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S i d e b a r
What Does "The Personal Significance of the Body" Mean?
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This Rock
Volume 19, Number 6
 July-August 2008 
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John Paul’s writings on human life and sexuality often make mention of the "personal significance of the body." But what does it mean to speak of the personal significance of the body?
Our English word "significance" comes from a Latin root meaning "to show by signs." So we can begin to understand this concept by thinking about how the body could be a sign of the person.
As a first step in that direction, compare bodies and persons to words and their meanings. From a common sense point of view, words in conversation are the signs and expressions of meanings; in and through them, our meanings become available to ourselves and to others for response. So when we respond to words, our own or others’, we respond not just to them but to their meanings.
But what of the person whose meanings are expressed in words? How can persons come to expression for themselves and others? The notion of the body’s personal significance points the way: Our persons become available to ourselves and to others for response in and through our bodies. As with words and meanings, when we respond to the human body—our own or others’—we respond to the person. The body in its own integral order is the sign of the person because it makes the person present in such a way that the recipient of the person’s self-gift may respond.
Because the body is the sign of the person and because persons are oriented toward self-gift, the body’s actions are apt signs for expressing the mutual self-donation of persons. A few examples demonstrate this point: If I want to give you my greeting, I wave. If I want to give you my word, I shake your hand. If I want to give you my affection, we embrace. And if I want to give my spouse a promise of my total self-gift, we engage in the marital act.
In the culture of death, on the other hand, many think of the body as a mere tool of the person. But in responding to a tool, we respond to something other than the person. So if real mutual self-gift is possible, the body must be more the sign of a person than the tool of a person.
Others imagine the body as a kind of word, but as a word without any context or inherent meaning. According to this way of thinking, bodily actions derive their significance from an external social context. So when the social context changes, the meaning of the bodily action changes.
Certainly this is true for some actions; the American gesture indicating "stop" may mean "go" in another culture. But in the Theology of the Body, John Paul teaches that the marital act is not a gesture of that kind. Rather, following Christ’s words that take us back to the beginning and forward to the Resurrection, he shows us that the significance of the marital act as a sign of total self-gift belongs to the fundamental created order and to the bodily complementarity of the sexes.
As virtues, chastity and justice both depend on the ability to discern the personal significance of the body. Without it, we will not know how to treat a body that has become an inefficient tool or when and with whom to engage in the marital act. Chastity and justice rise and fall together on the basis of their perception of the body’s personal significance.
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Catholic Answers
