rom the Pastor:
Sometimes it’s the simplest things that teach us the greatest lessons. For example, consider a three-legged stool. We know that each leg is equally important to the others and thus all three must work together. Thinking more deeply, we realize that the legs do not exist simply for themselves, but for a higher purpose that can only be achieved when each is fulfilling its duty together with the other two. If one leg is weak, then the whole stool is weak. If one leg fails, then the entire stool and everything that is resting upon it falls. The result is a painful disaster for anyone close to it.
In God’s design and creation of the human person, there is a similar three-legged stool design that encompasses our physical, spiritual, and social dimensions. Who we are as human beings is not simply the result of a random process of evolution, that when completed, God looked upon with surprise and wonder. Rather, we humans are the result of forethought and planning on the part of God and no detail has been overlooked. As a result, we need to look to God to understand the purpose of our existence and the details of our physical, spiritual, and social dimensions.
The three-legged stool of God’s creation for humanity involves human sexuality, marriage, and children. Together these three form the “sacred trinity” of God’s design and plan for humanity. Together they lift the human person to become more than the primates from which many scientists contend is our only origin. The togetherness of human sexuality, marriage, and children is sacred to God because only together can they elevate humanity to become like God, in whose image and likeness we have been made.
From the very beginning, God’s people held as sacred the togetherness of these three aspects of human design even when the culture around them did not. Every alternative idea to human sexuality, marriage, and children that is being proposed today has been seen many times throughout human history, including during the time of Jesus. However, God’s people trusted the wisdom of God more than their own fleeting thoughts and feelings. They knew how strong the human tendency was to be “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Tim 3:4). They knew how easily this can affect their ability to judge between what is right and wrong.
Chastity and abstinence are viewed as burdensome by almost all of modern society. To those with such thinking, Jesus says His commandments are not burdensome (1 John 5:3). The heart of the problem, once again, is they have become “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Tim 3:4). Christians need to reconnect with the great truth that a deep, genuine relationship with God provides more joy and fulfillment than any worldly pleasure.
There is tremendous pressure today to deny that God’s design for marriage is a life-long union of man and woman for the purpose of bringing new human life into existence. It is only in this context that sexual activity is morally permissible. There is a sacredness to God’s design for humanity, and only when we respect and hold together all three dimensions, does man become like God.
Sincerely,
Fr. Miller
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