- NATIONAL CATHOLIC REGISTER - Shemaiah Gonzalez - MAY 4, 2023 -
‘Man is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day’ (Catechism 364)
My preteen boys’ bodies are changing. They are both, now, taller than me — and I am not a short woman. Their feet are unusually disproportionate to the rest of their bodies, so much so that my husband and I call them Puppy Feet. They have begun to stink at unexpected times and have sprouted unruly hairs across their face. It is glorious.
So many of our conversations are about their bodies. Bodies to yourself and Gentle touching, I say, as if they are toddlers once again and we need to teach them boundaries again. Because we do. This is new uncharted territory for them.
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They are aware of their classmates’ changing bodies too. I notice curiosity between all these children, moving into adulthood. I also notice how many dislike and distrust their bodies.
I remember that awkward time of adolescence, when I loathed what my body was doing — but these children are up against something different.
They are hearing a lie that their bodies are not good. That these bodies are malleable. That they can change their sex, an intrinsic aspect of who they are. They hear this from grownups, through media and from their peers. They are even hearing this from adults in some churches, who think they are being compassionate by spreading these lies.
When my sons bring home snippets of these evil lies, I remind them about the Incarnation. The beautiful mystery that the God of the universe loved us so much, he chose to become a man with a body. In doing this he showed us that our body and spirit are connected. And that our bodies are holy.
St. Paul reminds us, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, that our body and spirit are connected to Christ. This is why we should not do harmful things to our bodies or the bodies of others.
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you?” St. Paul implores us. The reality is that our bodies are “not our own” (1 Corinthians 6) but belong to Christ through his act of redemption.
I think back to the Garden of Eden. Before the snake and sin, Adam and Eve talked to God just as they did to each other. They “were both naked, yet they felt no shame” (Genesis 2). It was only when sin entered the world that they felt shame over their bodies. Shame was a result of sin, separating us from God.
And yet, we still bear God’s Image, the Imago Dei within us. We were tenderly created, our sex, whether we are an introvert or extrovert, the spiritual gifts we have been given, so that there can never be someone else like us. We cannot be duplicated.
When we allow ourselves to experience God’s love for us, it brings freedom. We are able to care more tenderly for this body he has given us — this temple of the Holy Spirit. We are able to see ourselves more clearly … as God sees us.
St. Paul understood this. He saw how pagan thought and rituals had pervaded the early Church. He witnessed the definitions of love and sex become warped and distorted, to the point that both became evil. He wrote to the Romans and told them to offer their bodies as “living sacrifices” as part of their “worship.”