Click here to add text.
.
Empowered to Love
Reflections with Music Inspired by Theology of the Body
by Peter Gerard Baklinski, PhD Candidate
(NOTE: Your pop-up blocker may need to be ON to hear this music.
Turn it ON with your browser Tools)
POPE JOHN PAUL II has been instrumental in setting into motion a beautiful renewal of thinking regarding marriage, family, and what it means to be a person. In particular, we have been gifted with many outstanding graces and blessings through his Theology of the Body [TOB], a great series of discourses on the grandeur of human love within the divine plan. This powerful work has certainly influenced my entire life: my marriage, my family life, my thoughts, and my music. While composing on the piano, I often found myself reflecting on the themes and ideas found in Theology of the Body and I became inspired to express my insights through music. My first album Resonance of the Gift: Musical Reflections on Theology of the Body is the fruit of much love, effort, and dedication. It is my hope that all who experience this music may become inspired and enlivened by the grandeur and beauty of human love.
v v v
Communion of Persons
Musical Meditation: Communion of Persons (now playing)
John Paul II understood that the human person cannot live without love. He writes in Redemptor Hominis that man "remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it.” The pope concludes that it is only in this dimension of self-giving love that man finds the "greatness, dignity and value that belong to his humanity” (see par. 25).
In Theology of the Body, John Paul II speaks about the “original solitude” of man, a fundamental characteristic of human beings which sets them apart from other bodily creatures and thereby opens them toward finding fullness of life by being in relationship with other persons. For Adam, the first human being in the Genesis creation account, this dimension is all important as he comes to the realization that his experience as a solitary human being is lacking something—he is missing a "help" that is similar to himself. What is this “help” that he seeks? It is something that all the other animals cannot give him. It is only found in the encounter of the man with the woman, and of the woman with the man. The help that Adam seeks is precisely another person with whom he can enter into personal communion, wherein one person exists beside another person and for another person (cf.TOB 9.2). The body plays an indispensable role in this communion, for it is through the body and all that belongs to the male in his masculinity and to the female in her femininity that unity is realized and the beautiful communion of persons is incarnated (cf. TOB 9.5). It is through the body and its innate spousal character that man and woman have “the power to express the love by which the human person becomes a gift, thus fulfilling the deep meaning of his or her being and existence” (TOB 32.1). The transcendental communion of persons is where love is revealed and experienced in all its glory and grandeur. (Click here to play Communion of Persons again)
v v v
.
Child from the Lord
Musical Meditation: Child from the Lord (click to play)
In the spousal “communion-community of persons, in which man and woman unite so closely with each other that they become ‘one flesh,’ ... [they renew] the existence of man as image of God.” In every act of procreation, “both man and woman take this image [of God] again, so to speak, from the mystery of creation and transmit it ‘with the help of God-Yahweh’” (TOB 21:7). The conception of a child is not simply a small biological event. A new life is a spiritual reality that has cosmic consequences; a divine spark has been breathed by God Himself, creating someone eternal who is destined for eternal life; a new person has been made by Love for Love. This is called pro-creation because God and the parents cooperate to make something—some one—profoundly new whose existence will never be repeated.
As John Paul II points out (TOB 21), the first woman was fully aware of the mystery of creation that was made present anew with the conception of a child in her womb, for Eve said: “I have acquired a man with the help of the LORD” (Gen. 4:1). Eve recognizes that the new life within her is not her body and surely not a product of her biological right, but it is a person and a gift. Every child, whether created in the terrible act of rape or in the loving embrace of a husband and wife, is a unique unrepeatable gift that comes from the Lord. The mystery of creation being made present within the womb makes the womb something utterly profound and sacred: it is surely the temporary chamber of God who takes the parent’s dust of the earth (sperm and egg) and transforms them into His image and likeness.
v v v
Fiat
Musical Meditation: Fiat (click to play)
Mary, Mother of Jesus, exemplifies what wondrous things can happen when one becomes humble and submissive before God and His plan. This submissiveness is not a negation of human freedom nor a belittling of what it means to be a person: rather it is the most radical expression of human nature itself. It is the paradox of the giving away of one’s self in order to receive the fullness of life. Mary’s total gift of self, her “fiat”—let it be done to me—opens her to receive not only the fullness of life, but Life itself, the Word through whom all things were made (John 1:1-4). In the history of salvation, Mary’s yes, her affirmation of the gift-of-self meaning inscribed in human nature, reverses the no that Eve declared as she ate from the forbidden tree and denied the plan and purpose that God had created her for. On the deepest level, Mary’s free act of offering herself to God and lovingly embracing His plan is nothing more than her living deeply what John Paul II calls the “spousal meaning of the body”, which is the power to express love in which the human person becomes a gift and through this gift incarnates the very meaning of human existence. Her yes to God, her yes to the meaning of human existence results in the most splendid fruitfulness that this world has ever witnessed. Mary’s divine motherhood is a superabundant revelation of that fruitfulness that comes from the Holy Spirit when the human person freely submits his spirit to the intention and design of God (TOB 75.3).
v
PETER GERARD BAKLINSKI is a father, a student, and a composer. He is currently pursuing PhD studies with the John Paul II Institute in Melbourne. He spends his days reading, writing, playing piano, and being present to his wife and two daughters. Please visit his website www.resonanceofthegift.com to purchase a copy of his new CD Resonance of the Gift: Musical Reflections on Theology of the Body © 2008. All songs in this article are expressly the property of Peter Baklinski and have been used with permission by the Logos Review. They are not to be permanently downloaded or distributed.
