Today in the calendar of the Church we celebrate the Solemnity of The Most Holy Trinity. It is a great feast day for the pro-life movement.
In our understanding of the Trinity, the Father gives Himself totally to the Son, and the Son gives Himself totally to the Father. In this reciprocal act of radical self-donation made in Love, the Holy Spirit of God is generated. The Church holds out sacramental marriage as an icon, a window, into the inner life of the Trinity.
The mutual submission of husbands and wives to one another of which Saint Paul speaks is not the servile condition that radical feminism would have us believe. It is rather the same total emptying of self, the same radical self-donation as characterizes the inner life of God. In that complete giving and receiving of self between spouses, there can be no barriers. In that self-donation, new life is generated as the product of spousal love.
The Church teaches contraception as an intrinsic evil precisely because it is an assault on our imitation of the inner life of the Trinity, because it is an assault on our fertility, of our capacity to generate new life as the expression of our love. It is a barrier that is out of sync with the natural rhythms of human fertility and its cycles. Natural Family Planning takes into view those cycles and does not erect such barriers as to make of marital union a mere plaything devoid of openness and responsibility.
Sterile marriages, marriages that are parsimonious in their approach to love and its fullest expressions beyond the bedroom, that are even hostile to life, are marriages that reject the paradigm of the inner life of the Trinity. The four Gospels are nothing, if they are not one long revelation into the inner life of the Trinity. As Jesus said, “As the Father has loved me {completely}, so I have loved you {completely}.” and “Love one another as I have loved you,” which is to say, completely and selflessly.
So God gives us marriage that we might have a vehicle through which we learn to love, mirroring the example set by the inner Life of the Trinity. God is truly three persons in one entity because that oneness comes about through radical, mutual self-donation. That’s how the two become one in marriage: two persons, one in mind and heart, and even almost in being. And in those best of marriages where self-donation comes closest to perfection, we have reflected for us the inner life of the Trinity. This is what Jesus was getting at in His prayer to the Father in John 17:
20″My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: 23I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. 24″Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. 25″Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. 26I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
This model of the Trinity in our lives works when we ask the Holy Spirit of God to move in us, in our marriages. It works when we ask the Spirit to teach us wisdom and love, when we are prepared to abandon sin and empty our lives of all impediments that lead us to parsimony, rather than openness.
Especially openness to Life.
The priest celebrating the mass I attended this morning made many of the exact same points, about the meaning of this feast day, the meaning of love, and marriage (he happens to be the priest in charge of Marriage Encounter at our parish).
Believe it or not, even though my husband isn’t a Christian, and doesn’t go to mass with me, a great deal of it was still applicable.
(The NFP part, though, is strictly a Catholic thing.)
Beautifully said Doc. Thank you for the direction as I prepare myself for the Mass today. Often, in our parish I feel very separated from the new evangelization and the movement of the modern Church. Interesting, my husband and I were talking about this very issue last night. In Him, V.
Best paragraph ever:
“The mutual submission of husbands and wives to one another of which Saint Paul speaks is not the servile condition that radical feminism would have us believe. It is rather the same total emptying of self, the same radical self-donation as characterizes the inner life of God. In that complete giving and receiving of self between spouses, there can be no barriers. In that self-donation, new life is generated as the product of spousal love.”
And not happening today in many marriages, although I’m betting most aren’t aware of it. NFP aids considerably in the self-giving necessary for a good marriage. It also helps develop trust in each other and in God’s will for the couple.
As a former NFP teacher I’d also like to add that many of my “clients” were from faiths other than Catholic. The only difficulty I had was that I had to turn down those who weren’t married.
Thank you Gerard for this post that was inspired by the Holy Spirit!
Very thoughtful, thanks for that.
In her day, Blessed Theresa of Calcutta instituted NFP classes to poor couples of all faiths in Calcutta (Catholics are a minority there, of course) with great success. When I have mentioned NFP people automatically think of the old rhythm method, which then led to discussions about respect of one’s fertility leading to respect and love for the whole human person. In this blog the good doctor has shown the link between breast cancer and the pill. So, a method of fertility control that is natural in my humble opinion should be a welcomed alternative to any present day pharmaceutical regimen.
Rev USMC,
The rhythm method is to NFP, what a kazoo is to a symphony orchestra!
God Bless.
I have read recently two interesting reports on contraception:
1. the first says that some form of contraception is almost universal in use among women today – that is about 99 percent of women are contracepting..
2. That for the first time since the advent of the birth control pill, many women are dissatisfied with the pill and are not using it, instead opting for other less harmful types of contraception.
There is a very interesting article on Mercator Net about how we have “forgotten” the connection between sexuality and fertility and that we live in a culture of “forgetfulness”.
“What happens when our clinicians succeed in their enforced forgetting and we can, as a society, essentially cede our need for reflection and live in blissful forgetfulness that once, long ago, fertility required intelligence, thought, action, deliberation, memory, forbearance, patience, forgiveness, and love?”
I think this is one of the most important things NFP does for couples – it helps them remember their bodies and the reasons sexuality was given to us by our loving God.
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/05/1341
NFP:
My husband and I went in for my 38 wk. check-up the other day. Our OB asked what birth control we’ll be using. – I was kinda surprised, and answered, “We’re using NFP” to which she replied with a questioning/ almost horrified look, “What’s NFP?”
So my husband and I look at each other and we’re like “what? or doc doesn’t know what NFP IS?”
So, I explain it’s short for Natural Family Planning. And she says,
“What’s that?, like the withdrawal method?” to which I definately give her an astonished, horrified look and am so flabbergasted that I ask my husband to explain. And we also explain that to get married in the Catholic Church, most diocese require it, that we’re super excited to be using nfp coupled w. Ecological Breastfeeding for our family planning.
We discussed it later and my husband wasn’t really that surprised; a regular ob probably just isn’t taught “birth control” from an nfp perspective, so where would she have gotten the info?- unless she happened to be a Christian, or maaaaybe have worked abroad with WHO for instance.
Still glad we got the opportunity to promote nfp and the Church’s stance on it here- to clarify both for at least our uninformed ob.
Victoria Falls,
NFP just isn’t taught to medical students as a matter of course-work. It’s wrapped up in anti-religious bigotry.
My prayers for a smooth delivery and happy homecoming.
good heavens Victoria your ob must have had a complete mental breakdown when you mentioned natural family planning AND ecological breastfeeding in the same discussion…..