Holy Communion: Eucharistic and Marital (Part 1)
By John F. Kippley
(Sheila: The reader may want to read Fr. William D. Virtue’s comment at the end of this blog. This is from an email he sent to me.)
Introduction
In some of the contemporary (2008) writing that supports the teaching of Humanae Vitae, there is considerable emphasis on the beautiful and very complete “Theology of the Body” (TOB) developed by Pope John Paul II. There is a special emphasis on the belief that the marriage act ought to entail a genuine gift of self to the other. In fact, some of the writing so connects this concept with the papal TOB that it gives the impression that that the self-gift concept of the marriage act was not developed prior to the papal lectures that constitute the “Theology of the Body.” That is not historically accurate. I would like to call attention to the fact that the following article first appeared as an article in Ave Maria, 25 February 1967. That was 17 months before Humanae Vitae and more than 12 years before the start of the TOB lectures in the fall of 1978. Further, it was actually written a year previous to publication. It was the first piece I wrote about the birth control issue, and I clearly remember what prompted me to write. I was living in Santa Clara, CA, and on a winter Saturday early in 1966, I attended a workshop on the birth control issue held in a church hall somewhere up the peninsula, probably in Palo Alto. The speaker was Michael Novak who was then teaching at Stanford. He was also making a name for himself as a leading lay spokesman for those who thought the Church could and should change its teaching to allow contraception, and he held true to form in that workshop. I can’t recall what he said, but I can remember my reaction. I thought his case specious, and I was angry—not just mad, but angry—and I was determined to respond. Considering what I wrote, I suspect that Novak had been using the very soft love-talk that has been traditionally used by dissenters from authentic Christian teaching on love and sexuality. So I responded by drawing a five-fold analogy between the conditions necessary for a worthy reception of the Eucharist and a worthy marriage . In short, Christian love is tough love, both Eucharistic and marital.
What still amazes me is the ease and speed with which I wrote that original article. I made a few handwritten notes on a half piece of paper, probably the five points of the analogy, and then started typing—the rest of Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday. I showed it to a couple of theologians in the summer of 1966, made just a few changes, and sent it off to Ave Maria.
I wish I could write with equal ease today! A healthy anger was my great aid at the time, but as error and evil have become ever so much more widespread and commonplace, it is correspondingly more difficult to get charged up by a healthy anger that moves one from inertia to action.
A personal note: The Ave Maria article drew some letters pro and con. One priest praised the article, and another accused me of blasphemy for daring to associate the Eucharistic and the sexual communions. Thus it was satisfying to see the Holy Father make the same association on 25 September 1982 to an organization that planned to study marriage in the light of the Sacrament of the Eucharist. It was also gratifying to learn that Michael Novak as the publisher of Crisis recanted his dissent in his editorial for June, 1989.
What follows is the original article except for a few minor changes for clarity. The article plus a similar introduction constitutes Chapter 4 in Sex and the Marriage Covenant: A Basis for Morality published by Ignatius Press and published here with permission.
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With an increasing emphasis being given to the personalist values of sexual intercourse in marriage, additional light can be gained from comparing the marriage act with another very personal type of intercourse, that of the encounter with Christ in the reception of Holy Communion. Both communions take place within the context of communities that are creations of God—the Church and matrimony, and these communities are so closely linked that St. Paul explains the community of marriage in terms of the Church (Eph. 5:21-33). Both are meant to be truly personal communions; both are meant to be a simultaneous giving and receiving; both are meant to lead men and women to lives of holiness.
Everyone is agreed today that of itself the act of sexual intercourse is a good and that in marriage it can be a means of expressing married love and be conducive to true Christian holiness. In marriage it is meant to be a true communion of persons whose bodily actions represent the communion of the total persons. Because this communion is likewise meant to lead the couple to holiness, it can very aptly be called a holy communion.
Result of sacraments
There are a number of marked similarities between these two communions—Eucharistic and matrimonial. First of all, they are both the result of sacraments given us by Christ for our salvation. If it isn’t just word-picking, I think we usually refer to the sacrament of the Body and Blood of Our Lord as the “Holy Eucharist” as He becomes present to us through the consecration. Then when the faithful actually receive Him in the sacrament, we usually refer to this reception as “Holy Communion.” The sacrament of Matrimony is likewise a sacrament establishing a new and sacred union between husband and wife and making it morally good to express this union in the communion of sexual intercourse.
Sacrificial offerings
Secondly, both of these communions come about as a result of a sacrificial offering. In the case of Holy Communion we have the offering of Christ to his Father, an offering at the Last Supper which looked forward to and included the fullness of giving in his death on the cross the next day. “This is my body which is given up for you” (Luke 22:19). In the case of the holy communion of matrimony we likewise have a delivering of the bodies of husband and wife to each other. As they confer the sacrament upon each other, they deliver themselves to each other without respect to circumstances, i.e., for poorer, sickness and worse as well as for richer, health and better. This is an explicit and formal recognition that in the giving of themselves to each other they are making a sacrifice.
Here we can use the word sacrifice in its common connotation of enduring difficulty or of giving up something, or we can look upon it in its etymological meaning of making holy. Perhaps the best way to take it here is that husband and wife will each grow in holiness according to the measure in which they give of self in trying to build up the other person. St. Paul is explicit in his instruction to the husband to sanctify his wife as Christ gave of Himself to sanctify the Church. The current emphasis on reform in the Church is an embodiment of the Church’s belief that she must always seek to be ever faithful and true to her head and savior, Christ. Likewise are wives instructed in this spirit of obedience to a loving spouse who does not selfishly seek his own benefit but rather that of their mutual union. It is, then, this sacramental offering of self to each other, this true sacrificial offering, that makes morally good and humanly meaningful their subsequent communion in sexual intercourse.
Bodily gift of self
A third similarity is found in the expression of love through a bodily giving of self. Christ’s love for men was incarnate and anything but angelistic: throughout his public life we see Him performing bodily good works among men as well as the spiritual healing of forgiving sins. Did this cost Him something? Certainly his weariness at Jacob’s well shows his personal human expense. However, the example that Christ called our attention to was his giving up of his life in order to save men and in order to establish once again a union between God and men: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). This is also the example to which St. Paul points in his marriage discourse in which he directs husbands, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her. . .” (Eph. 5:25-26).
In the act of sexual intercourse in marriage we likewise have the possibility of a bodily expression of love which represents a real giving of self in order to increase the union between husband and wife. This possibility is not realized in every act of sexual intercourse, even that which is morally permissible in marriage. Of itself, looked at on the lowest level, it is simply a union of two bodies. As to the human value of this union, we will have an unfortunately large range . . . the gross outrage of rape, the commercial use of prostitution, adultery and fornication (in both of which the level of affection can be very high while still lacking utterly the total meaning of human love) and the various meanings of sexual intercourse within marriage. For within marriage, there is still a range of human significance of the sexual union sometimes paralleling those outside of marriage: the act which is little more than an act of legalized rape in which there is no affection, to say nothing of love; the acts which positively exclude a real acceptance of the other person in the sense of accepting further responsibility for that person or any other person; acts which embody total acceptance of the other person and of the responsibilities which their mutual love entails; and finally that act which, as a real embodiment of their mutual self-giving love, consciously seeks to personify this love in a third person, as the communitarian love of the Father and the Son is personified in the third person of the Holy Spirit.
At this highest level, we have a love which seeks to love in the image and likeness of God, to be freely creative, a love which is Christian for it incarnates itself, not shrinking from the self-sacrifice which will undoubtedly follow from this “incarnation,” this expression of their love through a bodily giving of self. What must be understood in all of this is that the marital act is meant to be the bodily expression of the personal love between the two persons, an expression of their union with each other through a mutual giving of self.
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Comment by Fr. Virtue: “When I was consultor to Bishop Myers in Peoria I recommended every seminarian read John’s book [Sex and the Marriage Covenant], and the Bishop gave copies to them to read so that as future parish priests they would appreciate Holy Matrimony. It is significant that John was ahead or at least in line with two other major theologians of our time — John Paul II on the theology of the body, and Scott Hahn on the theology of the covenant — and that John has synthetically brought these two lines of doctrine together and in his application of them to the sacraments of Holy Matrimony and its relation to the Holy Eucharist. This is one of the major developments of the theology of Matrimony in the history of theology.” June 4, 2007
Tomorrow, July 21, this article continues with a section on the renewal of the covenant.
John F Kippley
NFP International
www.NFPandmore.org
Sex and the Marriage Covenant: A Basis for Morality