car. She was beautiful, wet,
scantily clad and smiling at him. He knew right there
and then what she was doing for a living.
He smiled back, reached to the back of his truck
and handed the woman a jacket. He said, “You’re wet.
You’ll need this. I’m Bro. Charles.”
“Oh my God, I’m sorry. I didn’t know…” The
woman wanted to leave.
“It’s OK. You didn’t know. Here’s an orange. And
keep the jacket,” said the brother.
Touched by the gesture, the woman said, “You’re
a kind man,” and, after a rather long pause, she added,
“You know, I would do you for free.”
We all laughed when we heard the punch line.
Except that it wasn’t a punch line of a joke. It was a
real story.
I Don’t Know How to Love Him

John Paul II spoke of the so-called “masters of
suspicion” (see TOB, Oct. 29, 1980). These are people
afflicted with the little Jumbo syndrome. They are
suspicious that a pure encounter between man and
woman is possible. They cast suspicion on the capacity
of the human heart to long for and bestow love that
goes beyond the physical. They are those where lust
holds sway in their hearts and so they project the same
onto everyone else.
54
Why do we have the likes of Dan Brown of The Da

Vinci Code who think that the man-Jesus is too good to
be true? “Jesus must have something going on with the
women he encountered in the Gospels,” they suspect.
They don’t know any better.
Going back to our story, I don’t think the woman
with Bro. Charles was trying to be vulgar or insulting.
Maybe she was serious and sincere. Maybe she simply
didn’t know any better. Poisoned by her trade and the
men who patronize her, maybe that was the only thing
she knew that men wanted from women. Maybe that
was the only thing she knew that women could offer
men.
In the Scriptures, there’s a similar story of a
woman named Mary of Magdala. She has “loved”
countless men. She was a professional in the trade. As
a Broadway song about her goes, “I’ve had so many
men before, in very many ways. He’s just one more.”
But Jesus was different. He offered her something
unlike the others and He wanted something else
from her. He was not “just one more” man. After her
encounter with Jesus, the pro — all of a sudden — was
an amateur. She was singing a different tune: “I’ve
been changed, yes really changed… I don’t know how
to love him.”
Didn’t she really know how to love him, or was it
the first time that she encountered true love and was
invited to truly love?
55
Like Mary and the woman with Bro. Charles, their

experiences of love have been the grabbing kind of
love. Their later encounters with genuine lovers were
a welcome invitation for them to love again, or maybe,
for the first time.
56
SIX
The Humanness of Love and Sexuality

Man is called “to be the authentic master of his own innermost impulses, like
a watchman who watches over a hidden spring, and… draw from all these
impulses what is fitting for ‘purity of heart.’”
(Pope John Paul II)
I
n the Genesis story of creation, a constant
biblical refrain that accompanies each and
every completed creative act of God is the
affirmation, “God looked at what He has
created and it was good” (see Genesis 1:4, 10,
12, 18, 21, 25). But after the sixth day was completed,
after God created male and female in his image and
likeness, He looked at what He had created “and it
was very good” (see Genesis 1:31). Creation was no
longer just good. It was very good.
Some argue that “very good” referred to all of
creation and not exclusively to the male and female.
57
Could be, but it’s unlikely. The first five days had
their own refrain: “Good.” Whether it was to all of
creation or exclusively to the male and female, no one
can argue that it was only after the appearance of male
and female that creation was rendered “very good.”
They must have something uniquely theirs to make the
world qualitatively better. They must be special. They
are. They are human persons. They are alone (original
solitude) in the world as persons, as image of God.
Girls Gone Wild

One early morning I was browsing the internet and I
stumbled upon this news article entitled “UK woman
Sharon marries Cindy.”
“Another point for the same-sex union activists,”
I said to myself. Until I read the rest of the article to
discover that it was a different kind of same-sex union.
Cindy was a female… dolphin.
I’m not making this up. Google it and you will
find the article complete with photos of British woman
Sharon Tendler in her white wedding gown, vowing,
“This is not a perversion. I simply love her. I’m a one-
dolphin woman.”
This could be the ultimate edition of Girls Gone
Wild.
There are several things that humans share with
the rest of the animal kingdom. One of them is the
instinct of self-preservation. Like the animals, we feel
58
the need to eat in order to keep ourselves in existence.

When life is threatened, we naturally defend ourselves.
We also have the instinct of self-propagation, the
longing to keep the human race in existence. But
there is something we humans uniquely have. It is the
capacity for self-reflection and self-consciousness. Why
do animals charge at their own image in the mirror?
Because they do not recognize themselves. They
simply see an image that they suppose to be another.
It’s different with the human person. He has an inner
world, a world of values by which he interprets the
visible world and casts meaning upon it.
Because we have the power of self-reflection, we
regulate our instincts by reason, not by season. Take
the instinct of self-preservation. When it’s time for
the animals to eat, they eat. You will never see a dog
giving up a bone for Lent. Animals don’t fast, not
because they’re anti-religion. They don’t fast simply
because they don’t have the capacity to go beyond
their instincts. Only humans have the capacity to fast.
When it’s time for the animals to mate, they do it.
We don’t really call mating in the animal
kingdom as sex. As we have seen in the preceding
chapter, sex is a special kind of term. Mating in the
animal kingdom is properly called copulation, because
they “couple” in response to an instinct. I don’t think
animals consciously mate thinking, “What we are
doing right now will have an adverse effect on the
59
demographic balance of our species,” or “We have to

do this otherwise we will vanish into extinction.”
Mating in the human world (besides “sex”) is called
sexual intercourse. Intercourse means communication.
It is a communication of a sexual nature. This gives
sex its humanness, its human character. In the usual
course of things, only humans naturally unite face to
face. (That’s why Natural Family Planning, the most
scientifically accurate way of planning the family, is
most compatible to our human practice of sexuality
because the main character of NFP is shared responsibility
and communication between couples.)
No wonder Scriptures call the marital act an act of
knowledge. The older versions of the Bible have Genesis
4:1 saying, “And Adam knew his wife Eve. And she
had a son and bore Cain.” In the New Testament, older
versions of the Bible also have Mary saying, “How can
this be since I do not know man?” (Luke 1:34).
The marital act is not a response to an instinct. It is
a response to a person. When animals feel the instinct
to mate, they mate. For us, humans, if it is not the
opportune time, we wait. Or do we really?
When Mammals Rule the World

Want to hear some rap? Here’s a sample.
“You and me, baby, we ain’t nothin’ but mammals;

So let’s do it like they do in Discovery Channel.”
60
This is from a song by a group named Bloodhound

Gang. If we’re looking for poster boys of the little
Jumbo syndrome, they’re it. They have sold over five
million records. Their songs could be in the iPods of
your kids right now.
Read the title of some of their other songs: A Lap
Dance Is Better When the Stripper Is Crying. Are you
shocked? It gets worse: I Hope You Die, Kiss Me Where
It Smells Funny, I Wish I Was Queer So I Could Get Chicks,
Screwing You on the Beach at Night.
Oh the wounds of our little Jumbo syndrome.
They have gone very deep.
If it’s true that “we ain’t nothin’ but mammals,” I’m not
surprised that women would rather marry a dolphin these
days. There’s a great crisis of manhood and womanhood
in our times. As they say, “Girls rule, men drool.”
But there is hope in the transforming power of the
Gospels. We need not fear the words of Jesus against
lust or adultery in the heart (see Matthew 5:27-28).
John Paul II encourages, “Are we to fear the severity
of these words or… have confidence in their salvific…
power?” (TOB, Oct. 8, 1980).
Jesus will not call us to do something we are
not capable of. His call reminds us of the “interior
possibilities” of the human heart. We are not “accused”
or “condemned” by the words of Jesus. We are rather
“called.” We only have to get out of our “suspicions” on
our capacities and believe and reclaim our humanity.
61
I Want to Break Free

One time my brother visited me with my nephews and
niece. Instinctively, my little nephew ran across the
room and headed to my guitar. With much gusto he
strummed it, or more like banged against the strings,
and produced the noisiest heavy metal music I’ve
heard in my life.
He was very sincere, spontaneous, free. But he
was also noisy.
When I take hold of that guitar, I can also be sincere,
spontaneous and free. But I don’t produce noise. I can
play beautiful music. What is the difference between
my nephew’s spontaneity and mine?
My nephew’s is a reckless spontaneity. Mine is a
disciplined spontaneity. Reckless spontaneity is sincere
but without direction. It is spontaneity without
boundaries. It is energy spent for one’s own pleasure.
That’s why it produces noise, chaos and pain (in the
ears).
Disciplined spontaneity is just as sincere but
purpose-driven. I want to produce music and not just
strum away at the strings. Disciplined spontaneity is
comfortable with boundaries. I had to endure years
of learning the chords. I had to train my fingers
coordination and rhythm despite initial pain and
blisters. Disciplined spontaneity is energy spent for
another’s pleasure. My pleasure derives from the
listening pleasure of my hearers.
62
Reckless spontaneity degrades our passions (eros)

to lust. Disciplined spontaneity elevates our passions
(eros) into genuine love (agape).
Pope Benedict XVI also developed this well in
his latest encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God is Love).
The reason why we are “suspicious” of the words of
the Gospel is because we fear that God’s words will
take away the spontaneity of our passions. That’s the
farthest from the truth. We think of God as a killjoy. If
we open ourselves to the invitation of the Gospel and
believe in the interior possibilities of the human heart,
we will discover that God will not delete our passions.
He will complete them.
Jesus assures us, “I have told you this (his
commandments) so that my joy may be in you and your
joy may be complete”(John 15:11, emphasis added).
When that happens, we will finally let go of our
biscuits and crackers and feast on the buffet banquet
available for us from the very beginning (remember
Johnny in p. 19?).
When the Saints Come Knocking In

If I reach a checkpoint and see a sign saying, “Stop:
Train Approaching,” am I free to move forward?
Yes, but maybe not for long, when I get run over and
become a corpse.
Sometimes we think we are free when we can
barge in without meeting any resistance. That is not
63
freedom, that is license. Could this explain why people

behind the wheel create their own traffic rules since
they have their driver’s license?
License is doing what you want, whenever,
wherever and with whomever. Freedom is doing what
one ought to do.
Is a pilot free to ignore his coordinates? Is the train
free to break away from the railroad tracks? A pilot’s
freedom is in his coordinates. A train’s freedom is in
its tracks. Freedom is the power to do what one ought
to do.
In an undelivered address, John Paul II expounded
on a section in The Song of Songs. It has something
interesting to teach us about the exercise of freedom
in the area of human sexuality. Warning: the following
image could be sensitive. But then again, to the pure,
everything is pure. To the impure, nothing is pure (see
Titus 1:15).
The lover says to his beloved, “You are an enclosed
garden, my sister, my bride, an enclosed garden, a
fountain sealed” (Songs 4:12). The image of “a garden
closed, a fountain sealed” speaks of the freedom
inherent in both the female and the male.
Because she is “a garden closed, a fountain
sealed,” the biblical woman is one who is “a master of
her own mystery” (TOB, p 568 ff). Woman is not weak
and gullible as our culture presents her to be. She holds
the key to her own mystery. She is not easily enticed,
64
swayed or duped by chocolates, romantic dinners and

threats of abandonment or peer pressure.
She keeps her mystery. She does not crave undue
attention for “my hump, my hump, my hump.” Our
culture calls it “girl power” or “confidence in one’s
body.” “Girls rule, men drool,” we often hear it said.
But for real men, a woman who flaunts what she has
looks more like she’s begging, craving, crying for
attention.
The biblical man is one who respects a woman’s
mystery. He doesn’t barge in or abuse his strength
because the woman holds the key. At most he could
only “knock.” He joyfully waits. And he does not
frown if the garden remains closed. He has no secret
agenda to get the doors open beyond the woman’s
wishes. He respects the “inviolability of her person”
(TOB, undelivered, p. 548ff). And because he respects
“the inviolability of her person,” he will not take
advantage even if the woman becomes careless with
the key.
To the women reading this, if your boyfriend tells
you that tired, old, cliché, ”If you love me, you will do
this,” he’s not the man you would want to stay with.
Avoid him like a plague. That guy has a little Jumbo
syndrome (no pun intended).
65
66
SEVEN
The Life-Giving and Love-Giving

Significance of Sexuality
The marital consent that “binds the spouses to each other finds its fulfillment in
the two ‘becoming one flesh.’”
(Catechism of the Catholic Church §1627)
H
ere are some figures regarding the
state of world populations taken from
the most recent UN World Population
Prospects 2006 Revision report.*
1. In Europe as a whole, the percentage of the

aged outnumbers the youth by 20.6% vs 5% of
the whole population.
2. In France, the ratio of the old against the youth
is 20.8% vs. 6.3%.
3. In Germany, it’s 25.1% vs. 4.4%.
4. In Italy, it’s 25.3% vs. 4.6%.
5. In Asia, particularly in Japan, it is 26.4% vs. 4.5%.
*Source: http://esa.un.org/unpp/
67
The Life-Giving and Love-Giving Significance of Sexuality
All of the countries above have a negative

population growth prospect in the period 2005 to 2010
and their Total Fertility Rate is just a little over 1, which
is way below the 2.1 accepted birth replacement rate.
What can we learn from these numbers? That the
world is not really overpopulated. It is mis-populated.
From the data above, it is clear that in years to come,
these countries whose birth rate is way below the
accepted replacement level will be in danger of collapse
and eventual extinction. There will simply be no more
young people who will replace the aging population.
Fertility in these countries is no longer appreciated
as a gift and a blessing. Many factors explain this:
the culture of death promoted by the contraceptive
mentality; the misguided feminism that sees
motherhood and pregnancy as a hindrance to women’s
place in society; and the same-sex union advocates
that long to alter the natural character of marriage as
the union of one man and one woman open to the gift
of parenthood.
You’ve Got Male… and Female

In the book of Genesis we read, “God created man in
his image; in the divine image he created him; male and
female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). Have you ever
wondered why the Genesis author used “male” and
“female”? He could have used “man” and “woman”
or their proper names Adam and Eve. Is this simply a
68
random linguistic choice or is there a theological point

being raised? I believe it is the latter.
“Male” and “female” are special terms with
specific meanings. First of all, they point to the physical
difference which distinguishes one sex from another.
When we fill up application forms and see the item
sex, we do not put “man” or “woman.” We put either
“male” or “female” to emphasize the physical sexual
distinction.
Why is there a need to emphasize the physical
sexual difference in Genesis 1:27? The reason can be
seen in the next verse. In Genesis 1:28, it reads, “God
blessed them, saying: ‘Be fertile and multiply; fill the
earth and subdue it.’” The physical sexual difference is
emphasized to highlight the purpose of that difference
— the ability to procreate. This is the life-giving or
procreative significance of the marital act.
The Primal Blessing

Genesis 1:28 does not only emphasize the ability to
procreate. It also emphasizes the blessing of fertility.
“God blessed them… be fertile.”
Fertility was the first thing on earth that God
Himself blessed. Fertility is part of the plan of God.
It is not an unfortunate thing that God “overlooked”
when he created male and female. When a woman
gets pregnant, it doesn’t mean “something went
wrong.” Something is right because it means your
69
body is functioning properly. What is “wrong” is how

we used what is originally and inherently right. Sin is
not only about committing something wrong. Sin is
also using something that is inherently good and holy
in a wrong way.
Do the countries above experience or value
fertility as a blessing? Notice that these are countries
and people who can well afford to take care and
nourish new human lives. The wounds of the culture
of death have cut deep.
We are not advocating mindless and irresponsible
procreation. That has never been the Church’s teaching.
What the Church teaches is “openness to the possibility
of parenthood” (see Love and Responsibility, p. 227, also
Humanae Vitae §12, §14 and Familiaris Consortio § 32).
Openness to the possibility of parenthood means
regulating the number of children in a way that is
not a direct attack on the gift of life. Natural Family
Planning (NFP), the most scientifically accurate way
of regulating the number of children, satisfies this.
Contraception cannot claim the same.
8
There are many areas to cover to show how NFP is morally and essentially different
and better than contraception. But that is not the main thrust of this book. Perhaps
that would be the subject of another book.
70
He’s Leaving Home

In Genesis 2:24 we read, “For this reason, a man shall
leave father and mother and cling to his wife, and the
two shall become one flesh.” Now the “male” becomes
“man” and “female” becomes “wife.”
“Man” and “wife” are special terms. They connote
relationship, fidelity and commitment. This is the
love-giving or unitive significance of the marital act.
The “male” becomes a “man” because only a man is
capable of sacrifice (“…a man shall leave father and
mother…”). Only a man can be committed, faithful and
true to his word (“…a man… clings to his wife…shall
become one flesh”). We never call an oath “a male’s
word.” We call it “a gentleman’s word.”
“Man” expresses the need to complement male-
ness with manhood. “Wife” expresses the need to
complement femaleness with womanhood. In concrete
terms, every “male” with a genital can become a father.
But it takes a man to be a spiritual father. Every female
can become a mother but only a dedicated wife can
become a spiritual mother.
St. Joseph is considered the patron saint of all
fathers. We know that he was not the biological father
of Jesus. But knowing of his sacrifice for Mary and
Jesus, he was more father than any other biological
father of his time.
71
This is the essence of the apostolic letter

Redemptoris Custos, The Custodian of the Redeemer
(from the Latin redemptoris, meaning “redeemer” and
custos, meaning “custodian”). John Paul II proposed
that Joseph was specially chosen by God for a no less
important mission. Sometimes because of the scarcity
of Joseph’s biblical appearances we think that he was
called by God only to complete the figures of our
Nativity sets.
Joseph’s special vocation was to witness to the
call to spiritual fatherhood. Joseph’s special vocation
was to witness to the call to spiritual fruitfulness.
72
EIGHT
With This Body, I Thee Wed:

The Significance of the Body
“It is the body itself that ‘speaks’; it speaks with its masculinity or femininity,
it speaks with the mysterious language of the personal gift.”
(Pope John Paul II)
W hen John Paul II became Pope, one of

the significant changes he made in the
world famous Sistine Chapel is to have
the fig leaves, which some prudish
cardinals ordered painted over the private parts of
Michelangelo’s nudes, removed. Afterwards he re-
dedicated the Sistine Chapel and called it the Shrine
of the Theology of the Body.
As we have been developing throughout this
book, the body is not only biology. It is a theology. Man
does not only have a body, he is a body. Everything
man does with his body involves a whole network
73
With This Body, I Thee Wed: The Significance of the Body
of meanings: physical, psychological, emotional and

spiritual. Consequently, sex is not only a matter of
anatomy. It is a matter of theology.
Brother-Husband, Sister-Wife
As a young priest, I once was talking to a parishioner
when his wife arrived. The way he introduced his wife
left a deep impression on me. “Father, meet my sister-
wife,” he said. Both of them were members of a world-
wide ecclesial community for wedded couples.
“Sister-wife, brother-husband.” I wasn’t used to
hearing that until I discovered through John Paul II
that it is very biblical. A quote from the Song of Songs
goes, “You have ravished my heart, my sister, my
bride, you have ravished my heart with one glance of
your eyes…. How sweet is your love, my sister, my
bride!” (Song 4:9-10).
When we see “sister” and “brother” attached to
“wife” and “husband,” we see incest. But John Paul II,
the mystic that he was, saw a “particular eloquence”
in the sequence of the lover calling his beloved “sister”
before calling her “bride” (see TOB, undelivered,
p. 558 ff).
The term “sister” indicates deep friendship and
kinship. It indicates the recognition that the one before
me shares the same humanity with me. We belong to
the same father (in heaven) and I have nothing but
74
respect for her. It is unthinkable for one to consider

“using” or “lusting” after his sister. “Bride” connotes
someone for whom I am passionate, someone with
whom I consummate my love.
Recognizing a woman as my “sister” before she is
my “bride” eradicates the possibility of my passion for
her degenerating into lust. On the contrary, “sister”
propels my passion into the heights of genuine love
(agape). Seeing one as sister enables a man to love the
woman with what John Paul II calls “a disinterested
tenderness” (TOB, p. 566). Disinterested doesn’t mean
he has no passionate interest in his bride. It means he
longs to promote her interests without ulterior selfish
motives. This recognition of the woman as sister must
accompany the recognition of the woman as bride.
All these are true not only for the man but also for
the woman. Note that in Songs 8:4, the bride responds
by calling the bridegroom “my brother.” And this was
so from the very beginning. How do we know?
Isn’t this the same with the experience of Adam
with his bride Eve? How did he first acknowledge her?
When he saw her body, he recognized her as “bone of
bones, and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23). They share
the same humanity. They both originated from the
same Creator. Adam beheld Eve with a “disinterested
tenderness.” Adam saw Eve as a person expressed
through a body and not simply a body of a person.
75
With This Body, I Thee Wed: The Significance of the Body
Only after that acknowledgment was Eve given to

Adam as a bride, “and the two of them shall become
one flesh… man and wife” (see Genesis 2:24-25).
I believe it’s important to recognize a woman as
sister first and then as bride because when the fires
of passion ebb, the woman “ceases” to be a bride (in
terms of passionate intensity) and she becomes a sister,
a friend.
I have never been married but I have enough
common sense to understand what lay preacher Bo
Sanchez wrote in his book: “I found out that in my
marriage, my wife and I are sexual partners less than
1% of the time… but you’re supposed to be friends
99% of the time”(How to Find Your One True Love,
p. 76).
When your wife’s waistline evolves from 24 inches
to 42, the excitement of “bridehood” will wane. When
the knight in shining armor you married “shines”
only because of baldness, the embers of passion die
out. Then he becomes a brother, a friend. “Sisterhood,”
“brotherhood” brings stability to the fleeting nature of
“bridehood.”
“My sister, my bride” is Scriptures’ way of
telling us that the best preparation for marriage is a
chaste friendship. When one builds a house or any
structure, one begins with the foundation, that part of
the house which will and must last. It’s the same in
our relationships. If courtship and going steady are in
76
view of a possible preparation for marriage, then we

have to build on that which will outlive the fleeting
nature of passion.
In our “hook-up” world, where dating is almost
synonymous with sexual experimentation, we have
become sexual experts but relational idiots. “My
sister, my bride” is an invitation to take the first step
to making that great paradigm shift.
A bride excites the emotions. A sister captures the
heart.
“You have ravished my heart, my sister, my
bride.”
77
78
Concluding Words
I
n one Catholic parochial school, two boys
were brought to the principal’s office
suspected of stealing items from the school
bookstore. The guidance counselor, who
also happened to be the Religion teacher of
the boys, was also called.
Disappointed, the teacher said to the principal,
“I can’t believe it. They’re very good in my Religion
class….”
Then sounding defensive and wishing to exonerate
the boys, he added, “Just to prove to you, I’ll ask them
a simple religion question.”
79
Concluding Words
Then he turned to the boys and asked, “Where is

God?”
One of the boys turned to the other and whispered,
“We’re in big trouble. God is missing and they think
we’re the ones who took Him.”
Poor boys, they felt accused of something they
were not capable of doing.
If you saw yourself anywhere in this book, I
hope you don’t feel accused. Rather, I hope you feel
challenged and called.
The Christian life is positive and the call of Jesus
liberating. The message of the Gospel explained
by the Holy Father’s Theology of the Body is indeed
bold but it is not something we are not capable of.
Christ’s words on the Sermon on the Mount are not
words of accusation but invitation. Christ does not
call us to something beyond our capacity. We only
need to restore confidence in our humanity and the
empowering invitation of the words of Christ and His
Gospel.
In the Theology of the Body, a morally good action
is not only one in which man pursues something
good. A morally good act is an act where man pursues
something truthfully good, and he pursues it in a
truthful, honest and good way. A truly good moral act
is one where there is an integration of purpose and
action. The body, in its actions, is indispensable in such
integration. The most common error of our times lies
80
in our pursuance of the good in a false and evil way.

The body is not a value-free, value-neutral reality
that man disposes of instrumentally. Today, there
is a difficulty in grasping this. Perhaps owing to the
advancement of technology, by which man can utilize
things for his purpose with such ease, the body too is
seen as a raw material, manipulable according to man’s
whims and caprices. In his Theology of the Body, John
Paul is proposing that if men and women would resist
this tendency, and recover once more a true sense of
their worth as embodied persons, as male and female,
then they would also be able to see more the beauty
of their vocation to love in a new and grander light.
Perhaps, they would also discover that the Church is
actually one with them all along in all the things their
hearts hold dear.
In just several pages, I’ve attempted to share the
glorious message of the Theology of the Body. I must
admit, I barely scratched the surface here and, in that
light, I still feel I have not given justice to John Paul
II’s message.
Quite literally, a groundswell of interest is
currently brewing among theologians and lay people
alike regarding this theology. Papal biographer
George Weigel in his book on Pope John Paul II,
Witness to Hope, calls the Theology of the Body as “one
of the boldest reconfigurations of Catholic theology in
centuries… a kind of theological time bomb set to go
81
Concluding Words
off with dramatic consequences… perhaps in the 21st

century.” When that bomb finally explodes, I hope to
draw satisfaction from the knowledge that this book
would have contributed a little to set it off.
So if your interest on the Theology of the Body was
aroused (I’m getting very “bodily” in my vocabulary
now) in any way, please take hold of many other
resources much more comprehensive than what I’ve
done here. Or, wait for my next book. (God help me.)
Now, let me end with how I started this book.
What comes to your mind when you hear the
words man, woman, male, female, sex, sexuality, body,
love? Don’t keep the answers to yourself. Share it. Live
the theology of your body.
82
Some Theology of the Body Resources
John Paul II. Man and Woman He Created Them: A

Theology of the Body, Michael Waldstein, trans., Boston,
MA: Pauline Books and Media, 2006.
Wojtyla, Karol. Love and Responsibility, H.T. Willets,

trans., San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993.
West, Christopher. Theology of the Body for Beginners: A

Basic Introduction to Pope John Paul II’s Sexual Revolution,
Pennsylvania: Ascension Press, 2004.
West, Christopher. Theology of the Body Explained:

A Commentary on John Paul II’s “Gospel of the Body,”
Boston, MA: Pauline Books and Media, 2003.
83
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To Gaudencio Cardinal B. Rosales, D.D., the Father
of the Archdiocese of Manila, for his solicitous support and
encouragement.
To Fr. Regie Malicdem, private secretary to the

Archbishop of Manila, for the patience and accommodation
of my many requests.
To Fr. Ramil R. Marcos, my friend and classmate, for

the editing work and the inspiration.
To Ms. Maricor de Villa and Ms. Bernadette Abrera,

for the additional editing work for the second printing of
this book.
To Auntie Molly and Betty, for everything.
To my staff at the Family Life Ministry: Rene, Lily,

Francis, Marilyn and all our vicariate coordinators and co-
workers in the archdiocese.
To Sem. Ser Allan G. Bodoraya, for his talent, creativity

and generosity and for the new layout.
To Ms. Virgie Dinglasa, for the follow up of the many

documentary requirements.
84
To my library staff: Kuya Pete Diaz, Jr., Rey Cruz,

Cesar Aguillon and Arniel Velasco.
It would be nice to know how this work has helped
you in any way. Please send your comments to:
Rev. Fr. Joel O. Jason

San Carlos Seminary
EDSA, Guadalupe Viejo, Makati City 1200,
Philippines
(63 2) 8958855; fax (63 2) 8909563
frajoel@mydestiny.net
Ministry for Family and Life

LAYFORCE, San Carlos Pastoral Formation
Complex
EDSA, Guadalupe Viejo, Makati City 1200,
Philippines
(63 2) 8906187; 8958855 loc 306
telefax: (63 2) 8960584
familyandlifeministry@yahoo.com
85

Free Love True Love

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Free Love True Love

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Free Love, True Love

Free Love, True Love

Theology of the Body

FR. JOEL O. JASON

Free Love, True Love: Rediscovering Love and Intimacy

Philippine Copyright by Fr. Joel O. Jason

For information and inquiries, pls. contact:

Requests for information should be addressed to:

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

Cover Design by Rey P. de Guzman

This book is dedicated to

my late father, Panfilo and my mother, Ligaya,

FREE LOVE, TRUE LOVE

One: Laying the Foundation:

reflect the image of God and that the human body is

In this book, Fr. Jason presents, in a clear and lively

We live in a world where there seems to be a strong

+ GAUDENCIO B. CARDINAL ROSALES

priests choose celibacy because love doesn’t attract us

And as for love, it’s always the ever sublime, “Love

So came the homily. The priest looked intently

No wonder we are confused. No wonder we smile

Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the

Fr. Joel O. Jason, SThL

Laying the Foundations:

couple was celebrating their 50th wedding

The priest asks, “So why didn’t you murder your

Christian, recognize your dignity and, now that

The Need for a New Ethos for Sexuality

(ethics) but from the interior attraction of the heart. John

The new ethos is a “living morality,” in

Look at the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-

St. Paul in his letter to the Romans is not proposing

“I’m Only Human, Born to Make Mistakes”

about what a Christian does will therefore depend on

The Need for an Adequate Vision of Man

totally destroyed God’s original plan. This means if

captive. Finally, after countless tries, the baby elephant

forever be in chains, fastened by flimsy ropes. We will

The Need for an Adequate Vision of the Body

Look at the human person as a pure matter and

The Great Sacrament:

Y ears ago, I was blessing the house of a friend.

I have a confession to make. (I hope they’re not

Let’s Get Physical

Let’s Get Metaphysical

The quote from the Catechism above calls it an

as “a great mystery.” St. Paul, speaking of marriage,

But just as we can speak the truth with our bodies,

When an Icon Turns into an Idol

who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of

G.K. Chesterton was known to have said once

The Original Experiences

friend of mine sent me an anonymous anecdote

Mom taught me about... ANTICIPATION.

“What were you thinking? Answer me when I talk

You can’t miss the writer’s wit and sense of humor.

your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives,

THE EXPERIENCE OF ORIGINAL SOLITUDE

Original solitude is humanity’s realization of his

To Love Somebody… Not Some Body

THE EXPERIENCE OF ORIGINAL UNITY

conversations, he treasured reading the papers. One