I decided to resurrect an old post of mine that originally appeared on Catholic Exchange's now retired Theology of the Body site. It was written in the spring of 2010, but the message is still timely.
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Rushing out
of my study cave with the great cloud of comprehensive exam induced stress
hovering above my head, I plotted out my plan of attack for the grocery store
shopping to which I was heading. Nothing
was going to stand between the milk aisle and me because any second lost was a
second I would not be fervently studying.
My perfectly
constructed plans reached a fork in the road after two steps into the store,
when a salesman invited me to sign up for a gift card giveaway. I stood hesitating, attempting to decide
between blowing off the opportunity to win $100 and surrendering some of my
study time. For some reason, I chose the
latter.
As I filled
out the raffle ticket, the salesman invited me to sign up for a newspaper
deal. Still in a hurry, I explained that
I would be moving in three months, so a 26-week subscription to a DC paper
wouldn’t do me much good. And like any
good salesman, he began a conversation: Where was I moving? First time there? Why was I in DC? What was I studying? What would I be doing after graduation?
That was the
moment when I began to realize that God was calling me to share Theology of the
Body. In the middle of the produce
aisle, I began explaining, now with genuine enthusiasm in my voice, how the
late Holy Father spent the first five years of his pontificate developing this
beautiful teaching. Instead of a
microphone in my hand, I held my shopping list, and instead of standing in a
room full of people eager to hear about the pope’s words, I stood amidst the
broccoli, bananas and bell peppers.
“See, a lot
of people think the body is bad. They
assume that when we die, only our soul will go to heaven. Or they think that the body is bad, and the
soul is good,” I explained.
“But John
Paul spent five years explaining that our bodies are good. He talked about how we are made in the image
and likeness of God, and that includes our bodies. We can tell by the fact that He created us
male and female, that we are called to love.
We are called to give ourselves to each other – whether it be in
marriage, or even in a smaller capacity like volunteering to help others. God isn’t sexual, but He is love, and in our
bodies we are able to image that.”
Surprised,
the salesman (who was also taken aback at having met someone who has never left
the Catholic faith) asked if Theology of the Body is only for Catholics. I assured him that it isn’t, and that it
applies to everyone. I gave him the
example of a Protestant church I’m aware of planning to host a series of
Theology of the Body study groups this year.
And right
there in the middle of the apples, asparagus and arugula, the salesman shared
the story of when his father, a Protestant minister, first explained to him
that God is love.
In those few
minutes, the salesman wasn’t making any commission, and I wasn’t memorizing
what Aristotle wrote about matter and form.
But God was calling. He was
asking that the work be set aside for a moment, and that He be given the
priority.
As I walked
away, a little slower than before, I chuckled at God’s insistence that I
remember what’s really important. There
I was, placing my exams above everything, nearly ignoring the opportunity to
talk to a person about God’s plan. Ironically,
isn’t it for people that I am taking these exams and completing these studies? Isn’t my desire to help others come to see
the beauty of Theology of the Body?
It’s a
lesson we need repeated frequently. When
preparing Sunday’s homily, or researching for next week’s CCD lesson, or reading
a new book about Theology of the Body, how often do we get lost in what we have
to get done and forget why we are immersed in this work in the first
place? If it’s not about our love of God
and neighbor, then haven’t we missed the point?
John Paul
seems a wonderful example of a man whose work was for his love of God and
neighbor. His encyclicals, letters,
addresses and even Theology of the Body audiences weren’t an academic exercise
for their own sake – they were for people.
John Paul wrote, spoke and lived for the man working in a rice field in
China, for the woman oppressed in Sudan, for the Polish couple contemplating
marriage, for the El Salvadorian family having difficulty putting food on the
table.
In Laborem Exercens, he wrote:
[H]owever
true it may be that man is destined for work and called to it, in the first
place work is "for man" and not man "for work. […] in the final
analysis it is always man who is the purpose of the work, whatever work it is
that is done by man – even if the common scale of values rates it as the merest
"service", as the most monotonous even the most alienating work.
(#6)
No matter
where God calls us, reminding us of the constant necessity of reordering our
priorities, it’s a lesson worth heeding.
