The Hermeneutic of the Gift

            “The dimension of the gift decides the essential truth and depth of meaning of original solitude, unity and nakedness.”[1] For it is in giving man and woman existence, in creating them out of nothing and calling their creation good that we have the beginning of the law of the gift. Genesis 1 and 2 testify to this giftedness in the mystery of creation. Every creature created by God and especially man and woman who are the only creatures created in his image and likeness, bear within them a sign of the original and fundamental gift that is life and love. In receiving life as a gift of love man and woman have the unique distinction in creation of being the only creatures created for their own sake. It is only when he makes a gift of himself that man realizes the self.[2] Moreover, to give a gift means there must be a recipient of that gift. Between the giver and the one who receives the gift there is established a relationship. Therefore, God, in the creation of man has written on his heart an indispensable need for relationship.

            Relationship has its manifestation only in the creation of man and woman, for it is only man and woman who are created in God’s image and likeness. They alone are created for their own sake. They alone are capable of receiving the gift as a gift and of understanding the gift as being created from nothingness. Consequently, only man and woman are able to make a response to the gift given them with the same language through which they were created, that of love. Therefore, creation is the fundamental and original gift. Man and woman receive the world as a gift and the world receives them as a gift.[3] After the original sin, there emerges a need for a new creation. This new creation is a re-creation of man particularly of his heart which is the center of his being. The prophet Jeremiah and Ezekiel prophesies the new heart which is echoed by subsequent prophets.[4] The ultimate fulfillment comes with the person of Jesus. He acknowledges the reception of the world as a gift and returns that gift, perfected, purified, unblemished, to the Father who is Creator by virtue of His sacrifice.[5]

            In order for man to live the world as a gift he must have a basis by which he experiences the world as gift. The Holy Father already has shown that in his original solitude, man was alone, unable to live in a relationship of mutual giving that would correspond to his being created as a gift. This being alone shows that without someone else man cannot realize himself and even more powerfully, being for someone else, that is being a gift to someone else and existing for them.[6] Man needs a helper in order to realize his image and likeness to God who is not alone but a Trinity, a communio personarum. Man, by nature, is communal, and only when he is able to be in communion with another like himself, one who is called by the scriptures a helper, can he make of himself a gift for the other and exist for the other. This is the fulfillment of original solitude, what the Holy Father calls the original unity of man and woman. Hence, the hermeneutic of the gift is founded on the experience that man is by nature called to make of himself a sincere gift to the other, that is woman, and vice versa. “The two shall become one flesh.”[7] Man, through the body, in its masculinity and femininity, in its original innocence, receives the other as a gift and enters into communion with the other thereby becoming a communio personarum in the image and likeness of God who is Trinity. The body expresses the person and the person becomes a gift to the other precisely through the body and its inherent nuptiality, thereby becoming one flesh.[8]

            “The body which itself expresses femininity manifests the reciprocity and communion of persons.”[9] The body is always receptive through the heart, which is the center of affectivity in the person. In order for man and woman to realize themselves they must give themselves as a gift and be received as a gift. The heart manifests this openness, this perpetual “feminine disposition” to be loved as well as to love. This is essential to man. “Love is a gift of God, nourished by and expressed in the encounter of man and woman.”[10] Redemptor Hominis teaches that

            Man cannot live without love. He 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.[11]

This experience of love is realized only within the communion of persons. Love is revealed to man when he is in communion with another person. Love itself is the cause of self-giving.

            Love is a precious source for self-giving which all men and women are called to make for their own self-realization and happiness. In fact man is called to     love as an incarnate spirit, that is soul and body in the unity of the person. Human love hence embraces the body, and the body also expresses spiritual love.[12]

 The body is also a witness to creation as a gift received and a gift that is given; it is also a witness to love as the source of all creation; that love is God who created the body.[13] The body as male and female “is the original sign of a creative donation and an awareness on the part of man of a gift lived in an original way—the two shall become one flesh.”[14] This is the meaning through which sex enters the theology of the body, for it is in the difference, the complementarity of man and woman, that they become a gift one for the other and become one flesh. It is in the inherent original reciprocity of man’s masculinity and femininity that the body becomes the foundation of their original unity as body-person called nuptial. There cannot be complementarity on this level, that is the level of sacramentality, between persons of the same sex because there cannot be perfect reciprocity through the body. The text of Genesis clearly reveals this. Man and woman alone become one flesh. Masculinity and femininity alone realize the communio personarum that is the primordial sacrament[15] and they do it precisely through the body, through its differentiation which is ordered towards reciprocity.[16]  

            When we tie this original unity of man and woman together with original nakedness in the context of the hermeneutic of the gift we discover that the absence of shame creates an interior freedom between man and woman. They are able to gaze into each other’s heart and give themselves totally as a gift without objectifying the other. In other words, man and woman are able to freely choose to give themselves as a gift one to the other, unconstrained[17] by their body and sex. This “constraint” refers to the “sexual instinct.” Therefore, capable of seeing the other in all their truth and splendor precisely through and in the body and capable of realizing the nuptial meaning of the body without any obstacle or barrier, man and woman are free to make of themselves a gift to one another and are therefore, free to fulfill their very being and existence. All of this is set in the context of love and life, for man is conscious of his capacity to procreate—to be fruitful and multiply [18]—as well as the love that is the very source of his creation—namely God. Consequently, man and woman as creatures created in God’s image and likeness can be interpreted and understood through their being a gift and responding to that truth by making of themselves a gift.

Article by Fr. Alejandro Valladres, Archdiocese of Mobile