T
the-3rd-parent
Guest
This is my reflection on the martial act. It comes from a lot of influences including our Late Holy Father’s the Theology of the Body as well as insights I’ve received in meditative prayer. I’ve read over what I just typed and I’m not sure how well together everything fits, but my formation with you as I have struggled putting all of this in my own words.
There is nothing wrong with enjoying sex nor do you have to have the intention of having a child at the moment you are having sex when you do. Lust is not the desire to enjoy sex. Lust is what moves us to pervert sex. It is not an emotion but a part of concupience. It distorts the intellect and prevents it from seeing the fullness.It is just as much oversimplifying it to say it is only for procreation as it is to say it is only for pleasure. Marriage is for the begetting and rearing of children, more over for the fostering of those children’s faith formation.
Sex, on the other hand, becomes what can be called the sacramental act of the marriage. It bonds the two people together, it opens the husband and wife to the potentiality of children, and it becomes an emotional and physical sign of the unity of the couple, the oneness of husband and wife. This unity is a reflection of the unity of God, and it is expressed in sex. Chaste marital sex mimics the image of God, an image of love which is a thing of constant self donation.
For instance, you can contemplate the oneness of a God in Three persons next to the unity of husband and wife. I believe understanding this comes from an understanding that Love requires persons to give themselves completely to the other and then connecting that with the notion that God IS love.
This exchange of love between the Father and the Son, the movement between them, the love between them is what we call the Holy Spirit. When the Father gives himself to the Son, He gives the Holy Spirit and when the Son gives himself to the Father, He gives the Holy Spirit. Likewise, when the Father gives Himself to us, we receive the Holy Spirit. And it is in the gift of the Holy Spirit, to the Blessed Virgin, that she bore the Son, Jesus, who is completely God and completely flesh, and God Himself.
Granted, we cannot think of God as Sex. We must think of Him as Love. Remember that we MIMIC and REFLECT his image but we do not become God or a god in the partaking of sex. To dismantle sex into a mere satisfying of our urges, dismantles the meaning of sex which reflects the nature of our God. So for those who say God doesn’t belong in the bedroom, that is the place he belongs the most, for that is the place where we either desecrate the image of God or where we reflect God in a way that we cannot do as mere individuals.