Full Tires

I probably should have explained the fun pink shirts that my Theology of the Body girls are wearing in the picture below.

Christopher West uses an analogy using tires to explain why people in our society sometimes live the way they do. He says it's as if we are all driving around in cars with flat tires, but we have never seen or driven cars with full tires, so we think our flat-tire lifestyle is completely normal...we don't know there is a better way to drive our cars. It is the same with our lives. People settle for less than the best because they don't know or understand that there's a better way. His point is that most of the time people don't desire to live their life with flat tires, but that they need us to share the gospel and they need us to show them what love is meant to be...to give them hope of living life to the fullest.

Christopher West often refers to the body and sexuality in terms of how it was "in the beginning". In Eden, Adam and Eve were naked without shame because before the fall there was no such thing as lust. It was so cool because the other night we were talking about the tire analogy again and one of the girls said "So, it's kind of like when God was breathing life into Adam and Eve he was inflating their tires". I thought that was really insightful. I'm so proud of them.

So, the girls in our small group really loved that analogy. The front of the shirt has a tire that says "Theology of the Body" - around the tire it says "I'm living my life with full tires" and on the back it says "This is the body....a witness to love - John Paul II"

I really love them a lot. The best part of the analogy, though, is that, as Christians, we can live in victory, with full tires, but when we get to heaven, we won't even need our tires. Heaven is more than re-inflating our tires, because we will be able to fly. :)

Free. Total. Faithful. Fruitful.

So, I have been co-leading a high school girls' small group with my friend Alicia at St Cecilia. We are currently studying Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body. Basically John Paul II did a massive amount of teaching on marriage, sex, the family, and how God ties into all of that. We are using the book "Theology of the Body for Beginners" by Christopher West.





For those of you who have read/heard/studied anything about Theology of the Body, you probably know how much potential it has to change peoples' lives. For those of you who haven't studied any Theology of the Body, I highly reccomend it - especially if you are married or are preparing for marriage.

John Paul II shows through his teaching that the meaning of life is to love others as Christ loves us - through a total donation of self, through agape love. Agape love is always free, total, faithful, and fruitful. He shows us how our body, when we use it the way that God intended us to, makes this mystery of love visible to the world.

The girls in my small group are, in a word, AMAZING. I have learned so much from them. The picture is of our group presenting/giving their testimonies to a youth group who is starting Theology of the Body for teens. They are passionate about sharing God's original plan for love with others. How refreshing! These women of God are truly the future of the church - I believe that their evangelization will change people's hearts for Christ. Praise God for the way that he is working in them!

"It is Jesus in fact that you seek when you dream of happiness, he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fulness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal."

- John Paul II The Great