The Deacon

By Katrina J. Zeno, MTS

This three-word statement constitutes the original proclamation of the Good News by the infant Church. It was, however, such impossibly Good News that the disciples refused to believe it. Yet once their eyes were opened by seeing the Risen Christ and experiencing His resurrected body, everything changed: Jesus truly is the Son of God! Insightfully, Dr. Peter Kreeft and Fr. Ron Tacelli identify how the resurrection moves our hearts from Jesus as a moral teacher to Divine Son: “Every sane person knows we should love our neighbor. The [good] news was that a man who claimed to be the Son of God and the Savior of the world had risen from the dead. This is the message that set hearts on fire, changed lives, and turned the world upside down.”

This same Risen Message still sets hearts on fire, changes lives, and turns our materialistic world upside-down no matter what time in the Liturgical Year we proclaim it. However, the months of March and April provide the ideal time to meditate and preach on God’s unimaginable and eternal plan for the risen human body as we journey through Lent, the Annunciation, Holy Week, and the Easter Season – guided by insights from St. John Paul II and his theology of the body.

Although not usually perceived this way, the catechetical heart of John Paul II’s teaching is a robust, Trinitarian anthropology and a sacramental understanding of human embodiment. Put in more ordinary terms, theology of the body unfolds the temporal and eternal meaning of the human body as one that is deeply sacramental and spousal for everyone.

As a deacon, you are uniquely positioned to bring the Good News of the sacramental and spousal meaning of the body to everyone. Through ordination, you participate in the invisible reality of being conformed to Christ the Servant; however, you also invest in the visible reality of the temporal realm as a servant-leader in secular business and the pastoral life of the Church. You bridge not only Church and society, but you also bridge ordained ministry and marriage. Spousal love informs your ordained ministry and ordained ministry informs your spousal love as you journey toward Christian holiness.

This pathway to holiness is placed before us in the gospel for the first Saturday of Lent, which ends with Matthew 5:48: “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” We often equate this Scripture with flawless perfectionism and performance, when, in fact, it unveils the nature of God. God is perfect, whole, complete, lacking nothing because He is a Trinitarian union and communion of Persons. This means our call to perfection is to participate perfectly in the inner life of the Trinity.

The first sentence of the Catechism announces this truth: “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life” (CCC 1, emphasis added). A bit later, the Catechism underscores the Trinitarian nature of this eternal plan: “[God’s] will was that men should have access to the Father, through Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit, and thus become partakers in the divine nature” (CCC 51, cf. 2Pt1:4). To be perfect – to be whole, complete, and lacking in nothing – our human nature must reach the fullness of what it was created for by participating perfectly in the divine nature. And that leads us to the Incarnation.

Put simply, when the Second Person of the Trinity became flesh, divine nature was united to our human nature in a way that brought human nature to its perfection. Many Catholics think their embodied humanity must “get out of the way” so God’s perfect will can be done, but the Incarnation proves this is false. The Word enters into intimate union and communion with our humanity and then brings us into intimate union and communion with His glorified human body through the Sacraments. Therefore, if we can grasp the relationship between humanity and divinity in Jesus’ body, then we can see God’s embodied design for human nature reaching its perfection.

Let’s propose four possible ways human nature and divine nature could have related to each other in the Body of Christ:

Option #1: Divine nature absorbed human nature so that human nature disappeared into Divine nature and was irrelevant.

Option #2: Divine nature wrestled with human nature and eventually pinned it down so divinity could dominate our humanity and override its (dangerous) impulses.

Option #3: Divine nature combined with human nature in a side-by-side, half- God, half-man mixture, where each nature took turns acting its part.

Option #4: Divine nature united with human nature so that there was a perfect unity of the two, a perfect union in distinction.

Although most people think it’s Option #3, I hope you chose Option #4. In the Incarnation, God and man, divine nature and human nature, were so closely united as to be one flesh. The Incarnation, we could say, is a holy union and communion between divinity and humanity in the very Body of Christ. And in this divine-human union and communion, God and humanity are one and yet they remain distinctly two.

Does this remind you of something? It reminds me of marriage. Genesis 2:24 tells us the two “become one flesh.” And yet, in this spousal one-flesh union, husband and wife do not disappear into each other but retain their unique distinctiveness. The characteristics of each person are reverently preserved so that their spousal union brings husband and wife to full human and Christian flourishing and perfection.

Isn’t this spousal description the same way human nature and divine nature united intimately in the Body of Christ? As the incarnate Divine Bridegroom, Jesus unites our human nature to Himself so that the two become one body. The New Covenant of the Divine Bridegroom is the new, full actualization and revelation of God’s sacramental design for human nature – we were created to become one body, one-flesh, with God! St. Paul announced this New Spousal Covenant in Ephesians 5:31-32 when he wrote, “‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church.” Who is the Church? Every baptized person. Baptism not only forgives original sin and adopts us as a son or daughter of the Father, but we become partakers of the divine nature through our intimate union and communion with the glorified Body of Christ. “Already,” CCC 1617 says, “Baptism…is a nuptial mystery; it is, so to speak, the nuptial bath that precedes the wedding feast, the Eucharist.”

Let’s unfold the Scriptural logic: Baptism as a sacramental-spousal reality in which we become one body with Christ leads to the Eucharist as a sacramental-spousal reality in which we also become one body with Christ. The Catechism says, “The principal fruit of receiving the Eucharist…is an intimate union with Christ Jesus” (CCC 1391) and “Communion with the flesh of the risen Christ…preserves, increases, and renews the life of grace received in Baptism.” (CCC 1392)

If we trace our steps, we can see how the Incarnation as a sacramental-spousal holy union and communion between divine nature and human nature leads us to Baptism as a sacramental-spousal holy union and communion between each person and Christ, which leads us to the Eucharist as an even deeper sacramental-spousal holy union and communion between Christ the Bridegroom and each of us as the Church-Bride who receives the Gift of the Bridegroom so as to be one flesh with God.

This means every Sunday, and potentially every day, Catholics have the privilege of living and experiencing Ephesians 5:31-32. When the Eucharist is received into one’s own body, the Great Mystery happens in that person – our embodied person and the glorified Body of Christ present in the Eucharist become one body, one-flesh. And in this one-flesh Eucharistic union, the Divine Bridegroom doesn’t absorb our humanity or merely co-exist with us. Each person and Christ become one body, all the while remaining two in a spousal, sacramental union and communion. John Paul II beautifully captures this reality when he says, “The Eucharist is the Sacrament of our Redemption. It is the Sacrament of the Bridegroom and of the Bride” (Mulieris Dignitatem 26). Even more amazingly, the Eucharist is a foretaste of heaven.

The Eucharist is the pledge of our future bodily resurrection. This means Jesus Christ reveals not only God’s earthly plan for our lives but God’s eternal design for human nature through the resurrection of His Body. Every Easter, we celebrate not only Jesus’ glorified human body, but the promise of our bodily resurrection. At Jesus’ Second Coming, our body will be raised, glorified, and reunited to our soul as an embodied man or woman. And our glorified body will be in a holy union and communion with the glorified body of Christ for all eternity. We will finally “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” because we participate perfectly in the Divine Nature through our glorified body being “full of grace.” Hallelujah! We have reached faith’s goal.

What can you do practically to live and convey this sacramental-spousal meaning of human life and salvation?

1) Help Catholics of all ages to connect the Incarnation (Annunciation) with Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and the purpose of their human life. Walk them through Scripture and sacred art to show how the human body gifted to Jesus in the Incarnation is the same Body offered to us sacramentally in the Eucharist, given up for us on the cross on Good Friday, and raised on Easter Sunday. Only because Jesus’ body was raised and glorified on Easter Sunday by the power of the Holy Spirit can the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ at every mass by the power of the Holy Spirit. Be sure to sprinkle “holy union and communion” of our body with the glorified Body of Christ liberally throughout your preaching and teaching (and even casual conversations).

2) When you assist at the Eucharistic celebration, pause with new intentionality before mingling the water and wine in the sacred chalice. As you pray, “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity,” allow your heart to burn with new ardor as you carry out this sacramental sign of the Son of God becoming flesh so that you can participate in His divinity through your holy union and communion with His Glorified Humanity. You may even want to repeat to yourself, “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God” (St. Athanasius, quoted in CCC 460).

3) Extend the kerygma to include the Ascension. Vatican II’s Christocentric anthropology articulated in Gaudium et spes 22 is a helpful entry point: “The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light…. Christ…fully reveals man to man himself and make his supreme calling clear.” Jesus makes every person’s supreme, eternal, and perfect calling clear through His ascension where His human body is united to His Divine Person forever! CCC 648 hits the target: “The Father’s power ‘raised up’ Christ his Son and by doing so perfectly introduced his Son’s humanity, including his body, into the Trinity.” This eschatological kerygma regarding the salvation of the body – not just the soul – needs to be repeatedly proclaimed: In the inner life of the Trinity, right now, there is a glorified human body. Jesus fully reveals the supreme calling and perfection of our embodied human nature through His resurrection and ascension.

He is Risen! Indeed, He is risen and ascended with His glorified human body into the inner life of the Trinity so that we, too, might reach human perfection through union and communion in our bodies with the glorified body of Christ – beginning now and for all eternity. By your proclamation and the power of the Holy Spirit, may this sacramental-spousal kerygma turn the world (and your parish) upside down. TD

Katrina J. Zeno, MTS, is an international speaker, retreat leader, and author dedicated to the legacy of St. John Paul II.v

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