HOLY JOY

Holy Holy Holy Lord God Almighty Heaven and Earth are Full of Your Glory

There is a lot of Catholic misconception concerning the nature of "Holiness" that leads to
Joylessness. Holiness and Righteousness are not the antithesis of intimate conjugal love. To the contrary, we all know marriage is one of the major sacraments- just one in which the holiest of us-our priests-never get to partake from the other side of the altar.
The holiness of conjugal love ranks with the holiness of complete priestly celibacy. They are equally self sacrificial. Holiness is not a robbing oneself of all natural passion or impulse. It is not a denial of all that is human. Were that the goal, why would Christ incarnate himself? He could have yelled at us from a burning bush. Holiness is not a foresaking of all that is pleasing, lovely, and beautiful. For some that is a path chosen. But for no one should it be a path imposed. Jesus came that you might have life and have it abundantly-fully human, fully alive. New Testament scripture expressly states that a bishop or deacon should be "the husband of one wife". That is the biblical statement on church office. Jesus never said and never meant for his apostles or disciples to require throwing away their bodies or their wives. He healed Peter's mother in law and didn't tell him to dump his wife in the river. He doesn't demand or need a cast of castratti to transform himself for our consumption under the appearance of bread and wine.
Scripture all teaches that this should be a choice, and some will choose it for the kingdom- and we all should respect when some do. But many are called to be priests, and only some are called to isolate themselves from all intimacy with women for all time. The view that Prieshood must by mandate be celibate- a creation of church doctrine of the 12th Century and not anything taught by Jesus-EVER-- has within it a certain unholy fear, loathing and disgust of women. This view hurts women. It hurts women precisely because there are some women whose hearts were created to bond with men called to be holy priests and they were created from the beginning of time to be married to men who are priests. Their lives are simply discounted-given no value under this order and rule whatever. They are not asked, they are not considered, they are not valued. They are valued less than the building called the church and they are part of Christ's body, the heavenly Church. There is an understanding of the Blessed Virginal Mary and everything else womanly which is intrinsically unclean to this understanding of mandated celibacy.
Jesus taught just the opposite.
He elevated the dignity of women. He taught that the woman getting stoned was not someone to scorn, he taught that the woman at the well who had five or seven (whose counting) husbands could be spoken to and could serve him-she became the first Evangelist who ran to tell the town all about him; He taught that the woman who wasted all her money on perfume or oil to annoint his feet could use her own hair as a towel and caress his feet with her hair. The first person he spoke to when he rose from the dead was a woman (and he couldn't wait to get up to see her again.)
God himself in the Holy Spirit had conjugal love-cosmic sex-with a woman (you thought long distance relationships were hard, God reached through time/space galactic dimensions to get to his love). He knows every temptation known to man and is sinless. We are made in his image. Thus this kind of powerful life giving love of a woman is sinless. He chose one woman-and he impregnated her. Sinlessly. Love seeks -compels-union by its nature and he loved her so much he brought forth human flesh from her.
An entire theology built around a notion of holiness that mandates celibacy is frought with internal contradictions and forced deceptions, denials and delusions. God made man in his image. God impregnated a woman. God has a Holy Family. God came as a baby. All these things stare a Priest in his face every time he says Mass. And yet, somehow the church has pursuaded holy men for centuries that they cannot be both Priests and carnally intimate with a wife. They cannot even touch them. -Especially now with the litigation exposure threats.
And so many of them cheat against their own souls. They dally with temptation and face stern retribution while they torture their consciences. They are threatened with persecutions, derision and trapped then in unholy Fear accused absurdly of loving Jesus less because they love a woman also. Those are the ones who don't simply leave active service of the church making the Church the loser. And to this unholy tortured doctrinal imposition is added more than a touch of hypocracy when we note that Episcopal Priests may bring wives with them to the Catholic priesthood as can the entire Eastern Rite --
But the Roman Catholic church's Princes-after the order of Melchizadek -a married Jewish King and Priest of Salem (Jerusalem) may never know the caring tender gentle caress of a woman in love.
And at this- Jesus wept.

Today is the Feast of Corpus Christi-the Body of Christ where upon the pre-eminence of the Eucharist in the Mass is expounded. You may hear a Priest say something like "there is no greater intimacy with God" than partaking of this. Yes of course, but we do not serve a God in a Box like a Jack in the Box. God is bigger than a bread box. We serve and adore a God much bigger than that. We serve the Source that created all life. God, it was once said was not in the thunder, he was not in the wind, he was in the still small voice. The still small voice might say something like "I love you, you are mine." It may say something like "follow me." God does come transubstantiated for us as the new Manna from heaven for our spiritual and bodily nourishment in his actual presence. God also comes through the hearts of purest love which can be found in a wife. God does not limit himself to his box. My mother used to say to our dog when it wouldn't mind (behave) "Get back in your box" and it would sit in its cage. God cannot be commanded to just remain only in the Eucharist at the command of the church. God is Love. There is not anything that was created which was not created through Jesus. The earth is the Lord's and everything in it. God is in the still voice. God is in the human heart. God is Love. God is Love. God is Love.