my Articulate Heart

There is a quiet lie many people carry: “I am too broken to be healed.” Christmas gently but firmly contradicts that lie. The Theology of the Body, especially as taught by Saint John Paul II, reminds us that we are not fundamentally flawed. We are created good. Sin did not destroy our desires—it twisted them inward. Our problem is not that we desire too much. It is that we desire too small. Christ does not come to erase desire. He comes to redeem it. God Enters Real Life, Not Ideal Life At Christmas, God does not wait for humanity to be strong, sorted, or spiritually impressive. He enters weakness. This changes everything. It means we no longer have to hide our poverty from God—tired marriages, strained relationships, confused desires, daily frustrations. Hope begins when we stop performing and start offering our lives as they are. Salvation does not begin by escaping our humanity. It begins by allowing God to enter it. The Body: Place of Hope, Not...

In the context of Christmas, words like bride , bridegroom , and spousal might sound abstract or distant. But in fact, Christmas makes them concrete—touchable, visible, human. The birth of Jesus is not only the arrival of a Savior. It is the arrival of the Bridegroom. Jesus is born in Bethlehem , which means House of Bread . He is laid in a manger—a feeding trough. From the very beginning, His body is marked for gift. Scripture captures this with stunning clarity: “A body you have prepared for me.” This body is prepared to be given. What the “Spousal Meaning of the Body” Really Means In the Theology of the Body, the spousal meaning of the body simply means this: The body is made to say, “I give myself to you.” At Christmas, God speaks that sentence not with words, but with flesh. Christ comes to unite Himself to humanity. But the Bride is wounded. Sin has distorted her ability to receive and to give love. She cannot make herself worthy. So the Bridegr...

Every Christmas, we look at the manger and think we already know the story. A baby. A stable. Mary. Joseph. Angels. Shepherds. But if we pause long enough, something deeply unsettling emerges. Why this way? Why would an all-powerful God choose to enter the world as a child—helpless, dependent, unable even to hold His own head upright? God does not arrive with force. He arrives with vulnerability. He does not bypass the human condition. He enters it through the main door , the same way every one of us does—through dependence. At the Nativity, the omnipotent God allows Himself to be carried, fed, cleaned, protected, and taught. He places His life into the hands of Mary and Joseph. The Creator submits Himself to His creation. This is not God using a body. This is God revealing what the body is for. What the Baby in the Manger Is Really Showing Us In the light of the Theology of the Body, Christmas reveals a simple but radical truth: The body exists for self-gif...