On many things

So here we go again, we are playing the game of "secret angel". Here we go again, I need to plan on my spring break trip somehow to where I'm gonna work this August.

I am liking this one quote from our Pope B XVI, "True love, in fact, by its very nature is never purely speculative but makes a direct, concrete and even verifiable reference to real persons."

I have always wanted to build a reflection on love, yet the topic of love is so broad that it's too hard to cut them into pieces and say that I've made a good reflection on it. The greatest example is our late Pope that build a ~130 general audience that spans within ~5 years of his apostolate only on the topic of Theology of the Body which has ~1003 references to the bible. Correct me if I'm wrong on this factoids. Anyway, that's just how vast the topic of love is.

The topic of trinity and love is something that hit me the most this past winter break. Peter Kreeft wrote it and put it really clear in his book "The Fundamentals of the Faith" and oh how much I love his explanation on it.

The idea that "eros" points toward "agape" is also new and refreshing to me. All these times, the thing that I heard from media and the perception that I see is that, "eros" is bad, "agape" is good. Yet Pope Benedict XVI puts it well in his encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, that "eros" and "agape" are both needed in our human and conjugal love. (I'm not even sure what conjugal means at first! ;) )

It is not common to hear that our BODY is good. That SEX is good. That in this brokenness of our life, God says that OUR body is good, that's radical. West said that each time we heard what church says about sex, all that we can think of is all these "Thou shalt not." Gak boleh sex. Gak boleh nyeleweng. Gak boleh pornografi. Gak boleh masturbasi. Gak boleh... How about ...? Nope nope nope... Let's not talk about it... It's all no.

What is it about sex that makes us want to know more? It is because God created sex. It is because in the essence of it, sex is a great thing, if it is in the consummation of the marital love. One part that I love is how in vulgate, the last word that Jesus said on the cross, "It is finished" is translated, "Consummatum est" which means, it is consumed, same as in marriage, the unity of both man and woman is consumed in the conjugal act of sexual activity.

One thing that I learned from the Theology of The Body is in our struggle through sexuality. We always think that we only have two options, either to suppress it or to let it go. And we often fall to think that the church taught that the only thing that we can do is to suppress our sexual desire. Yet Pope John Paul II said something in the line of this, "If you suppress your sexual desire, it will build up and explodes!" So, what's the right attitude then? That there is the third option. That what we can do instead of suppressing it is to offer it up, to say bluntly to God, "Lord, I have this sexual desire in my heart/head, and I thank you for this desire, yet I want to have this desire to be transformed in you and I offer it up, let this lust be transformed into love Lord!" Instead of suppressing it, we ought to offer it up at the foot of the cross, at the foot of His feet, just like Mary did.

So, to those who hold the idea of Puritanism (that the body is bad and only the soul is good), that is wrong. Same as gnotiscism. We are not a soul trapped in a body! Our whole body points back to our God! Love your own body...

So, going back to our source and summit of our faith, the Eucharist. That is why we as Catholics do what we do right now. There are so many symbols that we do at mass. When we enter, we dipped our hands and make the sign of the cross so that we remember our sign of baptism. As we enter, we genuflect (kneel/berlutut) to the tabernacle, that hosts the body of Christ as a sign of reverence. Our body proclaims the glory of our God! As we pray, we pray by standing up since we want to revere the person that we're talking to. (I'm pretty sure when you meet somebody that you revere, when you sit, you'll stand up right away) As we hear the readings, we sit for the attentive potition. As the priest stand in persona Christi Capitis (in the person of Christ the head) for the consecration we kneel/double genuflect for the sign that our King of Kings are there in the altar! (same as we see in movies, that every soldier will kneel when they meet their king) Again, our body glorify, worship, and proclaim the glory of God by standing, kneeling, and bowing!

So, the next time you go to mass, you go to class, go to sleep, remember that: what our body does, is the sign of who we are and what we believe.