| GENERAL AUDIENCE OF WEDNESDAY, 29 OCTOBER On Wednesday, 29
October, the Holy Father delivered the following address to the faithful
gathered in St. Peter's Square for the weekly General Audience.
1. For a long time now, our Wednesday reflections have been centered on
the following enunciation of Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount: "You
have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to
you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed
adultery with her in his heart" (Mt 5:27-28). We have recently explained
that these words cannot be understood or interpreted in a Manichaean way.
They do not in any way condemn the body and sexuality. They merely contain
a call to overcome the three forms of lust, especially the lust of the
flesh. This call springs precisely from the affirmation of the personal
dignity of the body and of sexuality, and merely confirms this
affirmation.
To clarify this formulation, that is, to determine the specific meaning
of the words of the Sermon on the Mount, in which Christ appeals to the
human heart (cf. Mt 5:27-28), is important not only because of "inveterate
habits," springing from Manichaeism, in the way of thinking and evaluating
things, but also because of some contemporary positions which interpret
the meaning of man and of morality. Ricoeur described Freud, Marx and
Nietzsche as "masters of suspicion"(1) ("maîtres du soupçon"). He
had in mind the set of systems that each of them represents, and above
all, perhaps, the hidden basis and the orientation of each of them in
understanding and interpreting the humanum itself.
It seems necessary to refer, at least briefly, to this basis and to
this orientation. It must be done to discover a significant convergence
and also a fundamental divergence, which has its source in the Bible, and
which we are trying to express in our analyses. What does the convergence
consist of? It consists in the fact that the above-mentioned thinkers, who
have and still do exercise a great influence on the way of thinking and
evaluating of the men of our time, seem substantially also to judge and
accuse man's heart. Even more, they seem to judge it and accuse it because
of what biblical language, especially Johannine, calls lust, the three
forms of lust.
The pride of life
2. Here a certain distribution of the parts could be made. In the
Nietzschean interpretation, the judgment and accusation of the human heart
correspond, in a way, to what is called in biblical language "the pride of
life"; in the Marxist interpretation, to what is called "the lust of the
eyes"; in the Freudian interpretation, to what is called "the lust of the
flesh." The convergence of these conceptions with the interpretation of
man founded on the Bible lies in the fact that, discovering the three
forms of lust in the human heart, we, too, could have limited ourselves to
putting that heart in a state of continual suspicion. However, the Bible
does not allow us to stop here. The words of Christ according to Matthew
5:27-28 are such that, while manifesting the whole reality of desire and
lust, they do not permit us to make this lust the absolute criterion of
anthropology and ethics, that is, the very core of the hermeneutics of
man. In the Bible, lust in its three forms does not constitute the
fundamental and perhaps even unique and absolute criterion of anthropology
and ethics, although it is certainly an important coefficient to
understand man, his actions, and their moral value. The analysis we have
carried out so far also shows this.
To the "man of lust"
3. Though wishing to arrive at a complete interpretation of Christ's
words on the man who "looks lustfully" (cf. Mt 5:27-28), we cannot be
content with any conception of lust, even if the fullness of the
psychological truth accessible to us were to be reached; we must, on the
contrary, draw on the First Letter of John 2:15-16 and the "theology of
lust" that is contained in it. The man who looks lustfully is, in fact,
the man of the three forms of lust; he is the man of the lust of the
flesh. Therefore he can look in this way and he must even be conscious
that, leaving this interior act at the mercy of the forces of nature, he
cannot avoid the influence of the lust of the flesh. In Matthew 5:27-28
Christ also dealt with this and drew attention to it. His words refer not
only to the concrete act of lust, but, indirectly, also to the man of
lust.
4. Why cannot these words of the Sermon on the Mount, in spite of
the convergence of what they say about the human heart (2) with what has
been expressed in the interpretation of the "masters of suspicion," why
cannot they be considered as the foundation of the aforesaid
interpretation or a similar one? Why do they constitute an expression, a
configuration, of a completely different ethos—different
not only from the Manichaean one, but also from the Freudian one? I think
that the analyses and reflections made so far answer this question.
Summing up, it can be said briefly that Christ's words according to
Matthew 5:27-28 do not allow us to stop at the accusation of the human
heart and to regard it continually with suspicion. But they must be
understood and interpreted above all as an appeal to the heart. This
derives from the nature of the ethos of redemption. On the basis of this
mystery, which St. Paul defines as "the redemption of the body" (Rom
8:23), on the basis of the reality called "redemption" and, consequently,
on the basis of the ethos of the redemption of the body, we cannot stop
only at the accusation of the human heart on the basis of desire and lust
of the flesh. Man cannot stop at putting the heart in a state of continual
and irreversible suspicion due to the manifestations of the lust of the
flesh and libido, which, among other things, a psychoanalyst perceives by
analyzing the unconscious.(3) Redemption is a truth, a reality, in the
name of which man must feel called, and "called with efficacy." He must
realize this call also through Christ's words according to Matthew
5:27-28, reread in the full context of the revelation of the body. Man
must feel called to rediscover, nay more, to realize the nuptial meaning
of the body. He must feel called to express in this way the interior
freedom of the gift, that is, of that spiritual state and that spiritual
power which are derived from mastery of the lust of the flesh.
That good beginning
5. Man is called to this by the word of the Gospel, therefore from
"outside," but at the same time he is also called from "inside." The words
of Christ, who in the Sermon on the Mount appealed to the heart, induce
the listener, in a way, to this interior call. If he lets them act in him,
he will be able to hear within him at the same time almost the echo of
that "beginning." Christ referred to that good beginning on another
occasion, to remind his listeners who man is, who woman is, and who we are
for each other in the work of creation. The words Christ uttered in the
Sermon on the Mount are not a call hurled into emptiness. They are not
addressed to the man who is completely absorbed in the lust of the flesh.
This man is unable to seek another form of mutual relations in the sphere
of the perennial attraction, which accompanies the history of man and
woman precisely from the beginning. Christ's words bear witness that the
original power (therefore also the grace) of the mystery of creation
becomes for each of them power (that is, grace) of the mystery of
redemption. That concerns the very nature, the very substratum of the
humanity of the person, the deepest impulses of the heart. Does not man
feel, at the same time as lust, a deep need to preserve the dignity of the
mutual relations, which find their expression in the body, thanks to his
masculinity and femininity? Does he not feel the need to impregnate them
with everything that is noble and beautiful? Does he not feel the need to
confer on them the supreme value which is love?
Real meaning of life
6. Rereading it, this appeal contained in Christ's words in the Sermon
on the Mount cannot be an act detached from the context of concrete
existence. It always means—though
only in the dimension of the act to which it referred—the
rediscovery of the meaning of the whole of existence, the meaning of life,
which also contains that meaning of the body which here we call "nuptial."
The meaning of the body is, in a sense, the antithesis of Freudian libido.
The meaning of life is the antithesis of the interpretation "of
suspicion." This interpretation is radically different from what we
rediscover in Christ's words in the Sermon on the Mount. These words
reveal not only another ethos, but also another vision of man's
possibilities. It is important that he, precisely in his heart, should not
only feel irrevocably accused and given as a prey to the lust of the
flesh, but that he should feel forcefully called in this same heart. He is
called precisely to that supreme value that is love. He is called as a
person in the truth of his humanity, therefore also in the truth of his
masculinity or femininity, in the truth of his body. He is called in that
truth which has been his heritage from the beginning, the heritage of his
heart, which is deeper than the sinfulness inherited, deeper than lust in
its three forms. The words of Christ, set in the whole reality of creation
and redemption, reactivate that deeper heritage and give it real power in
man's life.
NOTES
1) Cf. Paul Ricoeur, Le conflit des interprétations
(Paris: Seuil, 1969), pp. 149-150.
2) Cf. also Mt 5:19-20.
3) Cf., for example, the characteristic affirmation of Freud's last
work: S. Freud, Abriss der Psychoanalyse, Das Unbehagen der Kultur
(Frankfurt-M. Hamburg: Fisher, 1955), pp. 74-75.
Then that "core" or "heart" of man would be dominated by the union between
the erotic instinct and the destructive one, and life would consist in
satisfying them.
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