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GENERAL AUDIENCE OF 10 SEPTEMBER
The following is the Holy Father's address to about
thirty thousand faithful assembled for the weekly audience in St. Peter's
Square.
1. Let us reflect on the following words of Jesus from the Sermon on
the Mount: "Everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed
adultery with her in his heart" ("has already made her an adulteress in
his heart") (Mt 5:28). Christ said this before listeners who, on the basis
of the books of the Old Testament, were in a certain sense prepared to
understand the significance of the look that comes from concupiscence.
Last Wednesday we referred to the texts taken from the so-called Wisdom
Books.
Here is, for example, another passage in which the biblical author
analyzes the state of the soul of the man dominated by concupiscence of
the flesh: "The soul heated like a burning fire / will not be quenched
until it is consumed; / a man who commits fornication / will never cease
until the fire burns him up; / to a fornicator all bread tastes sweet; /
he will never cease until he dies. / A man who breaks his marriage vows /
says to himself: 'Who sees me? / Darkness surrounds me, and the walls hide
me; / no one sees me. Why should I fear? / The Most High will not take
notice of my sins.' / His fear is confined to the eyes of men; / he does
not realize that the eyes of the Lord / are ten thousand times brighter
than the sun; / they look upon all the ways of men, / and perceive even
the hidden places. / So it is with a woman who leaves her husband, / and
provides an heir by a stranger (Sir 23:17-22).
2. Analogous descriptions are not lacking in world literature.(1)
Certainly, many of them are distinguished by a more penetrating
discernment of psychological analysis and a more intense significance and
expressive force. Yet, the biblical description from Sirach (23:17-22)
includes some elements maintained to be "classic" in the analysis of
carnal concupiscence. One element of this kind, for example, is a
comparison between concupiscence of the flesh and fire. Flaring up in man,
this invades his senses, excites his body, involves his feelings and in a
certain sense takes possession of his heart. Such passion, originating in
carnal concupiscence, suffocates in his heart the most profound voice of
conscience, the sense of responsibility before God; and in fact that is
particularly placed in evidence in the biblical text just now quoted. On
the other hand, external modesty with respect to men does persist... or
rather an appearance of decency. It shows itself as fear of the
consequences rather than of the evil in itself. In suffocating the voice
of conscience, passion carries with itself a restlessness of the body and
the senses. It is the restlessness of the external man. When the internal
man has been reduced to silence, then passion, once it has been given
freedom of action, exhibits itself as an insistent tendency to satisfy the
senses and the body.
This gratification, according to the criterion of the man dominated by
passion, should put out the fire; but on the contrary, it does not reach
the source of internal peace and it only touches the outermost level of
the human individual. And here the biblical author rightly observes that
man, whose will is committed to satisfying the senses, finds neither peace
nor himself, but, on the contrary, "is consumed." Passion aims at
satisfaction; therefore it blunts reflective activity and pays no
attention to the voice of conscience. Thus, without itself having any
principle of indestructibility, it "wears out." The dynamism of usage is
natural for its continuity, but it tends to exhaust itself. Where passion
enters into the whole of the most profound energies of the spirit, it can
also become a creative force. In this case, however, it must undergo a
radical transformation. If instead it suppresses the deepest forces of the
heart and conscience (as occurs in the text of Sirach 23:17-22), it "wears
out" and indirectly, man, who is its prey, is consumed.
3. When Christ in the Sermon on the Mount spoke of the man who lusts,
who looks lustfully, it can be presumed that he had before his eyes also
the images known to his listeners from the Wisdom tradition. Yet, at the
same time he referred to every man who on the basis of his own internal
experience knows the meaning of lust, looking at lustfully. The Master did
not analyze this experience nor did he describe it, as Sirach had, for
example (cf. 23:17-22). He seemed to presuppose, I would say, an adequate
knowledge of that interior fact, to which he called the attention of his
listeners, present and potential. Is it possible that some of them do not
know what it is all about? If they really know nothing about it, the
content of Christ's words would not apply to him, nor would any analysis
or description be capable of explaining it to him. If instead he knows—this
in fact in such case deals with a knowledge completely internal, intrinsic
to the heart and the conscience—he
will immediately understand when the quoted words refer to him.
4. Christ, therefore, does not describe or analyze what constitutes the
experience of lust, the experience of concupiscence of the flesh. One even
has the impression that he did not penetrate this experience in all the
breadth of its interior dynamism, as occurs, for example, in the text
quoted from Sirach, but rather he paused on its threshold. Lust has not
yet been changed into an exterior action. It has still not become the act
of the body, but is until now the interior act of the heart. It expresses
itself in a look, in the way of looking at the woman. Nevertheless, it
already lets itself be understood and reveals its content and its
essential quality. It is now necessary for us to make this analysis. A
look expresses what is in the heart. A look expresses, I would say, the
man within. If in general it is maintained that man "acts according to his
lights," (operari sequitur esse), Christ in this case
wanted to bring out that the man looks in conformity with what he is:
intueri sequitur esse. In a certain sense, man by his look
reveals himself to the outside and to others. Above all he reveals what he
perceives on the "inside."(2)
5. Christ, then, teaches us to consider a look almost like the
threshold of inner truth. In a look, "in the way in which one looks," it
is already possible to single out completely what concupiscence is. Let us
try to explain it. Lust, looking at lustfully, indicates an experience of
value to the body, in which its nuptial significance ceases to be that,
just because of concupiscence. Its procreative meaning likewise ceases (we
spoke about this in our previous considerations). When it concerns the
conjugal union of man and woman, it is rooted in the nuptial meaning of
the body and almost organically emerges from it. Now then, man, lusting,
looking at lustfully (as we read in Mt 5:27-28), attempts in a more or
less explicit way the separation of that meaning of the body. As we have
already observed in our reflections, this is at the basis of the communion
of persons, whether outside of marriage, or—in
a special way—when
man and woman are called to build their union "in the body" (as the
"gospel of the beginning" proclaims in the classic text of Gn 2:24). The
experience of the nuptial meaning of the body is subordinate in a special
way to the sacramental call, but is not limited to this. This meaning
qualifies the liberty of the gift that—as
we shall see more precisely in further analyses—can
be fulfilled not only in marriage but also in a different way.
Christ says: "Everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already
committed adultery with her in his heart" (Mt 5:28). Did he not perhaps
mean by this that concupiscence itself—like
adultery—is
an interior separation from the nuptial meaning of the body? Did he not
want to refer his listeners to their internal experiences of such
detachment? Is it not perhaps for this reason that he defines it as
"adultery committed in the heart"?
NOTES
1) Cf. Confessions of St. Augustine, VI, 12, 21, 22; VII, 17; VIII, 11;
Dante, The Divine Comedy, "Inferno" V. 37-43; C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1960), p. 28.
2) A philological analysis confirms the significance of the expression
ho blépon
("one who looks"; Mt 5:28).
"If blépo
of Mt 5:28 has the value of internal perception, equivalent to 'I think, I
pay attention to, I look'—a
more precise and more sublime evangelical teaching may result regarding
the interpersonal relationship among the disciples of Christ.
"According to Jesus not just a lustful glance makes a person adulterous,
but a thought in the heart suffices" (M. Adinolfi, "The Desire of a Woman
in Matthew 5:28," Fondamenti biblici della teologia morale.
Proceedings of 22nd Italian Biblical Week, Brescia 1973, Paideia, p. 279).
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