GENERAL AUDIENCE OF 13 FEBRUARYDuring the General Audience of
13 February the Holy Father delivered the following address in Paul VI
Hall.
1. Today's meditation presupposes what has already been established by
the various analyses made up to now. They sprang from the answer Jesus
gave to his interlocutors (cf. Mt 19:3-9; Mk 10:1-12). They had asked him
a question about the indissolubility and unity of marriage. The Master had
urged them to consider carefully that which was "from the beginning." For
this reason, so far in this series of meditations we have tried to
reproduce somehow the reality of the union, or rather of the communion of
persons, lived "from the beginning" by the man and the woman.
Subsequently, we tried to penetrate the content of Genesis 2:25, which is
so concise: "And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not
ashamed."
These words refer to the gift of original innocence, revealing its
character synthetically, so to speak. On this basis, theology has
constructed the global image of man's original innocence and justice,
prior to original sin, by applying the method of objectivization, proper
to metaphysics and metaphysical anthropology. In this analysis we are
trying rather to consider the aspect of human subjectivity. The latter,
moreover, seems to be closer to the original texts, especially the second
narrative of creation, the Yahwist text.
2. Apart from a certain diversity of interpretation, it seems quite
clear that "the experience of the body," such as it can be inferred from
the ancient text of Genesis 2:23 and even more from Genesis 2:25,
indicates a degree of "spiritualization" of man. This is different from
that which the same text speaks of after original sin (cf. Gn 3) and which
we know from the experience of historical man. It is a different measure
of "spiritualization." It involves another composition of the interior
forces of man himself. It involves almost another body-soul relationship,
and other inner proportions between sensitivity, spirituality and
affectivity, that is, another degree of interior sensitiveness to the
gifts of the Holy Spirit. All this conditions man's state of original
innocence and at the same time determines it, permitting us also to
understand the narrative of Genesis. Theology and also the Magisterium of
the Church have given these fundamental truths a specific form.(1)
Permanent roots of "ethos" of the body
3. Undertaking the analysis of the beginning according to the dimension
of the theology of the body, we do so on the basis of Christ's words in
which he himself referred to that "beginning." When he said: "Have you not
read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female?"
(Mt 19:4), he ordered us and he still orders us to return to the depths of
the mystery of creation. We do so, fully aware of the gift of original
innocence, characteristic of man before original sin. An insuperable
barrier divides us from what man then was as male and female, by means of
the gift of grace united with the mystery of creation, and from what they
both were for each other, as a mutual gift. Yet we try to understand that
state of original innocence in its connection with man's historical state
after original sin: "status naturae lapsae simul et redemptae."
Through the category of the historical a posteriori, we try to
arrive at the original meaning of the body. We try to grasp the connection
existing between it and the nature of original innocence in the
"experience of the body," as it is highlighted in such a significant way
in the Genesis narrative. We conclude that it is important and essential
to define this connection, not only with regard to man's "theological
prehistory," in which the life of the couple was almost completely
permeated by the grace of original innocence. We must also define this
connection in relation to its possibility of revealing to us the permanent
roots of the human and especially the theological aspect of the ethos
of the body.
Ethically conditioned
4. Man enters the world and enters the most intimate pattern of his
future and his history with awareness of the nuptial meaning of his own
body, of his own masculinity and femininity. Original innocence says that
that meaning is conditioned "ethically," and furthermore, that on its
part, it constitutes the future of the human ethos. This is very
important for the theology of the body. It is the reason why we must
construct this theology "from the beginning," carefully following the
indication of Christ's words.
In the mystery of creation, man and woman were "given" in a special way
to each other by the Creator. That was not only in the dimension of that
first human couple and of that first communion of persons, but in the
whole perspective of the existence of the human family. The fundamental
fact of human existence at every stage of its history is that God "created
them male and female." He always creates them in this way and they are
always such. Understanding of the fundamental meanings contained in the
mystery of creation, such as the nuptial meaning of the body (and of the
fundamental conditionings of this meaning), is important. It is
indispensable in order to know who man is and who he should be, and
therefore how he should mold his own activity. It is an essential and
important thing for the future of the human ethos.
5. Genesis 2:24 notes that the two, man and woman, were created for
marriage: "Therefore, a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves
to his wife, and they become one flesh." In this way a great creative
perspective is opened. It is precisely the perspective of man's existence,
which is continually renewed by means of procreation, or, we could say,
self-reproduction.
This perspective is deeply rooted in the consciousness of humanity (cf.
Gn 2:23) and also in the particular consciousness of the nuptial meaning
of the body (Gn 2:25). Before becoming husband and wife (later Gn 4:1
speaks of this in the concrete), the man and the woman emerge from the
mystery of creation in the first place as brother and sister in the same
humanity. Understanding the nuptial meaning of the body in its masculinity
and femininity reveals the depths of their freedom, which is freedom of
giving.
From here that communion of persons begins, in which both meet and give
themselves to each other in the fullness of their subjectivity. Thus both
grow as persons-subjects. They grow mutually one for the other also
through their body and through that nakedness free of shame. In this
communion of persons the whole depth of the original solitude of man (of
the first one and of all) is perfectly ensured. At the same time, this
solitude becomes in a marvelous way permeated and broadened by the gift of
the "other." If the man and the woman cease to be a disinterested gift for
each other, as they were in the mystery of creation, then they recognize
that "they are naked" (cf. Gn 3). Then the shame of that nakedness, which
they had not felt in the state of original innocence, will spring up in
their hearts.
Original innocence manifests and at the same time constitutes the
perfect ethos of the gift.
NOTES
1. "If one should not acknowledge that the first man Adam, on
transgressing God's command in paradise, did not immediately lose the
holiness and justice in which he had been constituted...let him be
anathema" (Council of Trent, Sess. V, con. 1, 2: D.B. 788, 789).
The first parents had been constituted in a state of holiness and
justice.... The state of original justice conferred on the first parents
was gratuitous and truly supernatural.... The first parents were
constituted in a state of integral nature, i.e., immune from
concupiscence, ignorance, pain and death...and they enjoyed a unique
happiness.... The gifts of integrity granted to the first parents were
gratuitous and preternatural (A. Tanquerey, Synopsis Theologiae
Dogmaticae [Paris: 1943], 24 pp. 545-549).
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