United States Catholic Catechism for Adults

Chapter 30. Sixth Commandment: Marital Fidelity • 413

Shame may enter the relationship. St. John Paul II notes there is an instinctive shame that can ward off utilitarian sex. Shame leads the woman to protect herself from the aggressive, lustful sexuality of the man. In the opposite case, shame causes the man to resist a sexual advance from the woman that is merely lustful. God calls for spousal love as the remedy for moving beyond the sex appeal of the body alone to its nuptial meaning, revealing the person as made in his image. The Redemption of the Body St. John Paul II retrieves the nuptial meaning of the body by taking us back to life before the Fall, to a time of original innocence and original nakedness. The first man and woman did not experience any shame in their nakedness because the attraction of male and female served love alone. This was more than virtuous self-control. The man and woman dwelt so intimately in their bodies that each body expressed to the other the beauty of the human person and the image of God. Bodily sexuality was integrated into the energy of spousal love. Original Sin caused a rupture in the unity of body and soul. The body now could obscure as well as reveal the person. Christ’s saving act included the redemption of the body by which he restored the lost unity of soul and body. This is a process of restoration , partly completed here and fully restored in the next life. While there will not be marriage in the future life, masculinity and femininity will endure. St. John Paul II relates this to consecrated celibacy and virginity in which the nuptial meaning of the body is not denied. The body’s nuptial meaning serves love in ways other than marriage. We seldom do justice to the ways in which our bodies share in and reveal our interior personal lives. We have drawn attention here to St. John Paul II’s meditation on the nuptial meaning of the body because we believe it is a vision of sex, marriage, and the person best suited to rebuilding a wholesome, faith-filled, and loving approach to these most precious gifts. 15

15 See St. John Paul II, Love and Responsibility (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1981); and his Original Unity of Man and Woman: Catechesis on the Book of Genesis (Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1981).