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Through Sexual Union the Body Speaks a “Language”
Perhaps even more surprisingly for some, John Paul II went on to say that conjugal union itself is meant to be a sign of God’s desire for complete union with us (which is intimate, though not sexual). It is a sign of Christ’s love for his bride the Church. How crucial it is then, that couples live their relationships as they were intended to in order to accurately image to the world God’s eternal plan for mankind.
St. Paul instructs, “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her…” He then refers back to the beginning, as Christ does in the Gospels and 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.’ This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church.” (Eph. 5:25, 31-32)
John Paul II explained that through sexual union the body speaks a “language” and that this language must be spoken in truth. Since the very nature of the conjugal act as designed by God includes both the interpersonal union of the couple as well as the potential for procreation, man and woman cannot contracept their union without violating their dignity as persons and the dignity of the conjugal act itself.
Because of his continual concern for what is truly worthy of man, John Paul II used the Theology of the Body to further explain the reasons behind Pope Paul VI’s controversial encyclical on contraception, Humanae Vitae: “Man and woman carry on in the language of the body that dialogue which, according to Genesis 2:24,25, had its beginning on the day of creation.
“This language of the body is something more than mere sexual reaction. As authentic language of the persons, it is subject to the demands of truth, that is, to objective moral norms. Precisely on the level of this language, man and woman reciprocally express themselves in the most profound way possible to them…Man and woman express themselves in the measure of the whole truth of the human person.” (TOB Aug. 22, 1984)
