Bound in Love

Father Neil asked the deacons to preach on natural family planning today because this week the Church celebrates NFP as the morally correct way for married couples to space their children. The Church has taught consistently that artificial birth control methods violate the natural law and God’s plan for marriage.

I’m not going to talk about the mechanics of NFP today. There are materials available for anyone interested in learning more about that. Today, I’m going to talk about why the Church understands NFP as the only proper way to approach the marital act because of what we believe about the human person. 

Natural family planning isn’t a thing if you are a child. It isn’t a thing if you are an older person, roughly past the age of 45. It is a thing if you are of childbearing age and married. For the average person, likely to live into your 80’s, then NFP is a thing for about a quarter of one’s life. Because of that, many in the Church approach NFP as a technique to achieve desired outcomes.

I submit to you today that natural family planning is not merely a technique to space your children, but rather it is an invitation to acknowledge who you really are, and come to a decision for yourself about the implications of that reality. In other words, NFP is part and parcel of the central teaching of Christianity.

I’m going to go to the book of Genesis, the first book in the Bible. I go there often in my homilies, and I can understand if you wonder if I’ve actually read any other books in the Bible. The first chapters of the book of Genesis tell us the story of creation, and they tell us the story of the fall of Adam and Eve. That sets the stage for the rest of the Bible. Sometimes we cannot know where we are going if we don’t know where we came from. The first chapters of the book of Genesis tell us where we came from. Natural family planning is part of that creation story, for natural family planning is less about sexual relations and more about what it means to be a human person made in the image and likeness of God.

The creation story tells us that the human person is fundamentally different from all the other creatures made by God. It is only mankind that is made in the image and likeness of God. We share instincts with the other animals, but we are gifted with intellect and eternal souls. We are the only ones created that way. Angels are eternal spirits and have intellect, but they don’t have bodies. Animals have natural souls and bodies, but they don’t have intellect. Only men and women have mind, body, and soul.

The story of the fall of humanity, when Adam and Eve ate the apple and were banished from the garden of Eden, explains why we all struggle to direct our mind and bodies in accordance with our original creation. Because we turned our back on God in the garden, we are not living as we were made to live. We were made to live in harmony and without conflict. We were made to live in harmony with nature, but instead we struggle against nature. We were made to live in love, but instead we struggle with sin. We were made to live under the dominion and care of our heavenly father, but instead we pursue domination of our circumstances and of others.

Let us go back for a moment to the season of Lent. When we start that season, we hear about prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Priests and deacons preach on those during the season of Lent because they are tools, or techniques, that we are given in order that we may grow closer to God by ordering our spiritual and physical lives in the right ways. If we apply ourselves to prayer, we will grow closer spiritually to our heavenly father. If we take up fasting, we will grow in detachment from sensual and material temptations. And if we take up almsgiving, we will grow in our trust in God’s providence as we give away some of the money that we have accumulated. Every year, we are reminded during the season of Lent about ways that we can return to that spiritual, and mental, and physical state that God made us for when he created us in the Garden of Eden.

Natural family planning is the same sort of invitation for people who are married and of childbearing age. If we are married, then the Church assumes we are committed to a lifelong partnership, an exclusive partnership, between one man and one woman, and open to giving birth to and raising children. The marital act has two ends: the bearing of children and the good of the spouses. So the marital act in the eyes of the Church is not an act purely of instinct. It is not limited to the procreative aspect. It includes the mental, emotional, and physical connections that sustain and strengthen marriage. It involves intellect and will, along with the body. It is an essentially human act.

As an essentially human act, the marital act invites us to be truly, and fully, and authentically human. That means we are invited to reclaim our place as the highest of God’s creatures and yet completely within his dominion.

We are invited here, as everywhere, to love God, and to trust God, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. NFP is a special gift for a husband and wife to manifest before God the Christian virtues of mutual respect, mutual charity, mutual patience, mutual gentleness, and mutual total gift of self. Couples that approach natural family planning with the understanding that it is an opportunity for them to live out the first and the second great commandments will have a more fulfilling experience of spacing their children. Couples that approach NFP as a way to have sexual relations but not get pregnant will struggle with self-control.

Why is this? It is because everything that we face in our human lives that engages our will and our intellect is an invitation to return to the harmonious relationship we enjoyed in the garden of Eden with our heavenly Father. And the Devil knows this. And he hates it. So he uses our memories and our passions to pull us away from our heavenly father and to keep us wandering unhappily outside the garden.

As human persons, we are made with the greatest dignity and worth of anything created by God. Jesus told his disciples, “You are worth many sparrows.” Every human person shares in that profound dignity, and God constantly invites each of us to return to that place of dignity. In the privacy of our minds, we reclaim our fundamental worth when we follow the first great commandment, and trust and love God with ourselves. In the public spaces, we reclaim our worth when we follow the second great commandment, and love our neighbor as he deserves to be loved because he is a human person, too. And in the intimacy of our marriages, we reclaim our fundamental worth when we embrace natural family planning as a God-given way to live out the vocation of Holy Matrimony.

Natural family planning is a gift to married couples from God through the church to be who he made them to be. Let us pray for all married couples, that they accept this wonderful gift.