The Sign of Celibacy

Gospel Reflection for January 28, 2024 - Mark 1:21-28

Jesus Heals a Man with a Demon. They journeyed to Capernaum, and on the Sabbath Jesus immediately entered the synagogue and began to instruct the people. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.

In that synagogue there was a man with an unclean spirit, and he shrieked, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!”

The unclean spirit threw the man into convulsions and with a loud cry emerged from him. The people were all amazed, and they began to ask one another, “What is this? It must be a new kind of teaching! With authority he gives commands even to unclean spirits, and they obey him!” His reputation quickly began to spread everywhere throughout the entire region of Galilee. (Mark 1:21-28 New Catholic Bible)

Most of Missio Dei’s Gospel reflections, like most homilies, focus on the gospel reading for each day, with the other readings connected to it. Oftentimes, however, the Epistle reading is overlooked, especially since the epistolary selections in the post-Vatican II lectionary tend to be largely unrelated to the other readings. For my reflection today, I would like to focus on the Epistle from St. Paul, the theme of which is celibacy. Unlike the leaders of the Essenes in his own times, or the Manichees and Cathars of later times, as well as many people today, St. Paul did not prohibit marriage, nor did he in any way denigrate it. Whenever the Church, both today and throughout history, upholds celibacy as superior to marriage, the immediate reaction of many people, including Catholics, is defensiveness, assuming that by this marriage is somehow lessened or maligned. In the rest of Scripture, however, marriage is championed as a great vocation, the one which most people will and should take for their reciprocal sanctification and the procreation of future saints, a vocation beginning even before original sin in the Garden of Eden. St. Paul himself recognizes Christian marriage as “a great mystery”, one which is a sacramental sign of the unitive love between “Christ and the Church.” (Eph 5:32) So, this presumption should be gotten out of the way first.

Now to the main topic. On the opposite side of the Essenes, Manichees and Cathars, in recent centuries celibacy, not marriage, has been denigrated, first by Protestants, then by the hedonists of the Enlightenment and modern age who have seen sexual gratification and marital affection as the highest sources of meaning in life. Even in Scripture, celibacy was rarely mentioned in the Old Testament; it was not until Christ proclaimed His new teachings on marriage that celibacy came to be appreciated. Our Lord thus taught, “For there are eunuchs who have been made so from birth and eunuchs who were made so by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let those accept this who can do so.” (Mt 19:12)

St. Paul follows this same line of thought in his teaching on celibacy. Like Christ, he does not make celibacy binding for all, nor does he prohibit marriage. His purpose is ultimately practical. Both Christ and St. Paul intend celibacy as a preparation for the eschatological state of all people in the End Times, when at “the resurrection they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. They are like the angels in heaven.” (Mt 22:30) In the New Heaven and New Earth, all the saints will be united to one another with greater intimacy even than married couples now, precisely because we will be united in the Body of Christ as the Bride of the Divine Bridegroom. The hearts of all people will be occupied in the loving contemplation of God, not in worldly anxieties.

This is the life that celibate people today, including consecrated virgins, religious and (most) clergy, anticipate. Pope Benedict XVI taught that, while not all people are called to celibacy in this life, it still acts as a reminder of our ultimate vocation and destiny in Christ, that both married and unmarried should prioritize Christ above all else. This is why St. Paul taught in the Epistle for last Sunday, “From now on, those who have wives should live as though they had none… For the world as we know it is passing away.” (1 Cor 7:28)

In Pope St. John Paul II’s great Theology of the Body, he explained that the body, as the expression of the person, participates in the life of the Trinity through the communion of persons in marriage, when, by the reciprocal gift of love, husband and wife freely give themselves to one another and, through their motherhood and fatherhood, receive new persons from God in procreation. This is what he called “the spousal meaning of the body,” as well as “the generative meaning of the body.” The body is designed especially for this purpose, and while original sin distorted this meaning, leading to shame at our nakedness due to the threat that we will use one another as objects rather than love one another as subjects, the truth remains in human nature from “the beginning,” as Our Lord taught in Matthew 19:8.

Celibacy is a special and elevated form of this reciprocal gift, “in which man, male and female, finds at one and the same time the fullness of personal giving and of the intersubjective communion of persons, thanks to the glorification of his whole psychosomatic being in the eternal union with God.” (TOB 73:1) He continues:

This way of existing as a human being (male and female) points out the eschatological ‘virginity’ of the risen man, in which, I would say, the absolute and eternal spousal meaning of the glorified body will be revealed in union with God himself, by seeing him ‘face to face,’ glorified moreover through the union of a perfect intersubjectivity that will unite all the ‘sharers in the other world,’ men and women, in the mystery of the communion of saints. Earthly continence ‘for the kingdom of God’ is without doubt a sign that indicates this truth and this reality. (TOB 75:1)

In this way, celibacy is not a slight against marriage; it does not sacrifice the spousal meaning of the body or the perfection of eros which can come from the sacrificial love between spouses and their children. Rather, it is done “for the kingdom of God” and for charitable service in this life to God and man, without any worldly distraction.

Marriage and continence are neither opposed to each other, nor do they divide the human (and Christian) community into two camps… But these two fundamental situations, or, as one used to say, these two ‘states,’ in some sense explain or complete each other with respect to the existence and (Christian) life of this community, which as a whole and in all its members is realized in the dimension of the kingdom of God and has an eschatological orientation proper to that kingdom.

Celibate men and women are therefore signs and reminders of our true destiny in Christ and of the need to live for Him above all else, so that we may be ready when our Bridegroom returns.