Here is my summary of this great book!
The Problem: Idolaters or Iconoclasts?
Due to sin (the original sin of Adam and Eve + the structures of sin in our culture, the disordering of our passions caused by original sin = concupiscence, and the continued effects of sin), we can often fall into one of two extremes.
Idolaters. Just as idolatry is the worship of images, we too can worship the image of the body and attempt to live a “carnal life” divorced from the spirit and an eroticism in which we indulge in sexual feelings and desires. Idolaters mistake the sign of beauty for Beauty Itself (the end). To the degree that this happens, the icon becomes our “god” – the icon becomes an idol. Because icons provide a glimpse of heaven, there is a “constant temptation” to treat them as heaven – that is, to idolize them.
Iconoclasts. Just as iconoclasts destroy images, we too can try to destroy the image of the body and attempt to live a “spiritual life” divorced from the body and a puritanism in which we repress sexual feelings and desires. Whereas the idolater is obsessed with the sign (he can’t do without it), the iconoclast thinks he doesn’t need the sign at all. But the iconoclast makes the fundamental error of “blaming” the physical realm for the problem.
Both the idolater and the iconoclast is (understandably) put off by the other. Each wants to point out the other’s blind spots – usually while failing to acknowledge one’s own. Each is upholding a half-truth that remains unrecognized and unaffirmed by the other.
The half-truth of the idolater is that the body is good (CCC 364) & marital union is meant to be an icon of our ultimate satisfaction.
The half-truth of the iconoclast is our souls reveal that which is our greatest value in us (made in God’s image CCC 363) & that our ultimate satisfaction is in heaven alone.
The Answer: Icons!
Due to the Incarnation, Christ, the unique “icon of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), “fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear” (GS 22). In the Incarnation, a marriage of flesh and spirit took place, which now lies at the heart of the Gospel and at the heart of our humanity.
As Bridegroom of the Church, Christ’s body becomes an “icon” of the “mystery hidden in God from eternity” (see Eph 3:9). What mystery? “God is an eternal communion of love. And He has destined us to share in that exchange” (CCC 221). The body signifies this theological reality: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her… This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church” (Eph 5:25, 32).
From all that has been said, we can see that the analogy in Ephesians 5 between the holy communion of spouses (consummated when the two become “one flesh”) and the Holy Communion of Christ and the Church (consummated in the Eucharist) works in two directions, as John Paul tells us (see TOB 90:4). Spousal love and the love of Christ and the Church are two “great signs” which mutually illuminate each other.
- Spousal love illuminates both the “unitive” and “life-giving” dimensions of Christ’s love for the Church (see TOB 97:4).
- Christ’s love for the Church illuminates the theological and redemptive dimensions of spousal love (see TOB 102:4).
- The profound “oneness” of these two great signs, making them a single great sign (see TOB 95b:7).
Due to the Resurrection, we too can be “icons” of God. Our bodies can “make visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine” (TOB 19:4). Due to the ever-present grace of the Resurrection, our hearts can be liberated from the domination of concupiscence (the disordering of our passions caused by original sin) and our desires transformed in a new life of grace with Christ, “who heals, restores, and transforms the human heart by his grace” (VS 23, cf TOB 47:5, VS 103).
To become “icons” of God like Christ, we must commit to cooperating with this graces of the Resurrection by persevering along the threefold way of the interior life—the way of purgation, illumination, and union. This journey involves an “undeniably painful transformation ‘as through fire,’ ” as Pope Benedict XVI put it (SS 47). But as we humbly endure this painful fire, our idols lose their allure. “Created things cease to be a danger for us as once they were, particularly while we were still at the purgative stage of our journey. Creation, and other people in particular, not only regain their true light, given to them by God the Creator, but, so to speak, they lead us to God himself, in the way that he willed to reveal himself to us: as Father, Redeemer, and Spouse” (MI, p. 30). In other words, to the degree that our hearts are transformed and redirected from creatures to their Creator, our idols become for us what they always have been in reality—so many icons that “lead us to God himself.” In this way, our “false worship” is transformed into “true worship.”
In the Sacrament of Matrimony, couples have a unique ability to be, once again, “icons” of God’s love – and reveal the “great mystery” (Eph 5:32) of Christ’s spousal love for the Church. In the Resurrection, marriage, as the primordial sacrament, is “resurrected” in its ability to communicate divine life (see TOB 100:2). This is the Christian revolution – the sexual union is transformed from something that is worshiped into something that is worship – an offering of praise and worship to God with a living hope in the consummation of the Marriage of the Lamb.
In the New Evangelization, we must follow the example John Paul II set in his TOB and focus on proclaiming the truth, goodness, and beauty of the “great mystery” of Christ’s love in the modern world. This is a “theology of affirmation.” To proclaim first and foremost that it is good to exist, is good to be here! (see Mt 17:4). It is good to be human. It is good to be created male and female. And it is good that God created males and females with a yearning for love. In this context, sin is just to miss the mark, to not reach out goal of infinite Love.
Pope St. Paul VI said that we need to translate the Gospel “into the speech and thinking of our time” (LW, 63). And that “all of us who feel the spur of the apostolate should examine closely the kind of speech we use. Is it easy to understand? Can it be grasped by ordinary people? Is it current idiom?” An effective teacher of the Faith “is always at pains to learn the sensitivities of his audience, and if reason demands it, he adapts himself and the manner of his presentation to the susceptibilities and the degree of intelligence of his hearers” (ES 81).
Prodigal Catholic 
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