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There is a law running through human nature, that he who does not spiritualize the flesh will carnalize his spirit. Sex and spirituality do not walk hand in hand; rather, one leads the other. Sex can dominate the spiritual simply through nonresistance, but for the spiritual to rule over the flesh requires discipline and effort. Just as, to discover the secrets of history, one must learn to see eternity in time, so, in order to understand marriage, one must learn to see the Spirit in the flesh. When someone complained to St. Catherine of Siena that she was too much obsessed with temporal affairs to think of God, the Saint answered: "It is we who make things temporal; everything that comes from the Eternal God is good."
This is the alternative presented to every bride and groom: whether to eroticize marriage or eternalize it; whether to base it on sex or on Spirit. There is a tension between the two which has its historical origins in original sin. But even apart from the Fall of Man, there still would have been some tension because of the difference between body and soul. St. Thomas speaks of this natural tension as being due to the "necessity of matter," as opposed to the freedom of the spirit.
This does not mean that marriage must choose between sex and spirit (for without either marriage is incomplete) but rather that it must choose between giving the primacy to one or the other. It cannot be repeated too often that the human sexual desire is never simply an animal instinct and nothing more. The desire is at every moment informed and activated by the soul. Those who say the Church is opposed to sex are talking nonsense, because they refuse to understand the soul-body unity of the human person. There is no such thing as a choice between the flesh and the soul, because there is never flesh without the spirit, and never spirit without the flesh. Christianity is not against anything (except evil, and that is not a thing, but a privation), whether it be body, or soul, flesh, or sex, or mind.
There are two symbols for marriage: one is the pyramid, the other is the cellar. The Church sees each aspect of marriage as the reflection, the echo, or the shadow cast by some great Divine Truth. At the top of the pyramid is the Trinity. From this Triune Love there floods down on the sides of the pyramid (which represents Time and history) the richness of this Love in Creation, Revelation, Incarnation, the Mystical Body, the Eucharist, Grace, and the Sacraments, one of which is marriage. Everything noble and beautiful about it is a descent from above, a shadowing forth in the flesh of that Divine Love on which it lives and feeds and grows.
The other symbol of marriage is the cellar. This cellar, or cave, is filled with some cast-off fears and fixations of rational life which have been thrown into it, as so much rubbish, by the conscious mind, either because suppressed, or repressed, or feared. In this cellar, too, are to be found the bones of animals and the memory of the animal origin of man. Marriage, in this view, is an ascent from the beast, or a push from below. The Christian view is that marriage is a descent from God, or a gift from above.
From these two views of marriage, there have developed two distinct psychological attitudes toward sex. One group talks about it as they would about eating, drinking, or politics; their jokes are seasoned with it; their reading, advertising, interests, all center about it, as if sex were the basic energy of man. The other group treats the subject with reverence and mentions it only under certain conditions, resenting what is personal being made public. The reason for this sensitiveness is not due to prudery, but to piety before the tremendum. It no more comes into their heads to joke about the relations of man and woman in marriage, than to joke about the relations of the soul and Our Lord in Holy Communion, and for identically the same reason; they are face to face with the sacred, aye! the Divine. As a man will take off his hat on passing a Church with the Eucharistic presence of Our Lord, so he will show a becoming delicacy in the face of this mystery, which makes for unity of the flesh, as Communion does for unity in the spirit.
Because Spirit impregnates marriage, there is first seen in it the reflection of the Mystery of the Trinity. As the Father knows Himself in His Wisdom, or Word, or Son, Who is distinct but not separate, so the husband discovers opposite to himself one in flesh with him. As the Father knows Himself in His Son, so man knows himself through the person opposite. He is present to himself in her for, thanks to sex, two persons are merged and revealed, one to the other. As the Father and Son are one in nature through the Spirit of Love which binds them, so the husband and wife find unity of sex, despite their differences, through the bond of love which makes them one. The Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles not only made them one, but also apostolic and fruitful in the development of the Mystical Body of Christ. So, too, husband and wife, through the deepening of their unifying love, become fruitful unto new life, thanks to an earthly Pentecost which begets raw material for the Kingdom of God.
The differences in the characters of man and woman have their roots in creation. "Man and woman both, he created them." (Genesis 5:2) Man is made by God; woman is made by God from man. As God is present at the creation of the world, so man is present, though in ecstasy, at the creation of woman. The immediacy and the mediacy of the origin of the two sexes are mirrored forth in their differences. Man, coming directly from God, has initiative, power, and origin. Woman, coming from God through the ecstasy of man, has intuition, response, acceptance, submission, and co-operation. Man lives more in the external world, because made from the earth and closest to it; it is his mission to rule over it and subject it Woman lives more in the internal world, because she was created from an inner, human life. Man is more interested in the outer world; woman in the inner world. Man talks about things; woman more about persons. Man fashions the products of the earth; woman fashions life, having come from life, both Divine and human. Man, more related to the earth, makes sacrifices for things which are in the future and which are abstract; woman, more related to the human, is more inclined to make sacrifices for persons and for that which is immediate. Because more objective, man is inclined to give reasons for what he loves and for what he does; woman, being more subjective and having issued from the human, is more inclined to love just for love's sake. Man's reasons for loving are because of the qualities and attributes of the beloved. Man builds, invents, conquers; woman tends, devotes, interiorizes. The man gives; the woman is a gift. Even after the Fall and the disruption of the harmony of man and woman, man, despite all disappointments, never fails to possess the image of an Ideal Woman, and woman never ceases to love the image of the Ideal Man. The Golden Age may be in the past for those who know not Redemption, but among those who see the Fall as the felix culpa, all humanity knows the name of the Ideal Woman, the new Eve, and everyone knows the name of the Ideal Man, the new Adam, Christ.
God creates a woman for man, to be his helpmate. "It is not well that man should be without companionship; I will give him a mate of his own kind." (Genesis 2:18, 19) The Divine creation of the two sexes is here suggested as essential from the point of view of fellowship. A helpmate does not mean servile inferiority, but rather that through differences, like a bow and violin, they would complement each other. Sex is not only the Divinely-willed manner in which mankind will increase and multiply; it is also to be the basis of mutual helpfulness. Not to every husband and wife is given the privilege of having a Pentecost of the flesh through the birth of a new physical body, but to every one is given the companionship which God wills should be his lot on earth.
Mutual helpfulness implies an interpretation of ideals. Nietzsche once said that before a man married, he should ask himself: "Would I be willing to talk to this woman all the days of my life?" This brings up the question of the merging of personalities. There are only two genders, but there are millions of different personalities. The body by its very physical nature is incommunicable. Two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Animals never get inside of one another's mind by mating, for there is no mind to penetrate. But there is something in a human which is communicable, and which can get inside of another personality, and that is his mind, his attitudes, his ideals, and his moods. A mere physical content can throw personalities back into their solitude and isolation in a way which never happens after a conversation.
God ordained that the unity in the flesh be not transitory, or spasmodic, but enduring until death. The body symbolizes and intensifies the union of souls. Because there is unity in spirit, in love, and in ideals, the bodies concretize and intensify that union. The happiness of marriage depends upon common denominators, and the most common denominator of all is the love of God expressed in a common liturgy, a common faith, wherein husband and wife receive the same Bread and are made one Body in Christ. When this is lacking, the love of humans lacks the best inspiration. They are like two of Leibnitz's atoms, which bump and hit one another but have no windows through which one can look out on the other. Man and woman marry to make one another happy, but they never can do this until they have agreed on what is happiness.
There is no solitude worse than the solitude of the one who is bound to live a dual life, or of those whose epidermal unities drive them back to themselves in greater loneliness than before. But God intends that there should be a growing-together. What started as a passion of love becomes an act of love and then a habit of love. The body of each moves the soul of each; then the soul of each moves the body of each; and finally, at the height of mutual togetherness, God moves the body and soul of each to Himself, and therefore closer to each other. The growth they know, even if God has not blessed them with children, is a growth in God. A marriage need not have children to be a Divinely blessed marriage, for children depend on the Will of God, co-operating with husband and wife.
Marriage exists for the sake of intimacy, and, as such, is ordained to intimacy. Feuerbach said: "A man is what he eats." In a higher order, a person becomes that with which he communes. The food which is taken into his body becomes unified with that body. In like manner, the person who has this mysterious marital communication with another body becomes "personalized" to some extent by that body, and also with that personality. The sentiments and the affections of one become the sentiments and the affections of the other in a great moment of identification. As people are united by speaking a common language, and as people are united through sharing the same ideals, so in marriage people are united in a more binding way by this new knowledge of sex. From this point of view, quite apart from the fruit of love in the child, this knowledge which one has of the other is not discursive, like that which comes from reason. It is rather more intuitional, in the sense of being more immediate. Marriage, by its very nature, tends to this unity, through a communication of the flesh with flesh. The very fact that God made woman as the helpmate of man means that He intended that spiritual impregnation be closely associated with physical impregnation; one without the other is contrary to His Divine Purpose. To use the physical basis of unity, while deliberately rejecting the mental unity which it implies, is to poison that mysterious food which came clean, from the hand of God.
Spirit impregnating sex finds its next inspiration in the Incarnation. Here is the model nuptials of all, for on the altar of Mary's flesh was celebrated the Nuptials of the Divine and human nature in the Unity of the Person of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The great mystery of "the Word is made Flesh and dwelt amongst us," which was verified through her, now becomes reflected in the father and the mother, leaning over their newborn infant and saying, "Our love became flesh and dwelt amongst us." No wonder some young fathers and mothers say their prayers before the crib of their infant; in their little world, their child is God amongst them.
Pregnancy, too, becomes illumined by mystery, as the prospective mother hears the chant of the Liturgy: Non horruisti Virginis uterum. "Thou has not despised the womb of a woman." Every descent of new life into the body of a woman is possible only because God infused the soul into the child by a creative act. The child is not the Person of God, as it was within the womb of the Virgin, but it is nevertheless the Act of God, which is present within her. Nowhere within creation does God more intimately co-operate with a human than in the generation of life. The Liturgy, speaking of Mary's pregnancy, says: "He whom the heavens could not contain, thou didst contain within thyself." So the mother whose model is the Mother of Mothers sees herself as bearing within her the Creative Act of God, which not even the universe can limit.
When, as a bride, she went to the altar, the Church said to her and her husband: "You will be two in one flesh." Looking to the Incarnation, she perceives in a dim way that such must have been Mary's thought as she bore within herself the Word Incarnate. She and her Son were two in one flesh, the symbol of matrimony. In Mary, the sexes were reconciled, and a woman and a man were one. Now, bearing the child, the mother sees how the unity of two in one flesh, which existed between her and her husband, passes into a new unity of two in one flesh: herself and her unborn child.
Mothers who know not the Spirit in sex can see themselves only as higher developed animals, bearing within a new biological content. But the Catholic mother finds a model of pregnancy in the Mother who began the bringing of God to man. Physical trials become more bearable when she sees herself a co-worker with God in the making of life. A dying man in a country region of France, unable to receive the Eucharist, asked that a poor person be brought to him so that he might at least have Christ in a lesser way. The woman with the child may sometimes be unable to receive Holy Communion, but she can, with an act of faith, see that she already is bearing a lesser host within the tabernacle of her body.
The Papal Encyclical related Holy Orders to Matrimony, in the sense that both are the bearers of life. Mary, bearing Divine Life, the mother bearing human life, and the priest or the apostle begetting divine life through grace, are all united in a concept of pregnancy. Sex then is just a shadow cast by the spirit on the walls of the flesh.
No new life comes into being without labor. Now there is a double life to which humans can be introduced: the physical life which incorporates them to the Old Adam, and the spiritual life of grace which incorporates them to the New Adam, Christ. The first is done through pregnancy; the second through instruction of converts, teaching, missionary, and apostolic endeavor. St. Paul, taking the analogy of the mother unto himself, wrote to the Galatians: "My little children, I am in travail over you afresh, until I can see Christ's image formed in you." (Galatians 4:19) St. Paul is here saying that it takes sacrifice, prayer, and labor to bring forth a new life in Christ. Physical life is born of the womb of the flesh; spiritual life, of the womb of the Baptismal Font. Great as is the joy of a mother in bringing a new life into the world, greater still is the joy of an apostle in bringing a convert with new life unto Christ. The mother, too, shares this joy in seeing her child made a child of God. There are some mothers who confess that they loved their children more after baptism than before, for the child, sharing the Divine Nature, became more lovable than before.
This analogy is carried further by St. Paul. Since God is goodness, and goodness tends to diffuse itself, God hates voluntary barrenness and sterility. Those who refuse to bring new life into the world will not be blessed by God. The priest who goes before the judgment seat of God without having brought souls to Christ, either through active ministry in which he saves them directly, or through a contemplative ministry in which he saves them indirectly, will be frowned upon by God. God will ask each person on Judgment Day: "Where are your children?"
Generation there must be, either physical or spiritual. There is a close connection between saving our souls and begetting life. In the spiritual order, St. James tells us that if we save a soul, we save our own. In the physical order, St. Paul tells mothers: "Woman will find her salvation in child-bearing, if she will but remain true to faith and love and holy living." (1 Timothy 2:15)
Sex and Apostolate are God's twin plans for fulfilling the plan of His Redemption. The pains which a woman bears in labor help to expiate the sins of mankind, and draw their meaning from the Agony of Christ on the Cross. Mothers are, therefore, not only co-creators with God; they are co-redeemers with Christ in the flesh, as the apostle is a co-redeemer in both the flesh and the spirit. And the greatest Mystery of Spirit to illumine sex is that of the Mystical Body of Christ, to which we now turn.
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