How to get a head
From
today's readings: "For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom,
but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to
Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power
of God and the wisdom of God.... The earth is full of the goodness of the
Lord.... Herod was the one who had John the Baptist arrested and bound in
prison, on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip, whom he had
married.... "
St. John the Baptist
denounced Herod with the charge, "It is not lawful for you to have your
brother's wife." For that, Herod imprisons him and eventually beheads him.
While everyone is rightly disgusted by the tyrant's brutality, so many people today
are nearly as shocked by the saint's morality! Sexual excesses and perversions
have become so commonplace it's almost ludicrous to imagine anyone putting his
head on the line over such a relatively petty affair.
But John is honored by the Church as a
martyr, not as an out-of-touch prissy busybody. Which means what was important
to him (the truth which he gave witness to with his very life!) ought also to
be important to you and me. So then, how did the immorality of the "sexual
revolution" take root so completely that St. John's witness to unchanging truth
appears obsolete and pointless to so many? The answer is: dualism!
On August 15th, the feast of the
Assumption of Mary body and soul into Heaven, I mentioned that we must be on
guard against dualism, this temptation to view the body and soul as mutually
incompatible, radically opposed or at odds with one another. One of the
painfully obvious ways that dualism has infiltrated modern thinking is in the
area of sexual ethics. When people argue, "If it feels good, do it!"
or "Anything goes as long as no one gets hurt!" they are spouting
dualistic thought by divorcing spiritual morals and ideals from bodily actions.
On the other hand, when we recall that
God created (and redeemed!) us body AND soul, then it's plain to see that our
whole selves (body AND soul) are subject to God's dominion. In this matter, St. Paul reminds us that
things are pretty clear, "This is the will of God, your holiness: that you
refrain from immorality..."
Note that Jesus, St.
John, St. Paul,
and the Church have all been tyranically shut up, not so much for prudishly
decrying the filth of sexual immorality, as for prophetically extolling the
beauty of sexual morality: "For God did not call us to impurity, but to
holiness!" (1Thes 4:7). Isn't it time for you and me (and everyone!) to
start living up to God's noble plan for us, body and soul?