Body of Jesus Christ ctxt.es

Sexuality and desire have always been one of the most effective tools of Christianity. Faith and passion always go together. Invocation, ecstasy, union. From St. Teresa to St. Sebastian, the experience of God has been a transcendent experience, but deeply rooted in the physicality of the body. Unlike other religions, divine experience in Christianity is not so much an external projection as an introspection, an inward glance toward the Lord, toward God, or toward the light that lies within the individual soul. Finding God was depicted as an experience closer to warming the body than forgetting Him. This is why Christianity has been characterized as a religion of physicality, of bodies coming together and forming something more, the flesh turning into a gathering, a community.

As we all know, bodies are identified by their boundaries. The limitations that prevent us from being everything are also the ones that define what we are and, therefore, the ones that allow us to be something specific. So, as solid as we are, we can be broken, hurt and damaged, but we can also be healed, loved and kissed. Without our body we are nothing, and without recognizing it as such, we lose everything that we are.

If we abstract, abstract, experiment and decompose, what are we left with? The destruction of the individual in the last century has gone hand in hand with the abstraction of our representations. While people have been turned into bags of energy ready to be produced, while communities have been turned into sewage networks through which consumption waste flows, while every human relationship has been increasingly rationalized and transformed into economic exchange. has been changed. , While all this was happening, we stopped painting ourselves. It seems that because we abuse our bodies so much, we have forgotten what a body is like.

Is that why it is shocking to see a half-naked Jesus Christ? No, for some people, the work Salustino did for the 2024 Sevillian Holy Week poster might be something kitsch, Others of us may see it as a perfect work of art, replete with broad values ​​and with all the complexity and depth worthy of images that awaken emotions and arouse passion through simple contemplation. However, seeing its reception on social networks is enough to verify that there is a certain sector of the population for which the poster represents an unacceptable homosexuality of the Body of Christ (as if Christ and his twelve apostles do not already Were) gay enough without needing Salustino’s help).

Perhaps the souls of those who with chisel and hammer turned all the statues of the Vatican into eunuchs still exist.

Many people forget; The Church is not there to explain, but to seduce. Catholic dogma has sought to be used as a means of wishing for a better world, a more just world. The Body of Christ demands the Word made flesh, the importance of the crystallization of the Words, the effectiveness of the promised judgment, the reaffirmation of the bodies and the assertion of their finitude as something constitutive. To those who say that the body of Christ has been mutilated, I would tell them that if not, it is that the only conception of the body which they respect is that of an instrument, and as an instrument, they There are also ways to see Christ.

Perhaps the souls of those people still exist who, with a chisel and hammer, turned all the statues of the Vatican into eunuchs. Perhaps the inability of many people to imagine such a Christ also explains why they are not able to see other people recognize themselves in the body they most desire. Perhaps this rejection also sheds light on why those who desire monogamy condemn breasts and vagina as obscene symbols. For them the body is nothing more than a tool in a world of fleeting ends, but never an end in itself. Something that should be used to bend, squeeze and break, but not to crave, caress and care for. You may not be able to see God in the velvety eyes of desire, but God is there; One is in the rush of secret love; It is there in shame and concealment and also in joy and sting; God is in that light clothing that hides not for the sake of hiding, but for the miracle of being able to find. It may be true that those who do not see it are not afraid of the body, but without knowing it they fear the world of the body, they fear a world where subjects reappear as the beings they are. Who affirm their identity within their limits and, therefore, demand to be recognized, valued and protected. They fear the world created by and for the body.

Before them, the body of this Christ becomes new and regenerated, showing golden powers on a red background. Provocative, yes, but because the idea of ​​a better world can only provoke. A youth, desiring and yearning for Christ, because desire constitutes the body, at least the body that recognizes its passions because these also constitute its finitude. Hurts, but his bloodless wounds are a thing of the past. Body of a Victim, more serious but sweeter, demands a world without victims, without people forced to hide because of who they are, without people killed and humiliated for their love. Is; The world of security from the physical, because the physical is coming to an end; A world of love for bodies, for all bodies. A body of Christ, steadfast and peaceful, demands a delayed fulfillment of justice and says that, if we have to choose between the bodies and the established order, it would be worse for the law.

Sexuality and desire have always been one of the most effective tools of Christianity. Faith and passion always go together. Invocation, ecstasy, union. From St. Teresa to St. Sebastian, the experience of God has been a transcendent experience, but it has the deepest roots…