But then man denies the gift of God and fails to be a gift to the other. It is at this stage that lust and shame enter the picture. We don’t want to be used. We want to be respected and loved. Shame is the defense mechanism against being used or being looked upon as someone whom others use only for their own pleasure.

So the human body has a “spousal meaning”. It exists not only for material support of the soul, but as an expression and reflection of God. The body of the human person speaks about God being love. Sex, then, is not something “merely permitted for the sake of something else” but a celebration of God’s being and an exercise in self-giving and mutual receiving between spouses.

Who we can become: redeemed and transformed by Christ

But in “the kingdom” there will be no human marriage because the ultimate fulfillment of salvation is “the Wedding of the Lamb”. Human marriages give way to The Marriage, the marriage of Christ and His Church. This is why “there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:12).

Celibacy is not the opposite of marriage. It is a different expression of the same thing. Marriage is the self-giving between spouses as a sacrament of God’s self-giving, while celibacy lives out here on earth our ultimate self-giving to God. Celibacy reminds marriage of its ultimate purpose; marriage reminds celibacy of its spousal meaning.

Spouses, then, are meant to live marriage not under the dominion of their disordered inclinations, but as new, redeemed creatures. Marriage, then, is freed from the power play of domination, and becomes a new language of relationship where husband and wife enjoy equal rights though different roles (Ephesians 5:29-33) as complementary members of the same flesh. The husband is called to serve the wife as Jesus serves the Church as her head. The wife is called to reflect in her love the docility of the Church to Christ. This is no battle of the sexes but an exercise in mutual sanctification. In this sense, married couples share in the prophetic role of the Church, proclaiming with their flesh the love of God for his people.

Christian living, then, is not a system of obligations; it is liberation and empowerment. Purifying love of its disorders, Christ calls husband and wife to participate in a kind of liturgy. “The marital bed can be viewed as an altar upon which spouses offer their bodies in living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. This is their spiritual act of worship”, Pope John Paul II said.