A cycle of catecheses that John Paul II gave at his Wednesday audiences between 1979 and 1984. Starting from Christ's appeal to what was so "from the beginning", it reads Genesis 1–3 as a revelation of the meaning of the body, then follows the theme through the Sermon on the Mount, the resurrection, celibacy, the marriage analogy of Ephesians 5, and the teaching of Humanae Vitae.