-Welcome (7:00)
-question box and pencils
- Prayer
- Overview
- Discussion
-Break (approx. 7:40 – 7:50)
- Discussion
-Summary (8:15 p.m.)
-Thank for food/Food for next time
-Prayer
OVERVIEW
of
Introduction and Chapter 1
Introduction
We should raise questions in spirit of confidence, like asking a mathematician why 10 X 10 = 100…we needn’t fear that the Church won’t have the answers.
Chapter 1
JPII ; still emphasizing this. Just last week in Rome (end of February 2004) meeting with pastors of the city of Rome he said, “Our theme is the family. Family means: ‘And He created them man and woman’. It means: love and responsibility. From these words come all the consequences. These consequences have been much talked about in regard to marriage, the family, parents, children, schools…I learned some time ago, when I was in Krakow, to live close to couples, to families. I also closely followed the path that led two persons, a man and a woman, to create a family and, with marriage, to become spouses and parents, with all the consequences we know so well.” …..
To the pastors: “Be close to them spiritually in the trials that life often holds, helping them to understand that the Church is always their mother as well as their teacher. And teach young people to understand and appreciate the real meaning of love and to prepare themselves to form authentic Christian families.” … “the misguided and often aberrant behavior that is publicly proposed, and also endorsed and exalted, and daily contact with the difficulties and crises of many families can cause us to be tempted to distrust and resignation. We must overcome this temptation with God’s help. … Today the Holy Spirit’s action is not weaker. … Therefore, the greater the difficulties, the stronger our hope must be in the present and future of the family, and the more generous and passionate our priestly service to families must be.”
Inevitably this leads us to the cross; love heavily involves dying-to-self and living for the other – this is the content of the Cross. We must be disposed to the Cross in this study, open to and asking God to reveal the ways that we are not fully living out our vocation to love (not only in sexual sphere but in all)
Sexual morality is about expressing God’s love through the body. Our cultural mindset would never see this, never occurs that it wasn’t just by chance that we were made this way as male and female. And if by chance then no deeper meaning than affection and pleasure.
John Paul II says if we live according to the truth of sexuality - the idea that we are to be gift to others, made for union - we fulfill our meaning of being. If we don’t then we never fulfill our meaning and thus remain frustrated and without the joy that comes with this fulfillment.
Disputes in sexual morality then are disputes in the very meaning of life, and thus cannot be taken lightly.
Man is in nature created and disposed to making a gift of himself to the woman
Woman is disposed to receiving the gift of man and making a gift of herself back.
And they are made so that new life can flow from this gift and reception.
\Foundation of sexual morality:
Sex expresses the wedding vows - which are God’s vows : free, total, faithful, and fruitful love.
Eucharist is the gift of God to the bride/Church - “This is my bodygiven up for you”
When we receive Him, we conceive new life in us by which we have the power to live the true meaning of our lives - the meaning that was distorted with the Fall of Adam and Eve.
Man is only creature created for his own sake (unlike animals/things<explain>), he cannot find himself except in making a gift of himself - thus truly imaging God the Gift.
Freedom is necessary for love. I cannot force someone to love me. This life is about freely choosing God or freely rejecting him. He is like the mad lover who comes after us after we’ve rejected him once in the Garden. He won’t take “no” but neither will he force us. Cana: It is Mary (the feminine, the image of the Church, the one who receives) who must give him the permission. “Be it done unto me according to thy Word” …. “Woman, it is not yet my hour…do whatever he tells you.” - signaling that humanity, represented by her, is ready now to receive his gift of self.
Devil is tempting us in Adam and Eve. He doesn’t love you; he’s holding something back. Eat this fruit then you will be like him. Instead they had been his image of mutual love, but now with distrust they no longer image love. For you can’t be in love with someone if you don’t trust them. Instead of becoming the image of God, which they already were, they distort the image of God, wounding it, which we call Original Sin.
Redemption comes in Christ. who comes to make a gift of himself to his bride-his people, who because they’ve distrusted him, reject him, and force him to suffer and die. But he still goes through with the gift of himself. He makes a marriage with mankind.--a free, total, faithful, and fruitful gift of himself on the Cross. All who are baptized then are as it were married to Him and are able to receive his gift of divine life- the Holy Spirit. - By the power of the Holy Spirit and the gift of his Body - the Eucharist - his Bride - the Church and all those who remain part of her are given the Spirit who restores them, or at least has the power to restore them to the degree they are receptive (by rooting out sin and living in the way revealed by Christ and his Body the Church)
With this as the backdrop we learn that sex is more than a biological function but is loaded with meaning.
And this means that marriage is only marriage, and sex is only sex, to the extent that they participate in God’s free, total, faithful, and fruitful love. And this foundation is the only proper basis for addressing all of the questions and concerns we have about sexuality and marriage.
Discussion Question Starters (these should only be used if after a period of time nobody is bringing up what they want to discuss, they are here in order to jumpstart discussion, not as a list of questions that should be discussed):
On page 13 what do you think of his statement that there was not much difference between rape and the way he was treating women?
P18 What is society’s idea of sexuality? Is it less beautiful than the Church’s?
P19 Image of the Trinity. Have you heard this description before? What do you think of it?
P23 What did you think about the car analogy and true freedom?
P25 Have you ever thought of the woman/man lust differences that he describes? Do you see this in our culture?
P27 Comments on the New Adam / New Eve chart, have you heard this before?
P29 What is society’s idea of love? Vs ours?
Appendix – if they want to know more about the New Adam connection…
Writings in Qumran show that some Jews expected an Adam-like figure to appear in the end times.
New Adam (Rom 5: 12-21; 1 Cor 15:20-3, 45-49)
Irenaeus – “ The Son of God…was incarnate and made man; and then he summed up in himself the long line of the human race, procuring for us a comprehensive salvation, that we might recover in Jesus what in Adam we had lost, namely the state of being in the image and likeness of God” (Adversus Haereses 3.18.I)
Also developed by Origen, Athanasius, and many other Church Fathers.
To image God, is to love perfectly:
Adam disobeyed, Jesus obeyed perfectly.
Adam (Pride) broke the “return of love” Jesus (humility) perfectly fulfilled it. Adam was limited and tried to break out Jesus (God) was unlimited and yet “humbled of limits (limits of the knowledge of good himself, taking the form of a slave, being and evil) “to become like gods”; born in the likeness of men” –Phil 2:6-9
[For more on limitation see Ratzinger, In the Beginning, last section]
As members of humanity we are all connected to Adam. You are in your loved ones, your loved ones are in you. We are affected by each others’ actions and the actions of all of those before us. (ripple effect of a stone)
Both Adam and Jesus. Adam injured our relationality (which is our very being –created in relation) Jesus perfects it, we can unite all to him and his love makes up what is lacking in others – their offenses against us can be moments of grace.
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