body in truth" so that the splendor of Christ's love for the Church can shine forth. The gift of piety has a particular meaning here. It gives them a "deep reverence" for the teaching in Humanae Vitae on the significance of the two inseparable meanings of the conjugal act.79 They become aware that in their shared life and vocation they manifest the very mystery of creation and redemption.

John Paul II echoes the encyclical Humanae Vitae in stressing the necessity of prayer and recourse to the sacraments to help build up the power of love which will enable them to overcome obstacles to living the truth of the language of the body.80 Love is not the same as the concupiscence that draws the man and woman together and that is often mistaken for love. Love is a power that comes from God and enables the couple to adhere to the truth in their relationship and to say yes to God's plan for their marriage. Just as Joseph, in obeying the angel and taking Mary into his home, with all that implied for his married life of virginity, found a love greater than any he could have imagined, so in obeying God's call in their marriage, and sustained by the donum pietatis, couples can find an inner harmony of marriage, beyond any they might imagine.81 It is also intrinsic to their call to holiness.

Conclusion

The universal call to holiness was laid out for the first time in Vatican Council II in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium.82 Since that time there has been a great renewal of interest in the family as the "domestic church," which had been proposed by St. Augustine. The family as a sphere of holiness, however, sinks it roots deep in the Old Testament. Joseph Atkinson, in his forthcoming seminal study Biblical and Theological Foundations of the Domestic Church, shows how in the Old Covenant the Temple was the extraordinary sphere of holiness, the family the ordinary. Its very raison d'être as an image of the covenant was to be holy.83 The practice of Mikvah constitutes an essential element of family purity or holiness by assuring marital chastity and respect for the vital structure of life. In other words, reverence for these structures which have God as their author lies at the heart of the family as a sphere of holiness.

79 Ibid., November 14, 1984, 131, no. 4.80 Ibid., October 3, 1984, 126, no. 5.81 Ibid., November 21, 1984, 132, no. 6.82 Lumen Gentium, Chapter 5.83 Joseph Atkinson, Biblical and Theological Foundations of the Domestic Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming). Two thirds of the holiness code in Leviticus directly relates to sexual behavior.

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Conjugal Spirituality and the Gift of Reverence

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