From the Director: Summer 2024

One of the great gifts of Archbishop Sheen was his capacity to render important philosophical and the-ological concepts in language that anyone could understand. He made these ideas accessible without lessening them. A great example of this was his treatment of the different kinds of love described in Greek.

If Sheen could speak to us today, I think he would remind us that Jesus commanded us to love in a way that is intensely spiritual, while the world focuses on love that is reduced to the physical. In the first century, Christians fought against Gnosticism, a philosophical system that focused on the body as evil in opposition to the soul which is pure. Gnosticism is a heresy because we are to be holy both in body and in soul. Jesus took on a human body to manifest his divine holiness in human flesh.

I believe Sheen would diagnose the anxiety about sexuality present in the world today as a modern kind of Gnosticism. The world tells us that a person’s identity on the inside can be at war with the ex-ternal physical body. The Archbishop would remind us that we were made in the image and likeness of God, both body and soul, and that God made us to be good, and indeed very good (Gen 1:31)! Jesus redeemed us in body and soul by means of his crucifixion in his human flesh. Only Jesus could restore the communion between God and man, and the harmony of body and soul that was wounded by sin. Jesus overcomes every human anxiety and fills us with hope.

-Msgr. Jason Gray