THE BODY RESPECTS THE GOD’S IMAGE

There is one fundamental fact about us, that we are bodily persons.

Understanding of the human person has often been distorted. Some have rejected the nature of the body of
the human person, seeing it like a machine the human spirit runs. Others have denied the spiritual essence of
the human person, emphasizing only his/her bodily nature. Against this dualistic view of the human person,
the Bible makes it clear that the human person is an embodied spirit. He/she has body and soul, not one
before the other but simultaneous.

Paul in his letter to the Romans teaches us:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living
sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of
this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what
God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Rom 12:1-2).

On this, Paul states two fundamentals truths: (a) the need to offer oneself to God; and (b) the requirement to
change our way of thinking and attitude to understand fully the truth God reveals.

“Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice”. To Paul, offering one’s body meant offering God one’s self. He is not
pointing out the separation of the body and the spirit but its unity. Offering the “body” is offering one’s self
for what springs from the body, expresses the spirit. He called upon the early Christians to begin by changing
the way they thought, where, there was a strong separation between the body and the soul that they could
serve God even doing no good for other people. So Paul tells them, “The mind in you must be the mind that is
in Christ” (Phil.2:5).

Body and God’s Plan

The Church teaches appreciation of the body. It is not true that the Catholic Church teaches as it does about
sexuality because it undervalues sex. The Church teaches as it does because it values human sexuality so highly. She
understands necessarily the value of the body as revealed and reflected in God’s plan of salvation.

The body points to the doctrine of creation. God created our first parents as bodily beings. “Male and female he
created them” (Gen. 1:27), a distinction is made evident on the bodily level. This implies that in God’s creative design,
women are not “misbegotten males.” They are not merely “added” simply because man is alone. Man and woman are
distinct bodily but of the same dignity.

The body points to the doctrine of Incarnation. In Jesus Christ, God became a human being, flesh and blood. The Gospel
of John puts it: ”The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (Jn.1:14).

The body points to the doctrine of our redemption by Christ. Jesus came to redeem. This entails pains and suffering. He
suffered the way a human person suffers. John scrupulously records the flow of blood and water from Jesus’ pierced
side (cf. Jn.19:34). He was a real human being who suffered in a real human body. When He died, we do not say, ”Jesus’
body died for us”, but, “Jesus died for us.” His identity as God, Incarnate and the fullness of His redemptive life and
death both are bound up with His human body.
The body points to eschatology (concerning end times or final things). In the Creed, we say, “We believe in the
resurrection of the body”; and we believe that on the last day, at the end of time, all of us will enter as bodily beings to
heaven or else to hell (Rev. 21:8). This resurrection of the body is part of the reintegration and restoration of all things
in Christ, who “fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23). And in the end, “death shall be no more” (Rev. 21:4).

Human Dignity

One basic truth about us is that we are created in God’s image and likeness. As such, we possess a dignity more than
the other creatures in the world. We are gifted with intellect and will, enabling to think and choose, decide, and direct
all our thoughts, words, and actions.

Being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but
someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion
with other persons.

We come to understand more of our dignity when the Son of God became flesh. He died for us, for our salvation. The
question here is, who are we for God to die for? Definitely, no one will sacrifice his/her own life if it is unworthy to do
so. By sending His Son to save us, we come to realize our dignity, not just mere creatures but adopted sons and
daughters. Also, we are able to know our calling, mission, and purpose in this world. These are united in the person of
Jesus Christ.

The Dignity of the Body

The human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God”: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a
spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit.

Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of
the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise
freely given to the Creator. For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body
as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day.

The Body and Human Life

The ultimate reality itself is revealed to us through the body. History tells us that the Second Person of the Trinity, the
Word made flesh. Christ- through His body given up for us- “fully reveals man to himself and makes his supreme calling
clear” (Gaudium et Spes, n.22).

John Paul II reminded us that when the Word became flesh, we come to understand more about God. The mystery of
God is revealed to us through the body. This is how God does it and this is how we come to know His revelations.

As the Holy Father observes, “God comes to us in the things we know best and can verify most easily, the things of our
everyday life, apart from which we cannot understand ourselves” (Faith and Reason, n.12). God meets us in the way
that we can understand Him better, in our very experience as embodied spirit. For this, this is how we should meet the
word and evangelize people.

Body and Human Experience

Our body and spirit are distinct but both constitute our identity. When suddenly and unexpectedly struck us, we say,
“What hits me?” not “What hit my body?” We all know that someone or something that touches our body is touching
us. Thus, hurting our body is hurting us. Caring for the body is caring for us.
God has made us aware of the value of the body itself by becoming like us-human. Taking the bodily form, He made
holy all the creations and enabled us to experience them.

We should always strive to keep our body and ourselves healthy. We should not let any doing that can harm our health;
put our lives in danger. Some examples of these are the use of illegal drugs and inordinate indulgence in food and drink.
We are called to be good stewards of our lives. This we can through exercise, healthy diet, healthy lifestyle, and the
like.

The Body Proclaims God’s Mystery

The Pope’s theology of the body provides a beautiful, uplifting vision of marital love and sexual intimacy. But it goes
beyond far beyond that, too. It is a deeply affirming education is what it means to be a human.

As John Paul says, what we learn is obviously “important in regard to marriage and the Christian vocation of husbands
and wives.” However it “is equally essential and valid for the understanding of man in general: for the fundamental
problem of understanding him and for the self-comprehension of his being in the world” (Dec. 15, 82). Therefore, “it is
this theology of the body which is the basis of the most suitable method of the …education (in fact the self-education)
of man” (April 8, 81).

Following the Scriptures, John Paul demonstrates that the union of the sexes provides a “lens” through which to view
the whole plan of God for humanity. God’s eternal plan is to “marry” us (see Hosea 2:19)- to live with us in an eternal
union of life and love. And God wanted this eternal “marital plan” to be so plain to us, so obvious to us that he
impressed an image of it in our very being by creating us male and female.

This is why the Pope speaks of the body as a theology- a “study of God.” The body, in the full truth of its masculinity
and femininity, proclaims the divine mystery in the world. What’s the divine mystery? As the Catechism says, “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” (CCC 221).

The Whole Person Reflecting God’s Image

We reflect God’s image by first of all being one in substance. Substance, we mean what a thing is. God as a trinity is one
being, acting with as much unity as our soul acts with our body. Our bodies are living, and Paul emphasizes that we
serve a living God, not one of gold or silver or stone (cf. Acts 17:29).

We give rise to another way of reflecting God, that is, His rationality or intelligence God, by His nature, is a rational
being. He does not have rationality but He is Rationale allowing us to participate and so become and called rational
being. He is a much a rational being as He is a loving being.

Sharing in God’s rationality, only we have the true capacity for reasoning. We are intelligent; aware of our surroundings
and capable of changing of them. We do not act on instinct, but are in control of our natural drives for higher purposes.

The Gospel of the Body

The “core of the Gospel,” according to St. John Paul II “is a proclamation of our living God who is close to us, who calls
us to profound communion with himself… It is the affirmation of the inseparable connection between the person, his
life, his ‘bodiliness.’ It is the presentation of human life as a life of relationship.” As a consequence, the Pope says that
“the meaning of life is found in giving and receiving love, and in this light human sexuality and precreation reach their
true and full significance.”
We might call this profoundly incarnate vision the “Gospel of the Body.” In a word, the Gospel is a call to communion.
This is what we long for and this is what our bodies shout: Communion! As John Paul asserts in his letter on the new
millennium, “To make the Church the home and the school of communion: that is the great challenge facing us in the
millennium which is now beginning if we wish to be faithful to God’s plan and respond to the world’s deepest
yearnings”