KNOWING YOUR SEXUALITY IN TIME OF C-19
Personal Integration
The personal dignity and worth, (we had even before we were born) belong to us in the full sense as persons who can know and love, be known and loved. We should therefore be aware that the call to become self, is the call to achieve maturity and integration by striving to unify sexuality by all the levels and dimensions of our being. This is because the life of any person is a journey towards human maturity: from self-centeredness (need, selfishness, possessiveness), towards self-giving (love, gratuitousness). Self-centeredness is typical to children; gratuitousness is proper to the maturity of love and it is source of freedom.
The three main steps toward personal integration in the realm of sexual maturity can be summarized as follows:
i) Awareness
Awareness of one’s own sexual identification – overcoming the ingeniousness of the childhood
ii) Profound acceptance
The point here is that we must affirm and accept ourselves as men and women and be at peace with this noble fact or gift. For example, I did not choose to be a man but am a man and there is nothing I can do to change the fact but accept it with joy. In deed J. Dwyer summarizes this point on acceptance vividly by saying that “to affirm ourselves as men, is to affirm and accept our dependence on women and to affirm ourselves as women is to affirm and accept our dependence on men”.[17]
iii) Integration into one’s Vocation
Integrating sexuality into a truly personal existence is the greatest challenge and which we cannot avoid because the existence itself is that of man and woman. Each of us existing as man and woman is powerfully drawn to the opposite sex, intellectually, emotionally and physically. The fact that we exist as sexed being, either as man and woman, constitute the file in which we are called to move from being potential to actual or real persons. To attain our human sexual maturity means that we have responsibly integrated our sexuality into our own vocation and at the service of life and love.
Biblical, Traditional and Magisterium Teaching on Human Sexuality
In its Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Vatican Council II declared: “All the preaching of Church, as indeed the entire Christian religion, should be nourished and ruled by sacred Scripture”.[18] The study of the biblical teaching on human sexuality is the appropriate and necessary, for Scripture is the primary fount of the Church’s teaching.[19]
The Old Testament
The Old Testament in general articulates fundamental truths about God himself and the created universe, and in particular, about human life and destiny, and the special relationship of friendship that he wills to exist between himself and human beings and between men and women. It reveals to us too the source of what Pope John Paul II terms “a fundamental disquietude in all human existence”, namely, the disobedience of our first parents and its devastating effects on human persons and human sexuality. Our main interest in this sacred book will mainly be narrowed to the fundamental truths about human sexuality.[20]
The statements of the Old Testament and in particular of the book of Genesis have preserved mankind’s primal understanding of the differentiation of humans. Human heterosexuality is the work of Creator. “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them” (Gen 1:27). The text speaks in the same breath of man as God’s image and as differentiated into two sexes. The sacred author adds to this that this is very good (Gen 1:31). The entire human person is created good. Therefore sexuality too, as a gift of God, is wholly acceptable.[21]
In this summary of Old Testament teaching on sex, our attention will mainly focus on the first two chapters of Genesis. These chapters describe God’s original design for human existence, human sexuality, and human marriage. The third chapter of genesis is also crucial inasmuch as it treats disobedience of our first parents, and the terrible effects of their sin on human existence, human sexuality, and the relationship between men and women.
© J. B Nyamunga
Girimori Catholic Parish - Kericho
Personal Integration
The personal dignity and worth, (we had even before we were born) belong to us in the full sense as persons who can know and love, be known and loved. We should therefore be aware that the call to become self, is the call to achieve maturity and integration by striving to unify sexuality by all the levels and dimensions of our being. This is because the life of any person is a journey towards human maturity: from self-centeredness (need, selfishness, possessiveness), towards self-giving (love, gratuitousness). Self-centeredness is typical to children; gratuitousness is proper to the maturity of love and it is source of freedom.
The three main steps toward personal integration in the realm of sexual maturity can be summarized as follows:
i) Awareness
Awareness of one’s own sexual identification – overcoming the ingeniousness of the childhood
ii) Profound acceptance
The point here is that we must affirm and accept ourselves as men and women and be at peace with this noble fact or gift. For example, I did not choose to be a man but am a man and there is nothing I can do to change the fact but accept it with joy. In deed J. Dwyer summarizes this point on acceptance vividly by saying that “to affirm ourselves as men, is to affirm and accept our dependence on women and to affirm ourselves as women is to affirm and accept our dependence on men”.[17]
iii) Integration into one’s Vocation
Integrating sexuality into a truly personal existence is the greatest challenge and which we cannot avoid because the existence itself is that of man and woman. Each of us existing as man and woman is powerfully drawn to the opposite sex, intellectually, emotionally and physically. The fact that we exist as sexed being, either as man and woman, constitute the file in which we are called to move from being potential to actual or real persons. To attain our human sexual maturity means that we have responsibly integrated our sexuality into our own vocation and at the service of life and love.
Biblical, Traditional and Magisterium Teaching on Human Sexuality
In its Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Vatican Council II declared: “All the preaching of Church, as indeed the entire Christian religion, should be nourished and ruled by sacred Scripture”.[18] The study of the biblical teaching on human sexuality is the appropriate and necessary, for Scripture is the primary fount of the Church’s teaching.[19]
The Old Testament
The Old Testament in general articulates fundamental truths about God himself and the created universe, and in particular, about human life and destiny, and the special relationship of friendship that he wills to exist between himself and human beings and between men and women. It reveals to us too the source of what Pope John Paul II terms “a fundamental disquietude in all human existence”, namely, the disobedience of our first parents and its devastating effects on human persons and human sexuality. Our main interest in this sacred book will mainly be narrowed to the fundamental truths about human sexuality.[20]
The statements of the Old Testament and in particular of the book of Genesis have preserved mankind’s primal understanding of the differentiation of humans. Human heterosexuality is the work of Creator. “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them” (Gen 1:27). The text speaks in the same breath of man as God’s image and as differentiated into two sexes. The sacred author adds to this that this is very good (Gen 1:31). The entire human person is created good. Therefore sexuality too, as a gift of God, is wholly acceptable.[21]
In this summary of Old Testament teaching on sex, our attention will mainly focus on the first two chapters of Genesis. These chapters describe God’s original design for human existence, human sexuality, and human marriage. The third chapter of genesis is also crucial inasmuch as it treats disobedience of our first parents, and the terrible effects of their sin on human existence, human sexuality, and the relationship between men and women.
© J. B Nyamunga
Girimori Catholic Parish - Kericho
No comments:
Post a Comment