The Legacy of Pope St John Paul II
Elena Feick writes on St JPII legacy of the Theology of the Body, I relate how Halloween helped me believe in the Communion of the Saints and we celebrate St Talocran and St Monk.
A Taste of Theology of the Body
Jesus said, ‘What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it with? It is like a mustard seed which a man took and threw into his garden: it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air sheltered in its branches.’
Another thing he said, ‘What shall I compare the kingdom of God with? It is like the yeast a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour till it was leavened all through.’
- Luke 13:18-21
This was the reading at Mass for October 26, 2021, and it made me think; the yeast of the Kingdom of God has to be mixed into our lives, our persons, our being, until it is leavened all through.
This is the primary gift that JP2’s Theology of the Body(henceforth to be called TOB) - or, more accurately, Theology of the Human Person - has given me. It has sifted through and become a part of my prayer life as much as yeast sifts through flour to become a part of the bread.
I feel barely qualified to comment on TOB, as it is such a deep and beautiful system of theology in which I have so far only taken four courses - one Introduction course from Sr Helena Burns, and then three courses online from the Theology of the Body Institute in Pennsylvania - and followed along with two book studies with the TOB Network UK. It is something people can pursue doctorates in, and I’m still wading my way into its depths.
And it is a system of theology - some say it will even be the next major system of theology in the Church, following on Thomistic theology the way Thomistic theology follows on Augustinian.
I will attempt here to give you a small taste for it, by sharing how it has impacted me.
The first thing I learned from TOB is that the human body is good. We are made in the image and likeness of God - we are made to make visible the invisible God. Our entire person, body and soul, is in the image and likeness of God. We aren’t, as many people today might think, souls trapped in bodies. We don’t have bodies, we are body-soul composites. We are as much our bodies as we are our souls. This is why we say in the Apostles Creed, ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.’
My whole life, I’ve never been one for fitness or worrying much over physical health. Yet this new understanding of the goodness of my body, of the gift that I am meant to be firstly to myself, forced me to realize that by not caring for my physical health and fitness, I was neglecting a gift God has given me and gift God would give the world through me.
So in late October 2020, after my first TOB course, I decided to do something about it. I took up running using a Couch to 5K app.
Who knew that running could improve your spiritual and mental health even as it improves your physical health?
The fact is, we are meant to be integrated beings. This is why mental illness can often manifest physically, and physical illness can often impact our mental health. We were created with a perfect integration of body, soul, intellect, and will. Original sin caused a disintegration. But grace means we can be reintegrated.
Another way TOB has impacted me is by helping me to integrate the pleasures of this life and my prayer life in a new way. Dr Christopher West talks about the stoic, the addict, and the mystic. I am learning to seek to be the mystic.
Let me give a more concrete example. My favorite coffee shop is Cafe Nero, and my favourite drink there is the hot chocolate milano (now renamed the luxury hot chocolate). Now, I could drink several every day and keep going back for more until I have nothing left. That would be the addict. I could also refuse to ever drink it again, and think of it as ‘so good it must be sin’, as the saying goes.
Or, as I have learned to do thanks to the TOB courses I’ve taken, I could enjoy it occasionally and as I get to the last sip of that drink, I could stay in the ache. Stay in the ache, Dr Christopher West says repeatedly in so many of those courses.
To stay in the ache means to pause, and to realise that longing for more hot chocolate is actually a longing for the infinite - for God. If we learn to redirect our longing for hot chocolate into a longing for God, then that moment of finishing that hot chocolate and wishing for more becomes a prayer and allows the hot chocolate to do what it is meant to do - awaken in us that desire for God. We are not meant to stay at the hot chocolate.
TOB has taught me that the joys and pleasures of this life are meant to be enjoyed - but we are not meant to stop there. We are meant to keep going and to realise that every joy, every pleasure, every gift in this world is meant to point us to Him who is the Source of these things and who is the ultimate joy, the ultimate pleasure, the ultimate gift.
There is so much more I could say, I could write on for pages and not even brush the surface. But I’ll leave it at this: TOB is worth studying, even if you can’t take a degree in it. If all you can take is one course, then take that course. Just like with Scripture, where even if you can’t sit down and read the whole Bible in one go, it is still worth it to pick up and learn a chapter or even a verse - so too with TOB. Learn what you can. Take every opportunity to pursue it. It will change your life, deepen your prayers, strengthen your faith. I know this, because it has done all of these and more for me.
Elena Feick | Paisley
How Halloween Helped Me Believe in the Communion of the Saints.
Soon we will be upon All Souls and All Saints day, days that have been lost to the mangled caricature of Halloween. I look forward to these days because they remind me of the eternity before us, the souls of loved ones to pray for, purgatory, and, if I am honest, it pulls at a deeper impulse for the mysterious and other. But in my life as a Protestant I staunchly rejected all of these things and swallowed the line that Halloween, Communion of the Saints and all the related doctrines was false, or inspired by paganism. The origins of Halloween itself do not lie in the so called Celtic Samhain but in the developing solemnizing of martyrs days from at least the 4th Century leading to Pope Gregory IV of the 9th Century extending the local Roman celebration of Saints to the whole Church for the 1st November. Therefore we should resist the notion that the Church just ‘Christianized’ a pagan festival. Surprisingly this opened the door for me to investigate the Communion of the Saints, Purgatory and find the biblical evidence that backs it up.
Eric Hanna
St Talocran, Feast Day 30th October, 6th Century
If you wish to see John Woodside’s other videos please click here. John has done videos on some of Scotland’s earliest Saints and missionaries and will be starring in a new programme on Being Catholic TV of the same topic. He has also written a book on the topic: Together In Christ: Following the Northern Saints.
St Monk, Feast Day 30th October
We know nothing of this Saint other than his importance to the Western Ayrshire town of Stevenson just south of Troon. A charter in 1189 mentions a fair held here in his honour on the 30th October and again a fair is mentioned as late as 1851. We also have reference to St Monks Church in 1547. There are a few Saints like this were all we have are place names or the memories of Fairs. Fairs of this sort could last up to 8 days and I am sure there was quite a lot of fun had at them. Wouldn’t it be nice to reinstate a local Saints fair? The opportunity to bring the community together reminding them of the towns heritage and under the banner of faith?