All the Way Down to the Genitalia

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

BEGGING your pardon for that rather naughty title of this piece, what I would like to bring out is that if we truly have the Christian spirit, that spirit should animate not only our spiritual soul but also our body all the way to our sexuality as represented by our genitalia where the crudest and strongest forms of our animality are found.

That’s because our Christianity should not only be a spiritual affair. It has to impact the whole man, body and soul. Let’s remember that man is always a unity of body and soul. He is not just pure body nor pure spiritual soul. And as our Catechism teaches us, the body, properly animated by the spiritual soul, shares in the dignity of the “image of God.” (cfr. CCC 364)

We can say that once our sexuality is animated by the Christian spirit, we truly can consider ourselves as authentic and consistent Christian. That’s because our sexuality can be regarded as the last frontier where the Christian spirit has to conquer. And it’s not an easy frontier to conquer at all. It requires tremendous effort and a special kind of grace from God.

Christianizing our human sexuality is not simply a matter of living chastity in the level of continence alone, where we can manage to be protected and to avoid falling into sin. It involves nothing less than making it a powerful means to show our love for God and for everybody else. Its instincts and passions should be trained in the ways of loving and glorifying God and of loving and serving everybody else.

We need to see to it that our body, and specifically our sexuality, is properly animated by the spirit of Christ, which is a spirit of love, a spirit of self-giving, willing to make sacrifices even up to death for love of God and of everybody else. This spirit of Christ should be felt in the body. And let’s convince ourselves that it is in this way that our body and our sexuality acquire their best condition.

We indeed need to sanctify sex which means that we understand its purpose and use according to God’s will and law about it. It should be trained to behave according to God’s will and law about it. Ideally, every time we feel the urgings of sex, we should always get the sensation of loving God and others. It’s in this way that we can discipline it and put it on its right place and path.

But, of course, given our wounded nature, where it is very vulnerable to just follow the blind and erratic ways of our hormones and other earthly factors, we really need God’s grace, first of all, and our all-out effort to attain its ideal condition.

Given how difficult this task can be, we have to understand that we may have to resort to some extraordinary means to keep our sexuality in its proper condition. In this regard, a saint once said: “To defend his purity, St. Francis of Assisi rolled in the snow, St. Benedict threw himself into a thorn bush, St. Bernard plunged into an icy pond…” (Escriva, The Way 143) We should not be averse to resort to these means when necessary.

We have to understand then that we can only put our sexuality in its proper place and on its proper path when it is lived in the context of a working piety, a living and loving relation with God that is supported by prayers, sacrifices, recourse to the sacraments, ongoing formation, spiritual accompaniment, etc.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com