Ok, now that I’ve gotten that shameless shock tactic of a somewhat provocative title to draw attention to this blog post…I wonder where this will show up on search engines. If you couldn’t tell, I’d like to talk about breasts.
Just about any guy who has grown up in the past 30 or so
years has heard the phrases “I’m a boob guy” or “I’m a butt guy”, relegating
women to two categories based on their preference of physical feature. We’re
not worried about hair, eyes, lips, facial structure, hands, feet, smell, no
that’s all thrown out the window. A guy is said to be attracted to a woman
based on her top shelf or bottom shelf. Very chivalric, I know.
But, if we step back and take a breath (do it, breathe) it
is pretty interesting that these two body parts are on the broad scale of movies,
tv, advertising, music, the focus of attractiveness. When we just break them
down to biology, these are very useful body parts. The breasts’ sole purpose is
to feed offspring. In fact, many physicians believe that breasts are not fully
developed until a woman has given birth and produced milk. They are a cafeteria
in waiting, only going into full milk production after a woman is not pregnant
any more. I state it that way because it is possible for women who have had
abortions or miscarriages to begin to lactate. Another amazing feature I
learned during our breast feeding class for my first daughter is that the
areolas will darken due to hormones which make for easy location for the baby.
The butt, well that’s simple. It’s your own personal seat cushion and waste
disposal system. No glamor and glitz here people.
Now, in God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence he didn’t just
create our bodies to be functional. They exude beauty and strength, they
communicate, male and female fit together. At a very primal approach, yeah God
knew what he was doing, for the most part members of the opposite sex are first
attracted by looks, the body. We only have to look as far as the nearest art
museum to see that the classical view of the masculine body and the feminine
body is pretty universal. Men’s bodies are muscular and powerful while women’s
are soft, curvaceous, and beautiful. These days the human body has been
commandeered to invoke lust to the point where though our society is rampant
with pornographic images it is at times very prudish to the point where people
are offended when a woman feeds her baby, gives nourishment, KEEPS HER BABY
ALIVE by breastfeeding in public. How dare she?
But the Church, abhorrent to prudishness, has used the
female body, even bare breasts, to communicate and point to spiritual
realities. Like I mentioned before, just plainly a naked female body
communicates femininity and beauty. When it comes to breasts a whole trove of
topless maidens and even topless Virgin Mary’s can be found. But these aren’t
used to prompt lust but to point to higher spiritual realities. A cursory study
of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body will show that our bodies are meant for
the other, to be given for the good of the other. I learned this very candidly
when our first and now our second daughter was born. We breast feed on demand
and it is a grueling ordeal for my wife to offer herself physically to our
daughter. This in turn definitely affects her emotionally and spiritually. But,
in the end, the benefits of breastfeeding far outweigh any fortified man made
formula. This idea, the self-donative aspect of the body and its ability to
communicate continues into Christian art.
The Virgin Mary has been depicted as Our Lady of the Milk.
She is pictured topless or with one bare breast offering it to the baby Jesus.
Just think of it, Mary fed, nourished, kept Jesus alive with her own body! He
wasn’t just brought into this world through her body but he also depended on
her self-donative love, her giving herself fully physically to keep him alive.
Some people may be scandalized, “How dare they show Mary’s breast,” but among
all her titles the one that stands out and was very important to Jesus was
“Mother”. The Word became flesh, human, so had to be sustained in human ways.
There is no scandalous invocation of lust here. 
Jesus is not the only one that Mary has been depicted in
nourishing with her breasts in art. I recently came upon a picture on Taylor Marshall's blog
of a statue of Mary squirting milk from her breast into the mouth of St.
Bernard of Clairvaux. There is a legend that while in prayer before a statue of
Mary St. Bernard said to Mary, “Show yourself a mother” and the statue came to
life and squirted milk into his mouth. Yeah, that one’s a little weird, but
none the less a depiction of Mary as mother and nourishing with her breasts.
In the painting “Liberty Leading the People” (yes I know
this is not a Catholic piece of art but you’ll see it serves my purpose) Lady
Liberty (Marianne) leads the battle topless. Delacroix’s Lady Liberty is
depicted as a goddess on a pedestal of corpses symbolizing new life (breasts),
power (topless, not worried). Marianne, Lady Liberty and an emblem of France,
is an allegorical goddess depicting liberty and reason.
Even some of the women depicting virtues on the arches of
the nave in St. Peter’s Basilica have their breasts exposed. Saint Peter's Basilica
So in the end, women’s breasts have been used to go beyond nutrition to communicate power, beauty, femininity, and life. And in reality, biologically they possess these attributes. This realization and appreciation going past just the sheer beauty of the feminine body has come to full fruition for me in marriage and fatherhood. If only society could follow suite. When we’re able to do so we can fully appreciate the depth of verses like Isaiah 66:11-12 “So that you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast; That you may drink with delight at her abundant breasts! For thus says the Lord: I will spread prosperity over her like a river, like an overflowing torrent, the wealth of nations. You shall nurse, carried in her arms, cradled upon her knees”. And let’s not forget Song of Songs. Here’s a foretaste: “Your breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle feeding among the lilies” (Song of Songs 4:5
Check this site out for Maria
Lactans, pictures of Mary as Mother: Maria Lactans
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