Sanity, Sanctity and Sexuality

My friends observed the full blossoming and integration of the anima within male saints: St Dominic who wept freely when celebrating Mass, and dealt with his brothers with tenderness of heart and soft compassion; St Benedict who treats his charges with similar tenderness and sensitivity; even the most manly of saints like Ignatius Loyola and Thomas More and Gregory the Great and Thomas Aquinas display a tenderness of heart, compassion and sensitivity that shows the proper flowering of the anima within the male soul. Again, this is not to say that they were effeminate; instead their masculinity is fulfilled and completed with a beautiful integration of the anima rather than a rejection of it.

As the female saints shed light on the feminist movement, so the male saints shed light on the homosexualist movement. This complex maladjustment of the masculine soul is. on the one hand, a false feminization which mocks both true masculinity and true femininity. As the Barbie Doll female is a shallow travesty of true fulfilled femininity, so the “macho man” is a shallow and immature realization of the masculine. You will find no saints who are one step above the gorilla. Instead male saints show us true masculinity which is completed by a fearless acceptance and integration of the anima in the correct way.

Finally, this work is not something that can be accomplished by analysis or therapy or self help or “behavior modification.” It is something that can only be accomplished by the supernatural work of grace in a person’s life. Only through a life of prayer and discipline and humility and self sacrifice can one hope to attain this supreme gift. On this journey the tender female will become tough and the tough man will become tender.

I am not sure how this happens, but I know that it does. I see in the lives of ordinary Catholics this transaction taking place. It happens through the life of prayer and worship. It happens through the vagaries and brought and tumble of life. It happens as we learn the difficult lessons of love.

For my part, as a man, I sense that a devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus helps. “O Lord who wears your heart on the outside, take away my heart of stone and give me a heart of fire. Help me to be vulnerable and learn the lessons of love before it’s too late. Help me not to be ashamed to love and be loved. AMEN.”