Why does the Church teach that making love is a form of prayer

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That’s right: sex is called to be sacred

It may sound strange to a lot of people, but did you know that by making love to your spouse in marriage, being both open to the grace of life, are you praying?

It is simple to understand. Prayer is not a repetition of words: it is an attitude of union with God. All our activities, when consciously offered to Him, are prayer. Even sex? And why not?

In his fascinating catechesis on the Theology of the Body, John Paul II tells us about the wonderful human capacity to experience, through corporeality, the nuptial attribute of the expression of love. In this love, each spouse becomes a gift, a gift to the other, and a complete, voluntary, conscious gift that God makes fruitful in magnificent fruits such as personal fulfillment, mutual fulfillment, the vision of meaning for life itself, the opening to new life for the children to come!

It is something unique for the human person: to consciously surrender to one another as an offering of love!

In this context, to make love is to pray because it is an act of mutual surrender in which one participates in the Divine Love and even of the divine creation.

St. John Paul II says about the spouses: they “see one another with all the peace of the inner gaze that creates the fullness of the intimacy of people.” We all want someone who loves us, accepts us and respects us fully, fully, because it fills us, elevates us, and literally leads us to experience the love of God sensibly.

Sexual union in marriage is an act of union with God because through it he makes us partakers of his love and his Spirit and conveys the graces necessary to persevere and fulfill us in the challenge involved in this daily surrender – it’s not easy.

Important: no other sexual act can be described as “making love”, because Love, in the full sense, is Absolute Love, is Absolute Being, is Absolute Sense, is God; and no act apart from Him can be understood authentically as love. No other sexual act dignifies. The sexual act outside this context not only unites us to God but, on the contrary, distances us from participation in the fullness of His Love.

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Adapted from original text by Luz Ivonne Ream

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