Sacred Body Language – Members Content
When sex is approached as a way to communicate your desire to be one in marriage, it is an exciting and thrilling experience. With heightened awareness of the meaning and the message of each look or touch, you will be more fully present and can open yourselves to loving and being loved at a deeper level. The messages of tenderness and responsiveness, self-donation and passion are all the more affirming when communicated with body language because you tend to believe the body more than mere words.
When you approach sex as communication, it is new and alive in the present moment and therefore deeply intimate and very exciting. It is not about positions or physical sensations but rather about what you want to say to your spouse with all your heart. The focus is other-centred and the message is deeply profound and bigger than just the two of you.
Within Catholic marriage there is an added sense that the good news you bring each other – that you are loved and lovable, that you want to be one in body and soul – is also what God wishes to tell you. You can experience being sent to each other to communicate God’s passionate and intimate love; His desire to be within you and give you life. With this context, lovemaking can be powerfully enriched by prayer and there is a natural heightened sense of God’s presence.
St John Paul II calls intercourse ‘Sacred Body Language’ because the message of sex is profoundly holy and loving: “I freely give myself to you totally, faithfully and fruitfully, and I freely accept you totally, faithfully and fruitfully.” In fact, it is the same love message that God speaks to us: “Take, this is my body, given for you”. Christ freely gave his life for us on the Cross and in the Eucharist. His love is freely given, total, permanent and life-giving.
“… the deepest words of the spirit – words of love, gift and faithfulness – call for an appropriate ‘language of the body’. And without this language they cannot be fully expressed.”
Theology of the Body, n104. pg 537.
Stories of the Heart
When I look into my wife’s eyes, I experience the very soul of the woman I love. I can see tenderness there that words cannot express. Looking deeply into each others’ eyes while making love helps us to be open and sincere and more fully present.
Consciously asking myself, “What do I want to say to my wife today?” keeps my focus on her. While the basic intrinsic message of sexual intercourse is always, “I give you myself totally, permanently, faithfully and fruitfully”, each time we make love we verbalise messages that are unique to that day, that hour. Perhaps I want to tell her that I trust her or let her know how she lifts me up, that I need her, or that I feel grateful to be hers.
Prayer can change our hearts to be more generous toward each other and fuel our lovemaking. We pray for passion to give ourselves away in love. When our communion is experienced deeply, it is not uncommon for us to have a heightened awareness of a communion with God. We often experience our coupleness as a gift from God, and it is very natural for us to express ourselves in prayers of thanksgiving for both our love and the gift of our sexuality.
