Mystery of Woman Revealed in Motherhood
by Pope John Paul II from this General Audience on 12 March 1980. Read text via EWTN.
It’s good for us to situate these words of Pope John Paul II in his 21st catechesis. We are in part I of Man and Woman He Created Them a Theology of the Body, chapter 1 “Christ Appeals to the Beginning”, Number 6 of that chapter “Knowledge and Procreation”. And in this section Pope John Paul II is going over three (3) parts of that number 6 of chapter 1: “Knowledge as Personal Archetype”, “Fatherhood and Motherhood as the Human Meaning of Knowledge”, and “Knowledge and Possession”.
Over ten (10) times Pope John Paul II focuses on “knowledge” in this 21st catechesis. He again analyzes “knowledge.” He went over it in the last catechesis. “Yada”, the Hebrew word “to know”: “Adam knew his wife and she conceived.” Knowledge is not just what we know rationally speaking: 2 + 2 = 4, Washington D.C. is the capital of the United States, Nashville is the capital of Tennessee, George Washington was our first President in the United States of America. These are things we know but there is a different knowledge. The knowledge between husband and wife, heart to heart, and carnal knowledge: the knowledge of husband and wife when they make love.
Knowledge establishes a kind of personal archetype. Pope John Paul II cites Carl Gustav Jung, He is not endorsing all of Jung’s work obviously, but whatever insights he can garner. John Paul II even points out that Freud doesn’t use the archetypical terminology but the reality is there nonetheless even in Freud and so there you have it.
What made man different from the other animals? His ability to know, he is able to differentiate one creature from another: this is a giraffe, this is a lion, this is a trout, this is a salmon, this is an amazon parrot, this is a sparrow. The birds of the air, the beasts of the field, the fish of the sea; they recognize each other perhaps at least as predator or not. But can they classify them as we are able to classify them? Study them as we are able to study them? Heal them or cure them as we are able to in our veterinary sciences? Our ability to abstract, to apply universals and to share knowledge; abstract knowledge makes us different. We are able to not just to build a house or a structure but an igloo, or a sky scraper, or a brick house, or a teepee… All of these are human dwelling places. But sparrows only make sparrow homes and beavers or make beaver homes. You see what I am getting at.
Knowledge is a basis for the original solitude and the Holy Father had treated original solitude earlier and it was based on this ability to know. Adam recognized he was not like all the other creatures and it was then that he discovered his wife Eve. “This one at last bone of my bone” but the two of them together were still unlike any other creature on the face of the Earth. And they are different because they were made in the image of God. Male and Female they were made in the image of God and that is still true for us today.
Pope John Paul II in this 21st catechesis speaks to us about reciprocal knowledge. The reciprocal knowledge of the husband and the wife: the knower and the known. At first he just says “the husband knows the wife and the wife is known” but later he points out that it is also vice versa, there is reciprocity here. Sometimes you meet a couple and they are able to finish each others’ sentences after so many years of Holy Marriage. This is just one aspect of reciprocal knowledge. Pope John Paul II in this 21st catechesis of the Theology of the Body Man and Woman He Created Them speaks of “external” and “internal”, “inside” and “outside”, as sorts of knowledge of the other. This reciprocal knowledge, of husband for wife, and wife for husband, externally or from the outside: the bodily constitution, the bio-physiological, the build, the form, of one and of the other, but within or the inside knowledge of motherhood, of fatherhood, maternity, paternity. This is a different sort of knowledge and the fruit of the aforementioned knowledge. “Adam knew his wife.” Knowledge is not just what can be quantified not just empirical sciences.
Pope John Paul II in this 21st catechesis instructs us that knowledge conditions begetting and this harkening back to Genesis. “Adam knew his wife and she conceived.” To beget is to conceive, to bring into being, to “get” into being – be-get. When we speak in sacred theology about the processions of the Persons of the Trinity, the eternal Son of the eternal Father is “not created but begotten.” Mysterious, an eternal begetting. When speaking about motherhood and knowledge about motherhood Pope John Paul II again returns to the exterior constitution, the exterior knowledge of the woman’s body of the look of the woman of the quality of the woman of the power of her perennial attraction. These are four (4) different aspects which surely do not exhaust the knowledge of a mother or of a woman. But here we see indications given by the Holy Father. While he does not focus on it here, the same can be done in regards to the father, to the man.
Pope John Paul II speaks to us in this 21st catechesis of the “tree of knowledge of good and evil.” And this tree of the knowledge of good and evil is not just something from the Garden of Eden. Oh no, we know that the Cross of Christ Jesus crucified and glorified is the definitive tree of the knowledge of good and evil, is the definitive tree of everlasting life. And we receive the fruit of this tree at the Eucharistic sacrifice which makes it present. When Christ gave up His life’s blood for His bride Mother Church whom He knows intimately, a knowledge which is fruitful, by which He brings us into our being adopted sons and daughters of God most high, adopted brothers and sisters of Christ the Lord. This is the Theology of the Body. The body of Christ Himself born of the Virgin Mary, the body of Christ which is Mother Church born from Christ’s pierced side.
In treating knowledge again Pope John Paul II in this 21st catechesis of Man and Woman He Created Them, a Theology of the Body he reminds us that “knowledge establishes a new human being in existence.” The fruit of the parents’ love, mommy and daddy, the husband and the wife, they give the body but God gives the soul. A new being, one who never has been before, who can never be repeated. This is what is special in “procreation.” In the fruit of this love for husband and wife, this knowledge, establishes a new human being in existence.
Twice in this 21st catechesis Pope John Paul II identifies his subject, the Theology of the Body. He says of the Theology of the Body in this catechesis that the meaning of the human body is understood from the beginning. That is the Theology of the Body, that there is meaning to the human body and that the human body is and can be understood from the beginning. Theology is the science of God. Theos – God, ology is the study of. So the Theology of the Body studies the human body in light of divine revelation. “Of old through the prophets and in the fullness of time through Christ.” Christ who reveals not only God to us but us to ourselves (GS, 22). From whence we come from where we hope to go. “Where he has gone we hope to follow.”
The 2nd reference Pope John Paul II makes in this 21st catechesis of Man and Woman He Created Them the Theology of the Body reminds us that the Theology of the Body is contained in Genesis. It is concise. It is sparing in words. It is primary and it is definitive. Concise: short, sweet, and to the point. God is not verbose. Perhaps your radio preacher is but God hits right to the heart, straight to core of the issue. Sparing in words: no fluff. Genesis is the primary text, the primary source. This radio broadcast, these podcasts, this is not the primary source. Even Pope John Paul II’s great master work Theology of the Body is not the primary source. The primary source is Genesis, the inspired Word of God. This is where we delve into the mystery of creation and redemption. This is where we delve into the mystery of our very being made in the image of God. The Theology of the Body is contained in Genesis and it is definitive. It was not only true for Thomas Aquinas in 1274. It was not only true for Gregory the Great or Augustine in centuries before him. It was not only true for the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). It is true for all ages from the first time those inspired words were consigned to writing until the consummation of the age (no pun intended). Until Christ returns in glory the Theology of the Body based in these sacred words of Genesis stands. “Heaven and Earth will pass away but My Word will not pass away.” This is the Word of God, God who is eternal, God who has made us for Himself, God in Whose image we are made.
There are those and there have been those who would discount the Sacred Scriptures, the inspired Word of God, the Holy Bible, Genesis, but Pope John Paul II is not one of those and please God neither are you. For my part I stand with the Pope.
Pope John Paul II in this 21st catechesis on Man and Woman He Created Them the Theology of the Body anticipates his later papal magisterium. He delivered these Wednesday addresses in the opening years of this pontificate. As Bishop of Rome he catechized the faithful, which ever portion of the faithful were present for those Wednesday audiences. Other presentations of his pastoral ministry, his ministry of service to the whole Church, include his letters written on different occasions: On the Redeemer of Man – Redemptor Hominis, On the Salvific Nature of Suffering – Salvifici Doloris, On the Diginity and Vocation of Women – Mulieris Diginitatem. This is all anticipated in this catechesis Theology of the Body. I say it is in anticipation of Mulieris Diginitatem because Pope John Paul II reminds us in this catechesis that “the mystery of femininity is manifest and revealed in its full depth through motherhood.” Pope John Paul II further praises woman in this passage of his 21st catechesis on the Theology of the Body in regards to the mother of God, the Virgin Mary. Pope John Paul II cites the Gospel of St. Luke 11:27 when a woman cried out, “Blessed the womb that bore you and the breast from which you sucked” and identifies these words as a “eulogy of motherhood of femininity.”
Pope John Paul II not only wrote Mulieris Diginitatem – On the Dignity and Vocation of Woman but he also wrote about the Mother of God – Mater Redemptoris. So we can see that the thought expressed in the Theology of the Body is not unrelated to the rest of his magisterial work. His teaching the Christian faith, “to confirm the brethren in the faith” as our Lord commanded Saint Peter. But while the Holy Father praises the Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, while he praises the dignity and vocation of Woman, he also acknowledges that man’s masculinity, his paternity, his generative powers are likewise no less mysterious because the man is made in the image of God and the woman made in the image of God, both reciprocally even though God is a spirit. Our souls, the spiritual “part” of our being which give us our ability to know and to love, this is the part of our being in the image of God before the Incarnation even. And then Christ received His flesh from His Blessed Mother and now in His glorified body He awaits the sound of the trumpet. We await His return in glory to judge the living and the dead. And to the extent that we put the Theology of the Body in to practice, to the extent that we know our faith and live our faith, acting accordingly, it will go well with us.
Pope John Paul II in this 21st catechesis of Man and Woman He Created Them the Theology of the Body reminds us that “though the body the human person is husband, wife”, we are embodied spirits. I am not just my body. I am not just my soul. We are body/soul composites. The body reveals the person he says elsewhere.
In this 21st catechesis the Holy Father speaks to us about the dignity of procreation. The husband and the wife, the father and the mother, they are a part of the procreation. God gives the soul. God gives the soul. God gives the soul. But the husband and the wife they give the matter and the proper place for conception is not a glass dish in a lab somewhere but in the womb of the mother as a consequence of the nuptial embrace. This is part of the Theology of the Body. The dignity of procreation, of begetting procreation. In this way “the mystery of creation” is “renewed in human generation.” That is part of God’s divine plan.