“The Marquis de Sade would be very pleased today. The body has been totally emptied of moral worth or significance. Today it’s used as a billboard for advertising.”
Strong words from a great observer of contemporary culture, Mr. William Holland.
Bill and I have been friends since college and I have always found him to be ten steps ahead with his assessments and insights. Bill and I have worked with young people our entire adult lives, and listen carefully to what they have to say.
A critical mass in this generation has assimilated the propaganda from the Culture of Death. “It’s MY body, I can do what I want with it.” There is some truth in that. Just enough to sweeten the arsenic.
My body is mine. It is an integral part of me, my identity as a being. I don’t simply inhabit this body of mine in some dualist fashion. It is an integral part of my being. So much so that at the Judgement I will receive a resurrected and glorified body that will remain with me into eternity. Jesus didn’t let his body moulder away, God happy to be rid of the mortal encumbrance. He took that human body with Him into eternity, so integral is it to the human nature He took to Himself.
It is my body. And I am free to do with it as I will, so long as that will, that conscience is a fully informed will and conscience. That’s the essence of free will. We come back again to the issue of ‘choice’. Where young people go horribly wrong is in not understanding that moral decisions must be informed decisions and choices.
When conscience is fully informed, accompanied by an obedient disposition, the moral imperative becomes irresistible.
Saint Paul gives us that imperative in 1 Corinthians 6: 13-20,
“The body is not meant for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
[14] And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.
[15] Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!
[16] Do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two shall become one flesh.”
[17] But he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.
[18] Shun immorality. Every other sin which a man commits is outside the body; but the immoral man sins against his own body.
[19] Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own;
[20] you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
Seems simple and straightforward enough. So what’s being missed here?
An obedient disposition born of a sense of identity and belonging. Far too many are estranged from God and seek their identity through corporeal associations, such as sexual unions, through narcissistic subcultures that glorify the self through the body.
STD’s, abortions, depression and suicide afflict far too many, deepening the alienation and isolation that have led people into these lifestyles in the first place.
The solution is easier said than done: Joyful Evangelization.
That means the fruits of our words must be evident in our lives, and written all over our bodies in an authentically peaceful countenance.
