From the Friars: The Mystery of Shame

My older brother had a great collection of comic books which I enjoyed reading when I was a kid. They often contained the well-known Charles Atlas advertisements. These included a cartoon of a skinny guy being ridiculed on the beach by a powerful bully. Fed up, the victim orders the free book that teaches the amazing “dynamic-tension” muscle building technique. In no time the wimp becomes a he-man and returns to the beach to take revenge on his tormentor. And the ladies are quite impressed.

Being thin and a bit insecure myself, I put a dime in an envelope and sent away for the miraculous book. To my horror it was returned for lack of postage and my mother questioned me about it. I was only nine or ten at the time. Feeling embarrassed, I said I did not want to tell her. She wisely asked me if I was ashamed of what was in the envelope. I said no, which was partly true, and she yet more wisely let it go.

In the first reading today from Genesis we hear of the shame of Adam and Eve after the original sin. St. John Paul II wrote about the complexity of human shame in his great Theology of the Body discourses. Our first parents experienced sexual shame. They had been naked without shame, because they saw the body as a manifestation of the person as a gift to be received and given. Sin profoundly wounded this innocence and the desire to use the other as an object sprang up.

I was too young to know the shame of lust, but I felt another type of shame, contempt of self because of being inadequate. I was ashamed of my body because it was not good enough to be loved. It was not like Charles Atlas’ body. In his book, Love and Responsibility, St. John Paul writes, “Shame is…swallowed up by love, dissolved in it.” The infinite and unconditional love of God for us slowly melts away shame in all its forms. There is no need to use the other or lament whatever physical imperfections I may have.

May Our Blessed Mother, Seat of Wisdom, help us to know this truth.

– Fr. Peter