This week, as I see it, the human body has been glorified over centuries of despitefulness. Today, Pope John Paul II has been declared Blessed, confirming the spiritual authority of His teachings. Catholics, Christians and all human beings, independent of their belief and culture, are in urgent need to discover His vision of the human body. There is no greater dignity for the body of every human being than the one revealed by God in Holy Scriptures, especially in the humanity of Jesus Christ, as unfolded to us in the last thirty years through Blessed John Paul II.

Last Tuesday (26th April), the so called “re-incarnated” body of Sai Baba was buried in India. He was born as Sathyanarayana Raju, in 1926, 8 years after the death of a great Indian guru named Sai Baba. At the age of fourteen, Sathyanarayana, announced that he was actually the re-incarnation of Sai Baba, and became to be know as such also. There are religions and sects that believe in the re-incarnation; a believe that in the past few years has been spreading even in western and Christian culture. There is no doubt another vision of man and the human body, one that is totally alien to the Christian vision. The re-incarnation renders the body nothing more than an instrument that has no value in itself. It is like a bottle containing perfume; when it is broken and the perfume spreads, one seeks to collect the perfume and put it in another bottle.

This vision of man and the human body is very much related to a deeper distortion that is more common even among Christians. It is the dualistic vision of man as body (made of matter) and soul (made of spirit). Carried to the extreme, this dualistic vision despises the body because matter is imperfect and evil, and exalts the soul because the spirit is good and perfect. This vision leads man either to repress the body and embraces angelism, or to give in to all instincts of the body debasing himself to bestiality.

We need to rediscover the Biblical vision of man, especially of the human body. Pope John Paul II is the prophet of this rediscovery. Between September 1979 and November 1984, He delivered 129 discourse during the Wednesday Audience about what is known as the Theology of the Body. During these reflections He helps us to discover how God reveals Himself in man, created in His own “image and likeness”. He helps us to get the vision of God for man, not as a composition of two, or three elements, but as a unified being and reality. He helps us to appreciate the dignity of the human body, which cannot be separated from his soul. In fact, all separation of body and soul is the main purpose of the Prince of Lies, the Prince of Darkness, leading to sin and death. Sin is like going away from God’s vision of man and the human body, leading to death and utter separation.

Christianity believes only in one Incarnation: that of the Son of God “becoming flesh”. This is quite different than somebody abandoning his body to take another body. It is God Himself (the Son of God) becoming man, giving man a greater dignity than that man already had. The Incarnation of the Son of God is the marriage of the human and the divine. In the Body of Christ God reveals Himself as the eternal Bridegroom giving Himself out of Love for humanity. And at the same time, in the Body of Christ humanity receives God’s eternal Love like a bride totally open to Him. Pope John Paul II affirms the beauty and sanctity of the human body as male and female, and lets the glory of the human body shines.

What a pity for all the billion viewers who followed the pageantry of the royal marriage between Prince William and Cathrine Middleton, that happened to take place even this week (on Friday 30th April), to let themselves be arrested by the colors and the sound of the event and miss the real and profound meaning of the marriage between a man and a women, becoming “one body” forever. During the ceremony, there was even one interviewer on an international radio station asking his guest what are her predictions for the success of this marriage!

Let us pray, through the intercession of Blessed John Paul II, that as people venerate the remains of His body, exposed at St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the glory of the human body be celebrated and the Holy Spirit overcome the ignorance, the use and abuse of the human body, and fill each and every human being, beginning with Catholics and Christians, with the gifts of wisdom to understand the teachings of this Great Pope until the real dignity of the human being, the human body, and the indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman may shine and reflect God’s Love. Amen

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