Men - Women
Complementarity
Spanish
Fr. Jordi Rivero, june, 2018
The Father’s plan for
relationships between men and women is that we abide in mutual love - a love that reflects His
divine love. When we ponder the love of Christ for His Bride and then look
at the state of men–women relationships today, we begin to realize how far
we are from understanding, much less living this love. We must seek Christ’s
power of love to restore us. We will only be restored as individuals in the
image of God to the extent that we are restored in our own man-woman
relationships. Pope Francis said:
Experience teaches it: to
know himself well and to grow harmoniously, the human being is in need of
reciprocity between man and woman. When this does not happen, the
consequences are seen. We are made to listen to and to help one another. We
can say that without the reciprocal enrichment in this relation – in thought
and in action, in affections and in work, also in the faith – the two cannot
understand in depth what it means to be a man and a woman. ...God has
entrusted the earth to the alliance of man and of woman: its failure makes
the world arid of affections and darkens the sky of hope…
A second reflection concerns the topic of man and
woman created in the image of God. I wonder if the crisis of collective
trust in God, which does us so much harm, and makes us become sick with
resignation, incredulity and cynicism, is not also connected to the crisis
of the alliance between man and woman. In fact the biblical account, with
the great symbolic fresco on the earthly paradise and original sin, tells us
in fact that the communion with God is reflected in the communion of the
human couple and the loss of trust in the celestial Father generates
division and conflict between man and woman.
From here comes the great responsibility of the
Church, of all believers, and first of all of believing families, to
rediscover the beauty of the creative design that inscribes the image of God
also in the alliance between man and woman. The earth is filled with harmony
and trust when the alliance between man and woman is lived well. And if man
and woman seek it together between themselves and with God, without a doubt
they will find it. Jesus encourages us explicitly to give witness to this
beauty, which is the image of God. (General
audience of April 15, 2015)
The pope has also made clear
that the man–woman complementarity is necessary not only in marriage but for all
to reach their potential as images of God. A man is not a man until he is
able to love and be loved by the women in his life. Likewise, women need
men.
A man without a woman
beside him - whether as a mother, as a sister, as a bride, as a working
companion, as a friend - that man by himself is not the image of God...
(Mass, Santa Marta, June 15, 2018).
But the love we need to give
and receive is God’s love, Christ’s crucified love, not the love the world
gives which is not love but selfishness that leads to ruin.
As the Father has loved me,
so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. Jn 15,9
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do
not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and
do not be afraid. Jn 14,27
Men and women are
called to give and receive from the other the riches of God who lives in
them. The body is God’s creation intended to communicate the treasures of
the soul. Our smile, our gaze, our hands, our actions..., speak of our true
beauty as images of God.
No wonder the enemy seeks to destroy unity of men
and women, of body and soul. In order to trap us he must take our eyes away
from God so that we see each other no longer as His image. This means taking
our eyes away from true love, from virtue, from self-giving. Then the body
is seen as an end in itself and the result is lust. We lose touch of the
truth of who men and women are. We end up thinking of the "spiritual life"
and the "life on earth" as two different realities. C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape
letters explains the wiles of the enemy to obsess men with sex:
We are more and more
directing the desires of men to something which does not exist –making the
role of the eye in sexuality more and more important and at the same time
making its demands more and more impossible. What follows you can easily
forecast! (106-107)
C.S Lewis wrote in the
1940's and could not have imagined to what degree technology was going to
turn women into merchandise to push men to fantasize and trap them into
pornography and lust.
Men obsessed with sexual fantasies pressure women,
even their wives, to satisfy them at any cost. They demand this as if it
were their right. Women become a drug meant to produce an elusive pleasure.
Women feel that they are never good enough because they can never compare to
the man's fantasy. A popular gift for girls upon high school graduation is
now plastic surgery. Then every so many years women feel they need even more
surgery to keep up their appearance. They are afraid of being discarded and
of growing old.
As the world exploits sexuality and strips human
relationships of their spiritual dimension, the complementarity which God
intended between men and women is lost. Some consequences: Few want to
marry, few want to have children, marriages falling apart. People then live
a profound loneliness. Many wives lament that their husbands do not know
their hearts. This is a tragedy for both because they can no longer share
the riches that God has given them. Often those riches are lost: The desire
to know, to understand and to love each other.
Christ became
flesh to overcome these evils and bring us back to the Father. As God-Man,
He brought unity between spirit and flesh. The Christian’s new life in the
Spirit is communicated with our entire person, body and soul, redeemed to be
one with Christ.
When Jesus gives His body for us to eat, He wants
us to participate be ONE with Him, one in body and spirit making Him
visible. Think of the way Jesus related with women and the implications for
how men should relate with women. But many people came after Jesus not
looking for unity with Him but to satisfy their body's hunger for bread
(Cf.John 6:26). Many man, in a similar manner, go after women not looking
for her as a person but to satisfy their sexual desires.
After performing the great miracle with the
loaves, Jesus asked them to believe in Him. He takes them beyond their
expectations and beyond any concept of religion they could imagine: He
teaches them that eating Him they will be united with Him and share in His
life! They protest. How can they eat the flesh of a man? Many abandon Him.
Jesus then again declares that we must eat His body but adds "It is the
spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail" (Jn 6:63). Why does He say
this if He has insisted on the necessity of receiving His body? Jesus is
saying that receiving His body would be of no avail if we do not allow Him
to give us His life in the Spirit. For this to happen we must enter a
profound union heart to heart with Him. Similarly, in a Christian
relationship we must die to our selfishness to enter into love, self-giving,
faithfulness.
God waits for the prodigal son to return to his
senses, to come home and enter the happiness that is only possible when we
repent, renounce to selfishness and enter His love. Pope Francis reminds us
that our way back to the Father's house is through Jesus:
It is necessary that women
not only be more listened to, but that her voice has real weight, a
recognized authoritativeness in the society and in the Church. The way
itself with which Jesus considered women –we read it in the Gospel, it is
so! -- in a context less favorable than ours, because in those times women
were in fact in second place ...We have not yet understood in depth what
things the feminine genius can give us, which women can give to society and
also to us. Perhaps to see things with other eyes that complements the
thoughts of men. It is a path to follow with more creativity and more
audacity. (General audience of April 15, 2015)