(Catholic Herald photo/Kevin Wondrash)
MADISON — “Be not afraid of your deepest desires. Be not afraid of God’s design for your desires. Be not afraid of your ultimate destiny.”
On the face of it, those words may not seem part of a “sex talk” to a college audience, but indeed they were.
Christopher West — author, speaker, teacher, and expert in St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body — spoke to about 200 college students in Madison on April 23 at St. Paul University Catholic Center on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. It was presented by Badger Catholic — a student organization whose goal is to help students lead deeper lives.
“We are here to talk about some big stuff.” West said at the start of his talk. “We’re here to talk about God, sex, and the meaning of life.”
Desire, design, destiny
His talk focused on “desire,” “design,” and “destiny,” or “living our lives in 3D,” West said.
In everyone’s life, “What is that burning desire? What are we looking for?” West asked. He answered “that hunger is a yearning for something infinite,” saying that when people use that desire on something finite, such as premarital sex, there is no “satisfaction.”
“Our desire for sexual love and union is only a little glimmer of something far beyond anything this world has to offer,” West added.
The energetic West’s movements were limited to mostly sitting on a stool, since he broke his femur on a recent skiing trip with his family and needs crutches to help get around.
West said people need to find the design for the desire — pointing toward St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body.
West likened the teachings of Theology of the Body and the design to “standing at a gate. There’s a whole other way of seeing and living if you will have the courage” to not misuse one’s body for pleasure or use others for the same reason.
He said, “God is singing a love song to the whole human race, and he’s trying to woo us into an infinite ecstasy of love.”
“There is a design written into creation,” West said. “We can look at creation and we can read God’s sign language.”
Whether God’s signs be in flowers, nature, or the bread and wine of the Eucharist, “If we read God’s sign language, it all culminates in our creation as male and female and the call of the two to be fruitful and multiply and the call of the two to become one flesh,” he said.
The ultimate destiny
West said the ultimate destiny in God’s love is to be “married” to him in heaven.
We have a “call to life-giving love. If we are reading the sign language correctly, what we are discovering is God wants to marry us and build his bride with eternal life,” West said.
He used the example of the Virgin Mary, “who opened up to God all of her desire for love, for union, for truth, for goodness, for beauty . . . and God married her and she conceived God’s eternal son — her womb was literally filled with eternal life.”
He said God calls a man and a woman to be together with a union that creates life as a sign of the “eternal bliss” that waits in heaven.
The Cor Project
West encouraged everyone to become part of his ministry, the Cor Project. Started by
West, the Cor Project aims to equip men and women to learn, live, and share the beauty of the divine plan for human life, love, and sexuality in a new evangelization.
Membership in the project lets members access many resources on Theology of the Body and West’s talks.
Assisting West during his talk was musician Mike Magione. Part of the folk band The Union, he travels with West on his speaking tour and plays songs, to the tune of his acoustic guitar, reflecting on the message of Theology of the Body.
For more information on West and the Cor Project, visit www.corproject.com
For more on Badger Catholic, visit badgercatholic.org