Photos by Anna Weaver

Christopher West speaks and Mike Mangione, below, performs during the May 30 Theology of the Body seminar at St. Anthony Church in Kailua.

God, sex and the universal longing

Theology of the Body’s Christopher West comes to town with a lively presentation on love and the divinity code

By Anna Weaver | Hawaii Catholic Herald

Theology of the Body, Pope John Paul II’s teachings on human sexuality, broke free from theological text books on May 29 and 30 when nationally known speaker Christopher West came to town to present “To Fill These Hearts Full: God, Sex and the Universal Longing.”

“Theology of the Body” was developed from the 129 papal audiences Pope John Paul II gave between 1979 and 1984 on the human body and sexuality.

West and musician Mike Mangione, who often tours with him, were featured at two Hawaii events: a May 29 Singles’ Night attended by about 35 people at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace’s Kamiano Hall, and an all-day conference that drew an audience of 145 the following day at St. Anthony Church, Kailua.

At times, each event took on the feel of a concert thanks to Magione’s soulful, acoustic performances throughout the sessions, and West interspersing his lectures with bursts of singing and lyric references. He paced the church aisles on May 30 in a borrowed aloha shirt, talking animatedly and belting out songs.

“God is singing to us,” West exclaimed. “This is what he’s saying: ‘I love you, I really love.”

West told his audience that desire itself is not wrong because God created humans to have a built-in longing which only he can fill.

“When we see a human being as a human being really is, we’re filled with absolute awe,” he said. People must learn to read “the divinity code” written into their bodies and all of creation. “God wants to fill that place in your heart.”

In a world where sex seems to underlie every product or form of media, West believes there is a way to “untwist” this warped desire to show the good that God created.

To illustrate, West used examples from some “twisted mystics,” as he calls them, rock and roll musicians including Bruce Springsteen (“Everybody’s got a hungry heart”), Steve Winwood (“Bring me a higher love”), U2 (“And the fever ... getting higher. Desire, desire ...”) and The Rolling Stones (“I can’t get no satisfaction”).

There is a corruption of the pure meaning of longing in their songs, West said, but at the heart of it is a yearning for something higher.

“That’s why you’re going to find [desire] in the secular world,” he said, “because we know it in our hearts.”

West said Hugh Hefner was an example of someone who started off with the right idea of not suppressing desire. Unfortunately he said, Hefner’s “cure,” creating the Playboy empire, became worse than the disease.

“This is the fall, the terrible, terrible distance of the body by sin,” he said.

The three spiritual diets

A recurring theme of West’s talks included understanding three kinds of spiritual “diets.” While people should not consume the “Fast Food Diet” of popular culture, West said it also is no good to go on the “Starvation Diet” of repressing the desire God put in us. He opposes that diet’s message of “spirit good, body bad.”

Rather than reduce desire to lust and instant gratification (fast food), or repress desire (starvation) everyone is called to what West calls “The Banquet.” This is where people “live in our desire,” where sex can be experienced as it was meant within marriage, and where God, not one’s spouse, is one’s “ultimate fulfillment.”

The Banquet says, “If it feels good, it’s a preview of coming attractions.”

That is why, West said, Scripture often describes heaven as a marriage.

Married couple and St. Ann Kaneohe parishioners Manlee and Jen Herrington came with their three children on May 30 because Jen has heard good things about West. With their kids enjoying the provided child care, the couple learned how much more Theology of the Body covered beyond human sexuality.

“As a Marine, I see so much of human behavior,” said Manlee. “I think it [Theology of the Body] helps explain it more. It reinforces why humans behave the way they do sometimes.”

Jen felt West “definitely brought two sides together with the whole untwisting of nature.”

She says that while she won’t be talking to her young children about sex just yet, she and Manlee can already apply parts of West’s message, such as respect, to their child-rearing. Her oldest child, Peter, is six-years-old and already very self-critical.

“We have to explain to him the nature of being human,” Jen said.

During one of the day’s lectures, West called on Manlee to stand before the audience and illustrate how “you can see the soul through the body.”

“Man is not an icon, not an idol,” he said.

Like the Herringtons, Jessica Mazzocco, a parishioner of Sacred Heart Church, Punahou, came to the May 30 event because she heard it was a “big privilege” to hear West speak. By the end of the day, he had exceeded her expectations.

She was also surprised by Mangione’s music, which she described as having a Catholic mystical quality.

“[Today] has taught me not to deny myself of the desire I have, but to confront it in a holy way, in an ‘erotic’ way with the Holy Spirit,” she said, using West’s description of Eros, “the upward impulse of the heart toward what is true, good and beautiful.”

As the May 30 event came to an end, West summed up his message this way: “All the church’s questions of morality come down to one question: Is this a true participating in the love of God?”