But what does this have to do with the body? What is the wealth of the body? And in what way is it Marian? Let us return to the theology of the body. There John Paul II argues that the body's role in the complex of the person is revelatory: the body reveals the person.62 The person is embodied, yet the person can transcend her body (albeit in a provisional way), as the soul that subsists after death reveals.63 So the body, while personal, is not simply the whole reality of the person.64 What the human body can do, however-and only the human body, because it is the body of a person-is reveal God's eternal triune life. In fact, according to John Paul II, this is the very purpose for which God created the human body. This purpose means that the body functions as a "primordial" sacrament.65

Thus, in this [pre-lapsarian] dimension, a primordial sacrament is constituted, understood as a sign that efficaciously transmits in the visible world the invisible mystery hidden in God from eternity. And this is the mystery of Truth and Love, the mystery of divine life, in which man really participates. . .. The body, in fact, and only the body, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It has been created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden from eternity in God, and thus to be a sign of it.66

John Paul II wishes to emphasize that it is a revelatory fact that the human being acts, in a personal way, through his body. This body, therefore, "permits him to be the author of genuinely human activity."67 What is "genuinely human activity," however? He has in mind the activity of a thoughtful and responsible person using his or her spiritual powers. Ultimately, however, what fulfills persons is generosity. As Gaudium et Spes states, the human person is fulfilled only through a sincere gift of self (§24).

62 John Paul II, ToB, 7:2, 154; 9:4, 164 63 ST I, q. 75, a. 2. 64 Indeed, this fundamentally "aesthetic" quality of the body as the expression of the interior person is common to all material things, which reveal the truth of their substances by means of their exterior accidents. 65 See Angela Franks, "Deleuze, Balthasar, and John Paul II on the Aesthetics of the Body," Theological Studies 81, no. 3 (2020): 649-670. 66 John Paul II, ToB, 19:4, 203 (italics original). For more on the philosophical background to this statement, see Angela Franks, "Thinking the Embodied Person with Karol Wojtyła," Nova et Vetera (English) 16, no. 1 (2018): 141-71. 67 John Paul II, ToB, 6:3, 152; 7:2, 154.

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Mary as the Exemplar of the Body’s Poverty

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