39
in a profoundly Incarnational encounter, “reread in truth in the language of the body.” 164 In
reading the signs of their fertility the couple stands, so to speak, at the threshold of the hortus
conclusus—at the “intersection between heaven and earth” 165 —where man and woman return to
the garden, once more faced with a fundamental and original decision.
On the one hand, the couple can choose to cooperate with God’s plan, to respond to the
call to participate in the mystery of creation. They do this through a complete gift of themselves
to the other, by submitting their passions to reason and will, and by recognizing their natural
limitations which make one, as Humanae Vitae clarifies, “not the master of the sources of life but
rather the minister of the design established by the Creator.” 166 By submitting to the laws of
creation and to the language of truth stamped in their bodies, the man and the woman can choose
to keep the garden, to protect the source of life-giving love and love-giving life through their
one-flesh cooperation with the divine plan. 167 In their response to each other, eros is purified
through their renunciation of selfish “holding back” and is transformed into agape, a self-giving
and sacrificial love for the other through “a body that expresses the person…[and] reveals the
‘living soul’… ” 168 Only in this response can the man and the woman find the peace of the
interior gaze which recognizes the image of God expressed through a reciprocal gift of self. 169
Only in this response can the man and the woman truly live the mystery of creation as the gift
that it was intended from the beginning. 170
164
John Paul II, “Language of the Body: Actions and Duties,” sec. 2.
Lucas, “The Enclosed Garden.”
166
HV, 13.
167
Cf. Patrick O’Boyle, “Sex in Marriage: Love-giving, Life-giving,” The Linacre Quarterly 36, no. 1, 16
(1969), accessed May 27, 2018, https://epublications.marquette.edu/lnq/vol36/iss1/16/.
168
John Paul II, “The Nuptial Meaning of the Body,” sec. 4.
169
John Paul II, “Truth and Freedom,” sec. 3.
170
Ibid.
165