Even more important is the mode of expression natural meanings provide. Natural meanings are given, rather than being products of one’s private intellect. They allow us to step outside the limits of our imaginations, of our personal fixations and eccentricities, of the personality and style that we craft for ourselves. What I say about marriage, fatherhood, and filiation is always colored by my self-image, my idea of what “a person like me” would say. Natural meanings, by their impersonal–let us instead say “suprapersonal”–nature, allow me to step outside myself and make a completely authentic response to the thing itself. Being a husband and father means taking on a universal role, a role not of my making but one that lets me participate in the mystery of creation. The ephemera of my personality fall away, and I engage this mystery, not as “bonald” (35 year old, assistant professor, Star Trek fan, etc) but simply as Man. By my imagination, I have my own private world, but by natural meanings, I am one with every human being who ever lived. Fatherhood means the same thing for every father; it’s bigger than any one of us, and yet it is at the core of each of us. Reflecting on these matters helps us see the real unity of the human race, the unity alluded to in the expression “Man” (“Adam” in Hebrew). Man is the whole race considered together as one, but Man is also the essence of each individual, what we find when we look deeply into ourselves. This escape from oneself and into Man is so important that cultures create formalized rituals–at weddings, funerals, etc–to provide more of it. Here again, part of the act’s meaning is its universality, that I speak the same wedding vows my father said and my son will say.
In this matter the Christian has an advantage. What is abstract for natural reason becomes concrete and vivid in the light of the Faith. God’s substance and essence are one, so He alone can bridge complete universality and concreteness. We believe that Man was made in His image, and at the appointed time, God Himself became Man, a new Adam, making Himself the core of humanity. So when he acts “as Man”, the Christian realizes a sense in which he is acting “as Christ”. When the body makes a promise (through sex, childbirth, etc), it is ultimately God Himself making the promise. If we would not be so mean as to break our own word, how much more should we take care not to break His!
So we find our corporeal existence charged with meaning; God Himself has lent it His own voice. Will you protest against this aspect of human nature because you didn’t choose it? But this is what you are! This is your inmost nature. Surely the proper response to so great and holy a thing is reverence. Reverence and gratitude. Let us embrace our place in the order of nature, the place chosen for us by the Creator. Let us respect the language of the body, with its suprarational, suprapersonal mode of signification. Let us follow its calling to grow out of ourselves by putting on Man.
Throne and Altar 
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