Theology of the Body by Pope John Paul II
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 16 APRIL, 1980Christ appeals to man's heart
During the General Audience in St. Peter's Square on 16 April the Holy Father gave the following address which is the first of a series of talks on the analysis of the text of Mt 5:27-28.
1. As the subject of our future reflections - at the Wednesday meetings - I wish to develop the following statement of Christ, which is part of the Sermon on the Mount. You have heard that it was said, 'you shall not commit adultery,' But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Mt 5:27-28).
This passage seems to have a keying for the theology of the body, like the one in which Christ referred to the "beginning," and which served as the basis of the preceding analyses. We were then able to realize how wide was the context of a sentence, or rather of a word, uttered by Christ. It was a question not only of the immediate context, which emerged in the course of the conversation with the Pharisees, but of the global context, which we cannot penetrate without going back to the first chapters of the Book of Genesis (omitting what refers there to the other books of the Old Testament). The preceding analyses have shown how extensive is the content that Christ's reference to the 'beginning" involves.
Need of fulfillment of the Law
The statement, to which we are referring, that is Mt 5:27-28, will certainly introduce us - not only to the immediate context in which it appears - but also to its wider text, the global context, through which the key meaning of the theology of the body will be revealed to us. This statement is one of the passages of the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus Christ makes fundamental revision of the way of understanding and carrying out the moral law of the Old Covenant. It refers, in order, to the following commandments of the Decalogue: the fifth, "you shall not kill" (cf. Mt 5:21-26), the sixth, "You shall not commit adultery" (cf. Mt 5:27-32) - it is significant that at the end of this passage there also appears the question of the "certificate of divorce" (cf.Mt 5:31-32 ), already mentioned in the preceding chapter - and the eighth commandment according to the text of Exodus (cf. Ex 20:7 ): "You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn" (cf. Mt 5:33-37).
Significant, above all, are the words that precede these articles - and the following ones-of the Sermon on the Mount, the words in which Jesus declares: "Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets, I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them" ( Mt 5:17). In the sentences that follow, Jesus explains the meaning of this opposition and the necessity of the "fulfillment" of the Law in order to realize the kingdom of God: "Whoever . . . does them (these commandments) and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven" ( Mt 5:19). "The kingdom of heaven" means the kingdom of God in the eschatological dimension.
The fulfillment of the Law conditions, fundamentally, this kingdom in the temporal dimension of human existence. It is a question, however, of a fulfillment that fully corresponds to the meaning of the Law, of the Decalogue, of the individual commandments. Only this fulfillment constructs that justice that God the Legislator willed. Christ the Teacher urges us not to give such a human interpretation of the whole Law and the individual commandments contained in it that it does not construct the justice willed by God the Legislator: "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" ( Mt 5:20).
Aspects of fulfillment
2. In this context there appears Christ's statement according to Mt 5:27-28, which we intend to take as the basis for the present analyses, considering it, together with the other statement according to Mt 19:3-9 (and Mk 10), as the key to the theology of the body. Like the other one, this one has an explicitly normative character. It confirms the principle of human morality contained in the commandment "you shall not commit adultery," and, at the same time, it determines an appropriate and full understanding of this principle, that is, an understanding of the foundation and at the same time of the condition for its adequate "fulfillment." The latter is to be considered precisely in the light of the words of Mt 5:17-20, already quoted before, to which we have just drawn attention.
It is a question here, on the one hand, of adhering to the meaning that God the Legislator enclosed in the commandment "you shall not commit adultery," and, on the other hand, of carrying out that "justice" on the part of man, a justice that must "superabound" in man himself, that is, it must reach its specific fullness in him. These are, so to speak, the two aspects of "fulfillment" in the evangelical sense.
At the heart of "ethos"
3. We find ourselves in this way at the heart of ethos, that is, in what can be defined the interior form, almost the soul, of human morality. Contemporary thinkers (e.g. Scheler) see in the Sermon on the Mount a great turning-point in the field of ethos ( 1). A living morality, in the existential sense, is not formed only by the norms that invest the form of the commandments, precepts and prohibitions, as in the case of "you shall not commit adultery." The morality in which there is realized the very meaning of being a man - which is, at the same time, the fulfillment of the Law by means of the "superabounding" of justice through subjective vitality - is formed in the interior perception of values, from which there springs duty as the expression of conscience, as the response of one's own personal "ego." At the same time ethosmakes us enter the depth of the norm itself and descend within the man-subject of morality. Moral value is connected with the dynamic process of man's intimacy. To reach it, it is not enough to stop "at the surface" of human actions. it is necessary to penetrate inside.
Interior justice
4 In addition to the commandment "you shall not commit adultery," the Decalogue has also "you shall not covet your neighbor's wife" ( 2). In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ connects them with each other, in a way: "Everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." However, it is not a question so much of distinguishing the scope of those two commandments of the Decalogue as of pointing out the dimension of the interior action, referred to also in the words, "you shall not commit adultery."
This action finds its visible expression in the "act of the body," an act in which the man and the woman participate against the law of matrimonial exclusiveness. The casuistry of the books of the Old Testament, which aimed at investigating what, according to exterior criteria, constituted this "act of the body" and was, at the same time, directed at combating adultery, opened to the latter various legal "loopholes" ( 3 ). In this way, on the basis of the multiple compromises "for hardness of heart" ( Mt 19:8), the meaning of the commandment, willed by the Legislator, underwent a distortion. People kept to legalistic observance of the formula, which did not "superabound" in the interior justice of hearts.
Christ shifts the essence of the problem to another dimension, when he says: "Every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." (According to ancient translations: "has already made her an adulteress in his heart," a formula which seems to be more exact) ( 4 ).
In this way, therefore, Christ appeals to the interior man. He does so several times and under different circumstances. In this case it seems particularly explicit and eloquent, not only with regard to the configuration of evangelical ethos,but also with regard to the way of viewing man. It is not only the ethical reason, therefore, but also the anthropological one, that makes it advisable to dwell at greater length on the text of Mt 5:27-28, which contains the words spoken by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount.
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 23 APRIL, 1980
Ethical and anthropological content of the commandment: "Do not commit adultery!"
At the General Audience in St. Peter's Square on 23 April, Pope John Paul II made the following address.
1. Let us recall the words of the Sermon on the Mount, to which we are referring in this cycle of our Wednesday reflections: "You have heard - the Lord says - that it was said: 'You shall not commit adultery.' but I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Mt 5:27-28).
The man, to whom Jesus refers here, is precisely "historical" man, the one whose "beginning" and "theological prehistory" we traced in the preceding series of analyses. Directly, it is the one who hears with his own ears the Sermon on the Mount. But together with him, there i also every other man, set before that moment of history, both in the immense space of the past, and in the equally vast one of the future. To this "future," confronted with the Sermon on the Mount, there belongs also our present, our contemporary age.
This man is, in a way, "every" man, "each" of us. Both the man of the past and also the man of the future can be the one who knows the positive commandment, "you shall not commit adultery," as "contained in the Law" (cf. Rom 2:22-23), but he can equally be the one who, according to the letter to the Romans, has this command only "written on his heart" (cf. Rom 2:15). (1) In the light of the previous reflections, he is the man who from his "beginning" has acquired a precise sense of the meaning of the body, already before crossing "the threshold" of his historical experience, in the very mystery of creation, since he emerged from it as "male and female" (Gen 1:27), He is the historical man, who, at the "beginning" of his earthly vicissitudes, found himself "inside" the knowledge of good and evil, breaking the Covenant with his Creator. He is the male-man, who "knew" (the woman) his" wife" and "knew" her several times, and "she conceived and bore" (cf. Gen 4:1-2) according to the Creator's plan, which went back to the state of original innocence (cf. Gen 1:28; 2:24).
Entering into his full image
2. In his Sermon on the Mount, particularly in the words of Mt 5:27-28, Christ addresses precisely that man. He addresses the man of a given moment of history and, at the same time, all men, belonging to the same human history. He addresses, as we have already seen, the "interior" man. Christ's words have an explicit anthropological content; they concern those perennial meanings, through which an "adequate" anthropology is constituted.
These words, by means of their ethical content, simultaneously constitute such an anthropology, and demand, so to speak, that man should enter into his full image. The man who is "flesh", and who as a male remains in relationship, through his body and sex, with woman (also the expression "you shalt not commit adultery" indicates this, in fact), must, in the light of these words of Christ, find himself again interiorly, in his "heart." (2) The "heart" is this dimension of humanity with which the sense of the meaning of the human body, and the order of this sense, is directly linked. It is a question, here, both of the meaning which, in preceding analyses, we called "nuptial," and of that which we denominate "generative." And of what order are we treating?
Meaning of adultery
3. This part of our considerations must give an answer precisely to this question - an answer that reaches not only the ethical reasons, but also the anthropological; they remain, in fact, in a mutual relationship. For the time being, preliminarily, it is necessary to establish the meaning of the text of Mt 5:27-28, the meaning of the expressions used in it and their mutual relationship.
Adultery, to which the aforesaid commandment refers, means a breach of the unity, by means of which man and woman only as husband and wife, can unite so closely as to be "one flesh" (Gen 2:24). Man commits adultery if he unites in this way with a woman who is not his wife. The woman likewise commits adultery if she unites in this way with a man who is not her husband. It must be deduced from this that the "adultery in the heart," committed by the man when he "looks at a woman lustfully," means a quite definite interior act. It is a question of a desire directed, this case, by the man towards a woman who is not his wife in order to unite with her as if she were, that is - using once more the words of Gen 2:4 - in such a way that "they become one flesh." This desire, as an interior act, is expressed by means of the sense of sight, that is, with looks, as in the ease of David and Bathsheba, to use an example taken from the Bible (cf. 2 Sam 11:2). The connection of lust with the sense of sight has been highlighted particularly in Christ's words.
Man's interior act
4. These words do not say clearly whether the woman - the object of lust - is the wife of another or whether simply she is not the wife of the man who looks at her in this way. She may be the wife of another, or even not bound by marriage. It is necessary rather to intuit it, on the basis particularly of the expression which, precisely, defines as adultery what man has committed "in his heart" with his look. It must be correctly deduced that this lustful look, if addressed to his own wife, is not adultery "in his heart," precisely because the man's interior act refers to the woman who is his wife, with regard to whom adultery cannot take place. If the conjugal act as an exterior act, in which "they become one flesh," is lawful in the relationship of the man in question with the woman 'who is his wife, in like manner also the interior act in the same relationship is in conformity with morality.
Clarifying the text
Nevertheless, that desire, indicated by the expression "every one who looks at a woman lustfully," has a biblical and theological dimension of its own, which we cannot but clarify here. Even if this dimension is not manifested directly in this one concrete expression of Mt 5:27-28, it is, however, deeply rooted in the global context, which refers to the revelation of the body. We must go back to this context, in order that Christ's appeal "to the heart," to the interior man, may ring out in all the fullness of its truth.
The statement of the Sermon on the Mount quoted (Mt 5:27-28) has fundamentally an indicative character. The fact that Christ directly addresses man as the one "who looks at a woman lustfully," does not mean that his words, in their ethical meaning, do not refer also to woman. Christ expresses himself in this way to illustrate with a concrete example how "the fulfillment of the Law" must be understood, according to the meaning that God the Legislator gave to it, and furthermore how that superabounding of justice" in the man who observes the sixth commandment of the Decalogue, must be understood.
Speaking in this way, Christ wants us, not to dwell on the example in itself, but also to penetrate the full ethical and anthropological meaning of the statement. If it has an indicative character, this means that, following its traces, we can arrive at understanding the general truth about "historic" man, which is valid also for the theology of the body. The further stages of our reflections will have the purpose of bringing us closer to understanding this truth.
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 30 APRIL, 1980
Lust is the fruit of the breach of the covenant with God
Continuing with the cycle of catechesis on the subject of adultery, the Holy Father delivered the following address to the faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square for the General Audience on Wednesday, 30 April.
1. During our last reflection, we said that the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount are in direct reference to the "Lust" that arises immediately in the human heart; indirectly, however, those words guide us to understanding of a truth about man, which is of universal importance.
This truth about "historical" man, of universal importance, towards which the words of Christ, taken from Mt 5: 27-28, direct us, seems to be expressed in the biblical doctrine on the three forms of lust. We are referring here to the concise statement in the first Letter of St. John 2: 16-17: For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides for ever."
It is obvious that to understand these words, it is necessary to take into careful consideration the context in which they appear, that is, the context of the whole "Johannine theology" (1). However, the same words are inserted, at the same time, in the context of the whole Bible: they belong to the whole revealed truth about man, and are important for the theology of the body. They do not explain lust itself in its threefold form, since they seem to assume that "the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life," are, in some way, a clear and known concept. They explain, however, the genesis of lust in its threefold form, indicating its origin which is "not of the Father," but "of the world."
2. The lust of the flesh and, together with it, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is "in the world" and at the same time "is of the world," not as the fruit of the mystery of creation, but as the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (cf. Gen 2:17) in man's heart. What fructifies in the three forms of lust is not the "world" created by God for man, the fundamental "goodness" of which we have read several times in Gen 1: "God saw that it was good . . . it was very good." In the three forms of lust there fructifies, on the contrary, the breaking of the first covenant with the Creator, with God-Elohim, with God-Yahweh. This covenant was broken in man's heart. It would be necessary to make here a careful analysis of the events described in Gen 3:1-6. However, we are referring only in general to mystery of sin, to the beginnings of human history. In fact, only as consequence of sin, as the fruit of the breaking of the covenant with God in the human heart - in the inner recesses of man - has the "world" of the Book of Genesis become the "world" of the Johannine words (Gen:15-16): the place and source of lust.
In this way, therefore, the statement that lust "is not of the Father but is of the world," seems to direct us once more, to the biblical "beginning." The genesis of lust in its three forms, presented by John, finds in this beginning its first and fundamental elucidation, an explanation, which is essential for the theology of the body. To understand that truth of universal importance about "historical" man, contained in Christ's words during the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:27-28), we must return once more to the Book of Genesis, and linger once more "at the threshold" of the revelation of "historical" man. That is all the more necessary, since this threshold of the history of salvation proves to be at the same time the threshold of authentic human experiences, as we will see in the following analyses. The same fundamental meanings, that we drew from the preceding analyses, will come to life in them again, as essential elements of a fitting anthropology and the deep substratum of the theology of the body.
3. The question may arise again whether it is permissible to transport the content typical of the "Johannine theology," contained in the whole of the first letter (particularly in I 2:15-16), to the ground of the Sermon on the Mount according to Matthew, and precisely of Christ's statement in Mt 5:27-28 ("You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart"). We will come back to this matter several times: nevertheless, we are referring straightaway to the general biblical context, to the whole of the truth about man, revealed and expressed in it. Precisely in the name of this truth, we are trying to understand completely the man that Christ indicates in the text of Mt 5:27-28: that is, the man who looks" at a woman lustfully."
Is not this look, after all, to be explained by the fact that man is precisely a "man of lust," in the sense of the first Letter of St. John, in fact that both of them, the man who looks lustfully and the woman who is the object of this look, are in the dimension of lust in its three forms, which "is not of the Father but is of the world"? It is necessary, therefore, to understand what that lust is or rather who is that "lustful man" of the Bible in order to discover the depths of Christ's words according to Mt 5: 27-28, and to explain the significance of their reference to the human 'heart," so important for the theology of the body.
4. Let us return again to the Yahwist narrative, in which the same man, male and female, appears at the beginning as a man of original innocence - before original sin - and then as the one who lost innocence, by breaking the original covenant with his Creator. We do not intend here to make a complete analysis of temptation and sin, according to the same text of Gen 3:1-5, the doctrine of the Church in this connection and theology. It should merely be observed that the biblical description itself seems to highlight particularly the key moment, in which the Gift is questioned in man's heart. The man who gathers the fruit of the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" makes, at the same time, a fundamental choice and carries it out against the will of the Creator, God Yahweh, accepting the motivation suggested by the tempter: "you will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil"; according to old translations: "you will be like gods, who know good and evil" (2).
This motivation clearly includes the questioning of the Gift and of the Love, from which creation has its origin as donation. As regards man, he receives the "world" as a gift and at the same time the "image of God" that is, humanity itself in all the truth of its male and female duality. It is enough to read carefully the whole passage of Gen 3:1-5, to detect in it the mystery of man who turns his back on the "Father" (even if we do not find this name applied to God in the narrative). Questioning, in his heart, the deepest meaning of the donation, that is, love as the specific motive of the creation and of the original Covenant (cf. in particular Gen 3:5), man turns his back on God-Love, on "the Father." In a way he casts Him out of his heart. At the same time, therefore, he detaches his heart and almost cuts it off from what "is of the Father": thus, there remains in him what "is of the world."
5. "Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons" (Gen 3:7). This is the first sentence of the Yahwist narrative, which refers to man's "situation" after sin and shows the new state of human nature. Does not this sentence also suggest the beginning of "lust" in man's heart? To answer this question more thoroughly, we cannot stop at that first sentence, but must read again the whole text. However, it is worth recalling here what was said in the first analyses on the subject of shame as the experience "of the limit" (3).
The Book of Genesis refers to this experience to show the "frontier" between the state of original innocence (cf. in particular Gen 2:25, to which we devoted a great deal of attention in the preceding analyses) and man's sinfulness at the very "beginning." While Gen 2:25 emphasizes that they "were both naked, and were not ashamed," Gen 3:6 speaks explicitly of shame in connection with sin. That shame is almost the first source of the manifestation in man - in both man and woman - of what "is not of the Father, but of the world."
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 14 MAY, 1980
Real significance of original nakedness
The following is the text of the Pope's General Audience address on 14 May which he delivered in St. Peter's Basilica because of the bad weather.
1. We have already spoken of those which arose in the heart of the first man, male and female, together with sin. The first sentence of the biblical narrative concerning this runs as follows: "Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons" ( Gen 3:7 ). This passage, which speaks of the mutual shame of the man and the woman as a symptom of the fall (status naturae lapsae), must be considered in its context. At that moment shame reaches its deepest level seems to shake the very foundations of their existence. "And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among trees of the garden" ( Gen 3:8). The necessity of hiding themselves indicates that in the depths of the shame they both feel before each other, as the immediate fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there has matured a sense of fear before God: a fear previously unknown. The "Lord God called to the man, and said to him, 'Where are you?' And he said, 'I heard the sound of thee in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself'" ( Gen 3:9-10).
A certain fear always belongs to the very essence of shame; nevertheless original shame reveals its character in a particular way: "I was afraid, because I was naked." We realize that something deeper than physical shame, bound up with a recent consciousness of his own nakedness, is in action here. Man tries to cover with the shame of his own nakedness the real origin of fear, indicating rather its effect, in order not to call its cause by name. It is then that God Yahweh says in his turn: "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" ( Gen 3:11).
Man alienated from Love
2. The precision of that dialogue is overwhelming, the precision of the whole narrative is overwhelming. It manifests the surface of man's emotions in living the events, in such way as to reveal their depth at the same time. In all this, "nakedness" not solely a literal meaning. It does not refer only to the body; is not the origin of a shame related only to the body. Actually, through nakedness, man deprived of participation in the Gift is manifested, man alienated from that love which had been the source of the original gift, the source of the fullness of the good intended for the creature.
According to the formulas of the theological teaching of the Church (1), this man was deprived of the supernatural and preternatural gifts which were part of his endowment before sin. Furthermore, he suffered a loss in what belongs to his nature itself, to humanity in the original fullness of the image of God. The three forms of lust do not correspond to the fullness of that image, but precisely to the loss, the deficiencies, the limitations that appeared with sin.
Lust is explained as a lack which has its roots in the original depth of the human spirit. If we wish to study this phenomenon in its origins, that is, at the threshold of the experiences of historical man, we must consider all the words that God-Yahweh addressed to the woman ( Gen 3:16) and to the man ( Gen 3:17-19). Furthermore, we must examine the state of their consciousness.The Yahwist text expressly enables us to do so. We have already called attention to the literary specificity of the text in this connection.
A radical change
3. What state of consciousness can be manifested in the words: "I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself"? To what interior truth do they correspond? To what meaning of the body do they testify? Certainly this new state differs a great deal from the original one. The words of Gen 3:10 bear witness directly to a radical change of the meaning of original nakedness. In the state of original innocence, nakedness, as we pointed out previously, did not express a lack, but represented full acceptance of the body in all its human and therefore personal truth.
The body, as the expression of the person, was the first sign of man's presence in the visible world. In that world, man was able, right from the beginning, to distinguish himself, almost to be individualized - that is, confirm himself as a person - also through his own body. In fact, it had been marked, so to speak, as a visible factor of the transcendence in virtue of which man, as a person, surpasses the visible world of living beings (animalia). In this sense, the human body was from the beginning a faithful witness and a tangible verification of man's original "solitude" in the world, becoming at the same time, by means of his masculinity and femininity, a limpid element of mutual donation in the communion of persons.
In this way, the human body bore in itself, in the mystery of creation, an unquestionable sign of the "image of God" and constituted also the specific source of the certainty of that image, present in the whole human being. Original acceptance of the body was, in a way, the basis of the acceptance of the whole visible world. And in its turn it was for man a guarantee of his dominion over the world, over the earth, which he was to subdue (cf.Gen 1:28 ).
Loss of God's image
4. The words "I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself" ( Gen 3:10), bear witness to a radical change in this relationship. Man loses, in a way, the original certainty of the "image of God", expressed in his body. He also loses to some extent the sense of his right to participate in the perception of the world, which he enjoyed in the mystery of creation. This right had its foundation in man's inner self, in the fact that he himself participated in the divine vision of the world and of his own humanity; which gave him deep peace and joy in living the truth and value of his own body, in all its simplicity, transmitted to him by the Creator: "God saw (that) it was very good" ( Gen 1:31 ).
The words of Gen 3:10: 'I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself", confirm the collapse of the original acceptance of the body as a sign of the person in the visible world. At the same time. the acceptance of the material world in relation to man, also seems to be shaken. The words of God Yahweh are a forewarning, in a way, of the hostility of the world, the resistance of nature with regard to man and his tasks, they are a forewarning of the fatigue that the human body was to feel in contact with the earth subdued by him: "Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you: and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken" (Gen 3:17-19). The end of this toil, of this struggle of man with the earth, is death: "You are dust, and to dust you shall return" (Gen 3:19 ).
In this context, or rather in this perspective, Adam's words in Gen 3:10: 'l was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself", seem to express the awareness of being defenseless, and the sense of insecurity of his bodily structure before the processes of nature, operating with inevitable determinism. Perhaps, in this overwhelming statement there is implicit a certain cosmic shame", in which the being created in 'the image of God" and called to subdue the earth and dominate it (cf. Gen 1:28) expresses himself precisely when, at the beginning of his historical experiences and in a manner so explicit he is subjected to the earth, particularly in the "part" of his transcendent constitution represented precisely by the body.
It is necessary to interrupt here our reflections on the meaning of original shame, in the Book of Genesis. We will resume them in a week's time.
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 28 MAY, 1980
A fundamental disquiet in all human existence
At the General Audience on, Wednesday, 28 May, the Holy Father delivered the following address.
1. We are reading again the first chapters of the Book of Genesis, to understand how - with original sin - the "man of lust" took the place of the "man of original innocence". The words of Genesis 3:10: "I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself", which we considered two weeks ago, provide evidence of the first experience of man's shame with regard to his Creator: a shame that could also be called "cosmic".
However, this "cosmic shame " - if it is possible to perceive its features inman's total situation after original sin - makes way in the biblical text for another form of shame. It is the shame produced in humanity itself caused by the deep disorder in that on account of which man, the mystery of creation, was 'God's image", both in his personal ego and in the interpersonal relationship, through the original communion of persons, constituted by the man and the woman together.
That shame, the cause of which is in humanity itself, is at once immanent and relative: it is manifested in the dimension of human interiority and at the same time refers to the "other". This is the woman's shame "with regard to" the man, and also the man's "with regard to" the woman: mutual shame, which obliges them to cover their own nakedness, to hide their own bodies. to remove from the man's sight what is the visible sign of femininity, and from the woman's sight what is the visible sign of masculinity.
The shame of both was turned in this direction after original sin, when they realized they "were naked", as Genesis 3:7 bears witness. The Yahwist text seems to indicate explicitly the "sexual" character of this shame: "they sewed fig leaves together arid made themselves aprons". However, we may wonder if the "sexual" aspect has only a "relative" character; in other words: if it is a question of shame of one's own sexuality only in reference to a person of the other sex.
Relative character of original shame
2 Although in the light of that Lone decisive sentence of Genesis 3:7, the answer to the question seems support particularly the relative character of original shame, nevertheless reflection on the whole immediate context makes it possible to discover its more immanent background. That shame, which is certainly manifested in the "sexual" order, reveals a specific difficulty of perceiving the human essentially of one's own body: a difficulty which man had not experienced in the state of original innocence. In this way, in fact, the words: "I was afraid, because I was naked", can be understood; they show clearly the consequences of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in man's heart.
Through these words there is revealed a certain constitutive break within the human person, almost a rupture of man's original spiritual arid somatic unity. He realizes for the first time that his body has ceased drawing upon the power of the spirit, which raised him to the level of the image of God. His original shame bears within it the signs of a specific humiliation mediated by the body. There is concealed in it the germ of that contradiction, which will accompany "historical" man in his whole earthly path, as St. Paul writes: "For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind" (Rom 7:22-23).
Center of resistance
3. In this way, therefore, that shame is immanent. It contains such a cognitive acuteness as to create a fundamental disquiet in the whole of human existence, not only in face of the prospect of death, but also before that on which there depend the value and dignity them-selves of the person in his ethical significance. In this sense the original shame of the body ("I am naked") is already fear ("I was afraid"), and announces the uneasiness of conscience connected with lust.
The body, which is not subordinated to the spirit as in the state of original innocence, hears within it a constant center of resistance to the spirit, and threatens in way the unity of the man-person, that is, of the moral nature, which is firmly rooted in the very constitution of the person. Lust, and in particular the lust of the body, is a specific threat to the structure of self-control and self-mastery, through which the human person is formed. And it also constitutes a specific challenge for it. In any case, the man of lust does not control his own body in the same way, with equal simplicity and "naturalness", as the man of original innocence did. The structure of self-mastery, essential for the person, is, in a way, shaken to the very foundations in him; he again identifies himself with it in that he is continually ready to win it.
Interior imbalance
4. Immanent shame is connected with this interior imbalance. It has a "sexual" character, because the very sphere of human sexuality seems to highlight particularly that imbalance, which springs from lust and especially from the "lust of the body". from this point of view, that first impulse, of which Genesis 3:7 speaks ("they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons") is very eloquent; it is as if the "man of lust" (man and woman "in the act of knowledge of good and evil") felt that he had just stopped, also through his own body and sex, being above the world of living beings or "animalia". It is as if he felt a specific break of the personal integrity of his own body, particularly in what determines its sexuality and is directly connected with the call to that unity, in which man and woman "become one flesh (Gen 2:24).
Therefore, that immanent and at the same time sexual shame is always, at least indirectly, relative. It is the shame of his own sexuality "with regard" to the other human being. In this way shame is manifested in the narrative of Genesis 3, as a result of which we are, in a certain sense, witnesses of the birth of human lust. Also the motivation to get back from Christ's words about man (male), who "looks at a woman lustfully" (Mt 5:27-28), to that first moment in which shame is explained by means of lust, and lust by means of shame, is therefore sufficiently clear. In this way we understand better why - and in what sense - Christ speaks of desire as "adultery" committed in the heart, because he addresses the human "heart".
Desire and shame
5. The human heart keeps within it simultaneously desire and shame. The birth of shame directs us towards that moment in which the inner man, "the heart", closing himself to what "comes from the Father", opens to what "comes from the world". The birth of shame in the human heart keeps pace with the beginning of lust-of the three-fold concupiscence according to Johannine theology (cf. 1 Jn 2:16), and in particular the concupiscence of the body.
Man is ashamed of his body because of lust. In fact, he is ashamed not so much of his body as precisely of lust: he is ashamed of his body owing to lust. He is ashamed of his body owing to that state of his spirit to which theology and psychology give the same synonimic denomination: desire or lust, although with a meaning that is not quite the same.
The biblical and theological meaning of desire and lust is different from that used in psychology. For the latter, desire comes from lack or necessity, which the value desired must satisfy. Biblical lust, as we can deduce from 1 Jn 2:16, indicates the state of the human spirit removed from the original simplicity and the fullness of values that man and the world possess "in the dimensions of God". Precisely this simplicity and fullness of the value of the human body in the first experience of its masculinity-femininity, of which Genesis 2:23-25 speaks, has subsequently undergone, "in the dimensions of the world", a radical transformation. And then, together with the lust of the body, shame was born.
Double meaning
6. Shame has a double meaning: it indicates the threat to the value and at the same time preserves this value interiorly. (1) The fact that the human heart, from the moment when the lust of the body was born in it keeps also shame within itself, indicates that it is possible and necessary to appeal to it when it is a question of guaranteeing those values from which lust takes away their original and full dimension. If we keep that in mind, we are able to understand better why Christ, speaking of lust, appeals to the human "heart".
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 4 JUNE, 1980
Relationship of lust to communion
During the General Audience in, St. Peter's Square on Wednesday afternoon, 4 June, the Holy Father delivered the following address.
Speaking of the birth of man's lust, on the basis of the Book of Genesis, we analyzed the original meaning of shame, which appeared with the first sin. The analysis of shame, in the light of the biblical narrative, enables us to understand even more thoroughly the meaning it has for interpersonal man-woman relations as a whole. The third chapter of Genesis shows without any doubt that that shame appeared in man's mutual relationship with woman and that this relationship, by reason of the very shame itself, underwent a radical transformation. Since it was born in their hearts together with the lust of the body, the analysis of original shame enables us at the same time to examine in what relationship this lust remains with regard to the communion of persons, which was granted and assigned from the beginning as the man and woman's task owing to the fact that they had been created "in the image of God". Therefore, the further stage of the study of lust, which had been manifested "at the beginning" through the man and woman's shame, according to Genesis 3, is the analysis of the insatiability of the union, that is, of the communion of persons, which was to be expressed also by their bodies, according to their specific masculinity and femininity.
Changes in man-woman relationship
2. Above all, therefore, this shame which, according to the biblical narrative, induces man and woman to hide from each other their bodies and particularly their sexual differentiation, confirms that the original capacity of communicating themselves to each other, of which Genesis 2:25 speaks, has been shattered. The radical change of the meaning of original nakedness leads us to presume negative changes in the whole interpersonal man-woman relationship. That mutual communion in humanity itself by means of the body and by means of its masculinity and femininity, which resounded so strongly in the preceding passage of the Yahwist narrative (cf. Gen 2: 23-25), is upset at this moment: as if the body, in its masculinity and femininity, no longer constituted the "trustworthy" substratum of the communion of persons, as if its original function were "called in question" in the consciousness of man and woman.
The simplicity and 'purity" of the original experience, which facilitated an extraordinary fullness in the mutual communication of each other, disappear. Obviously, our first progenitors did not stop communicating with each other through the body and its movements, gestures and expressions; but the simple and direct communion with each other, connected with the original experience of reciprocal nakedness, disappeared. Almost unexpectedly, there appeared in their consciousness an insuperable threshold, which limited the original "giving of oneself" to the other, in full confidence in what constituted their own identity and, at the same time, their diversity, female on the one side, male on the other. The diversity, that is, the difference of the male sex and the female sex, was suddenly felt and understood as an element of mutual confrontation of persons. This is testified by the concise expression of Genesis 3:7, "They knew that they were naked", and by its immediate context. All that is part also of the analysis of the first shame. The book of Genesis not only portrays its origin in the human being, but makes it possible also to reveal its degrees in both, man and woman.
Loss of that original certainty
3. The ending of the capacity of a full mutual communion, which is manifested as sexual shame, enables us to understand better the original value of the unifying meaning of the body. It is not possible, in fact, to understand otherwise that respective closure to each other, or shame, unless in relation to the meaning that the body; in its femininity and masculinity, had for man previously, in the state of original innocence. That unifying meaning is understood not only with regard to the unity that man and woman, as spouses, were to constitute, becoming one flesh" ( Gen 2:24) through the conjugal act, but also in reference to the communion of persons" itself, which had been the specific dimension of man and woman's existence in the mystery of creation. The body in its masculinity and femininity constituted the peculiar "sub-stratum" of this personal communion. Sexual shame, with which Genesis 3:7 deals, bears witness to the loss of the original certainty that the human body, through its masculinity and femininity, is precisely that "substratum" of the communion of persons, that expresses it "simply", that it serves the purpose of realizing it (and thus also of completing the "image of God" in the visible world).
This state of consciousness in both has strong repercussions in the further context of Genesis 3, with which we shall deal shortly. If man, after original sin, had lost, so to speak, the sense of the image of God in himself, that loss was manifested with shame of the body (cf. particularly Gen 3:10-11). That shame, encroaching upon the man-woman relationship in its totality, was manifested with the imbalance of the original meaning of corporeal unity, that is, of the body as the peculiar "substratum" of the communion of persons. As if the personal profile of masculinity and femininity, which, before, highlighted the meaning of the body for a full communion of persons, had made way only for the sensation of "sexuality" with regard to the other human being. And as if sexuality became an "obstacle" in the personal relationship of man and woman. Concealing it from each other, according to Genesis 3:7, they both express it almost instinctively.
Second discovery of sex
4. This is, at the same time, the "second" discovery of sex, as it were, which in the biblical narrative differs radically from the first one. The whole context of the narrative confirms that this new discovery distinguishes "historical" man with his lust (with the three forms of lust, in fact) from man of original innocence. What is the relationship of lust, and in particular the lust of the flesh, with regard to the communion of persons mediated by the body, by its masculinity and femininity, that is, to the communion assigned, "from the beginning" to man by the Creator? This is the question that must be posed, precisely with regard "to the beginning', about the experience of shame, to which the biblical narrative refers.
Shame, as we have already observed, is manifested in the narrative of Genesis 3 as a symptom of man's detachment from the love in which he participated in the mystery of creation according to the Johannine expression: the love that "comes from the Father". "The love that is in the world", that is, lust, brings with it an almost constitutive difficulty of identification with one's own body: and not only in the sphere of one's own subjectivity, but even more with regard to the subjectivity of the other human being: of woman for man, of man for woman.
Collapse of original communion
5. Hence the necessity of hiding before the "other" with one's own body, with what determines one's own femininity-masculinity. This necessity proves the fundamental lack of trust, which in itself indicates the collapse of the original relationship "of communion". Precisely regard for the subjectivity of the other, and at the same time for one's own subjectivity, has aroused in this new situation, that is, in the context of lust, the necessity of hiding oneself, of which Genesis 3:7 speaks.
Precisely here it seems to us that we can discover a deeper meaning of "sexual" shame and also the full meaning of that phenomenon, to which the biblical text refers, to point out the boundary between the man of original innocence and the "historical" man of lust. The complete text of Genesis 3 supplies us with elements to define the deepest dimension of shame; but that calls for a separate analysis. We will begin it in the next reflection.
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 18 JUNE, 1980
Dominion over the other in the interpersonal relationship
The Holy Father delivered the following address during the General Audience in St. Peter's Square on Wednesday, 18 June.
1. The phenomenon of shame, which appeared in the first man together with original sin, is described with surprising precision in Genesis 3. Careful reflection on this text enables us to deduce from it that shame, which took the place of the absolute trust connected with the previous state of original innocence in the mutual relationship between man and woman, has a deeper dimension. In this connection it is necessary to reread chapter 3 of Genesis to the end, and not limit ourselves to verse 7 or the text of verses 10-11, which contain the testimony about the first experience of shame. After this narrative, the dialogue of God-Yahweh with the man and the woman breaks off and a monologue begins. Yahweh turns to the woman and speaks first of the pain of childbirth, which will accompany her from now on:
"I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children . . . " ( Gen 3:16).
That is followed by the expression which characterizes the future relationship of both, of the man and the woman: "your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you ( Gen 3:16).
A particular "disability" of woman
2 These words, like those of Genesis 2 24, have a perspective character The incisive formulation of 3 16 seems to regard the facts as a whole which have already emerged in a way in the original experience of shame, and which will subsequently be manifested in the whole interior experience of "historical" man The history of consciences and of human hearts will contain the continual confirmation of the words contained in Genesis 3:16. The words spoken at the beginning seem to refer to a particular "disability" of woman as compared with man. But there is no reason to understand it as a social disability or inequality. The expression: "your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you" immediately indicate, on the other hand, another form of inequality. which woman will feel as a lack of full unity precisely in the vast context of union with man, to which both were called according to Genesis 2:24.
A fundamental loss
3. The words of God-Yahweh: "your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you ( Gen 3:16), do not concern exclusively the moment of man and woman's union, when both unite in such a way as to become one flesh (cf. Gen 2:24), but refer to the ample context of relations, also indirect ones, of conjugal union as a whole. For the first time the man is defined here as "husband". In the whole context of the Yahwist narrative these words mean above all, a violation, a fundamental loss, of the original community-communion of persons. The latter should have made man and woman mutually happy by means of the pursuit of a simple and pure union in humanity, by means of a reciprocal offering of themselves, that is, the experience of the gift of the person expressed with the soul and with the body, with masculinity and femininity ("flesh of my flesh":Gen 2:23), and finally by means of the subordination of this union to the blessing of fertility with "procreation."
Distorted by lust
4. It seems, therefore, that in the words addressed by God-Yahweh to the woman, there is a deeper echo of the shame, which they both began to experience after the breaking of the original Covenant with God. We find, moreover, a fuller motivation of this shame, in a very discreet way, which is, nevertheless, decipherable and expressive, Genesis 3:16 testifies how that original beatifying conjugal union of persons will be distorted in man's heart by lust. These words are addressed directly to woman, but they refer to man, or rather to both together.
Dominion over woman
5. The previous analysis of Genesis 3:7 already showed that in the new situation, after the breaking of the original Covenant with God, the man and the woman found them-selves, instead of united, more divided or even opposed because of their masculinity and femininity. The biblical narrative, stressing the instinctive impulse that had driven them both to cover their bodies, describes at the same time the situation in which man, as male orfemale-before it was rather male andfemale-feels more estranged from the body, as from the source of the original union in humanity ("flesh of my flesh"), and more opposed to the other precisely on the basis of the body and sex. This opposition does not destroy or exclude conjugal union, willed by the Creator (cf.Gen 2:24), or its procreative effects; but it confers on the realization of this union another direction, which will be precisely that of the man of lust.Genesis 3:16 speaks precisely of this.
The woman, whose "desire shall be for (her) husband" (cf. Gen 3:16), and the man who responds to this desire, as we read: "shall rule over you," unquestionably form the same human couple, the same marriage as Genesis 2:24, in fact, the same community of persons; however, they are now something different. They are no longer called only to union and unity, but also threatened by the insatiability of that union and unity, which does not cease to attract man and woman precisely because they are persons, called from eternity to exist "in communion." In the light of the biblical narrative, sexual shame has its deep meaning, which is connected precisely with the failure to satisfy the aspiration to realize in the "conjugal union of the body" (cf. Gen 2:24) the mutual communion of per-sons.
Threefold lust
6. All that seems to confirm, from various aspects, that at the basis of shame, in which "historical" man has became a participant, there is the threefold lust spoken of in the first Letter of John 2:16: not only the lust of the flesh, but also "the lust of the eyes and the pride of life". Does not the expression regarding "rule" ("he shall rule over you"), of which we read in Genesis 3:16, indicate this last form of lust? Does not the rule "over" the other - of man over woman - change essentially the structure of communion in the interpersonal relationship? Does it not transpose into the dimension of this structure something that makes the human being an object, which can, in a way, be desired by the lust of the eyes?
These are the questions that spring from reflection on the words of God-Yahweh according to Genesis 3:16. Those words. delivered almost on the threshold of human history after original sin, reveal to us not only the exterior situation of man and woman, but enable us also to penetrate into the deep mysteries of their hearts.
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 25 JUNE, 1980
Lust limits nuptial meaning of the body
At the General Audience in St. Peter's Square on Wednesday evening, 25 June, the Holy Father delivered the following address.
1. The analysis we made during the preceding reflection was centered on the following words of Genesis 3:16, addressed by God-Yahweh to the first womanafter original sin: "your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you," ( Gen 3:16). We arrived at the conclusion that these words contain an adequate clarification and a deep interpretation of original shame (cf. Gen 3:7 ), which became part of man and of woman together with lust. The explanation of this shame is not to be sought in the body itself, in the somatic sexuality of both, but goes back to the deeper changes undergone by the human spirit. Precisely this spirit is particularly aware of how insatiable it is with regard to the mutual unity between man and woman.
This awareness, so to speak, blames the body, and deprives it of the simplicity and purity of the meaning connected with the origin innocence of the human being. In relation to this awareness, shame is a secondary experience. If on the one hand it reveals the moment of lust, at the same time it can protect from the consequences of the three forms of lust. It can even be said that man and woman, through shame, almost remain in the state of original innocence. Continually, in fact, they become aware of the nuptial meaning of the body and aim at preserving it, so to speak, from lust, just as they try to maintain the value of communion, that is, of the union of persons in the "unity of the body."
Better understanding
2. Genesis 2:24 speaks with discretion but also with clarity of the "union of bodies" in the sense of the authentic union of persons: "A man . . . cleaves to his wife, and hey become one flesh"; and it is seen from the context that this union comes from a choice, since the man "leaves" his father and mother to unite with his wife. Such a union of persons entails that they should become "one flesh." Starting from this "sacramental" expression, which corresponds to the communion of persons - of the man and the woman - in their original call to conjugal union, we can understand better the specific message of Genesis 3:16; that is, we can establish and, as it were, reconstruct what the imbalance, in fact the peculiar distortion of the original interpersonal relationship of communion, to which the "sacramental" words of Genesis 2:24 refer, consists of.
Impulse to dominate
3. It can therefore be said - studying Genesis 3: 16 - that while on the one hand the "body," constituted in the unity of the personal subject, does not cease to stimulate the desires of personal union, precisely because of masculinity and femininity ("your desire shall be for your husband"), on the other hand and at the same time lust directs these desires in its own way. That is con-firmed by the expression: "he shall rule over you."
The lust of the flesh directs these desires, however, to satisfaction of the body, often at the cost of a real and full communion of persons. In this sense, attention should be paid to the way in which semantic accentuations are distributed in the verses ofGenesis 3; in fact, although there are few of them, they reveal interior consistency. The man is the one who seems to feel shame of his own body with particular intensity: "I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself" ( Gen 3:10). These words emphasize the really metaphysical character of shame. At the same time, the man is the one for whom shame, united with lust, will become an impulse to "dominate" the woman ("he shall rule over you").
Subsequently, the experience of this domination is manifested more directly in the woman as the insatiable desire for a different union. From the moment when man "dominates" her, the communion of persons - made of the full spiritual union of the two subjects giving themselves to each other - is followed by a different mutual relationship, that is, the relationship of possession of the other as the objet of one's own desire. If this impulse prevails on the part of the man, the instincts that the woman directs to him, according to the expression of Genesis 3:16 , can - and do - assume a similar character. And sometimes, perhaps, they precede the man's "desire," or even aim at arousing it and giving it impetus.
An interior dimension
4. The text of Genesis 3:16 seems to indicate the man particularly as the one who "desires," similarly to the text of Mt 5:27-28, which is the starting-point of these meditations. Nevertheless, both the 'man and the woman have become a "human being" subject to lust. And therefore the lot of both is shame, which with its deep resonance touches the innermost recesses both of the male and of the female personality, even though in a different way. What we learn from Genesis 3 enables us barely to outline this duality, but even the mere references are already very significant. Let us add that, since it is a question of such an archaic text, it is surprisingly eloquent and acute.
Similar experiences
5. An adequate analysis of Genesis 3 leads therefore to the conclusion that the three forms of lust, including that of the body, bring with them a limitation of the nuptial meaning of the body itself, in which man and woman participated in the state of original innocence. When we speak of the meaning of the body, we refer in the first place to the full awareness of the human being, but we also include all actual experience of the body in its masculinity and femininity, and , in any case, the constant predisposition to this experience.
The "meaning" of the body is not just something conceptual. We have already drawn attention to this sufficiently in the preceding analyses The "meaning of the body" is at the same time what determines the attitude: it is the way of living the body. It is the measure, which the interior man, that is, that "heart" to which Christ refers in the Sermon on the Mount, applies to the human body with regard to his masculinity/femininity (therefore with regard to his sexuality).
That "meaning" does not change the reality in itself, that which the human body is and does not cease to be in the sexuality that is characteristic of it, independently of the states of our conscience and our experiences. However, this purely objective significance of the body and of sex, outside the system of real and concrete interpersonal relations between man and woman, is in a certain sense "ahistorical." In the present analysis, on the contrary - in conformity with the biblical sources - we always take man's historicity into account (also because of the fact that we start from his theological prehistory). It is a question here, obviously, of an interior dimension, which eludes the external criteria of historicity, but which, however, can be considered "historical." In fact, it is precisely at the basis of all the facts which constitute the history of man-also the history of sin and of salvation-and thus reveal the depth and very root of his historicity.
Linked with Sermon on the Mount
6. When, in this vast context, we speak of lust as limitation, infraction or even distortion of the nuptial meaning of the body, we are referring above all to the preceding analyses regarding the state of original innocence, that is, the theological prehistory of man. At the same time, we have in mind the measure that "historical" man, with his "heart", applies to his own body in relation to male/female sexuality. This measure is not something exclusively conceptual: it is what determines the attitudes and decides in general the way of living the body.
Certainly, Christ refers to that in his Sermon on the Mount. We are trying here to link up the words taken from Matthew 5:27-28 to the very threshold of man's theological history, taking them therefore into consideration already in the context of Genesis 3. Lust as limitation, infraction or even distortion of the nuptial meaning of the body, can be ascertained in a particularly clear way (in spite of the concise nature of the biblical narrative) in our first progenitors, Adam and Eve. Thanks to them we have been able to find the nuptial meaning of the body and rediscover what it consists of as a measure of the human "heart," such as to mold the original form of the communion of persons. If in their personal experience (which the biblical text enables us to follow) that original form has undergone imbalance and distortion - aswe have sought to prove through the analysis of shame - also the nuptial meaning of the body, which in the situation of original innocence constituted the measure of the heart of both, of the man and of the woman, must have undergone a distortion.If we succeed in reconstructing in what this distortion consists, we shall also have the answer to our question: that is, what lust of the flesh consists of and what constitutes its theological and at the same time anthropological specific character. It seems that an answer theologically and anthropologically adequate - important as regards the meaning of Christ's words in the Sermon on the Mount ( Mt 5:27-28) - can already be obtained from the context of Genesis 3 and from the whole Yahwist narrative, which previously enabled us to clarify the nuptial meaning of the human body.
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 23 JULY, 1980
The "heart" a battlefield between love and lust
During the General Audience on July, in St. Peter's Square, the Holy Father gave the following address.
1. The human body in its original masculinity and femininity, according to the mystery of creation - as we know from the analysis of Genesis 2:23-25 - is not only a source of fertility, that is, of procreation, but right "from the beginning" has a nuptial character: that is to say, it is capable of expressing the love with which the man-person becomes a gift, thus fulfilling the deep meaning of his being and his existence. In this peculiarity, the body is the expression of the spirit and is called, in the very mystery of creation, to exist in the communion of persons "in the image of God." Well, the concupiscence "that comes from the world" - here it is directly a question of the concupiscence of the body - limits and distorts the body's objective way of existing, of which man has become a participant.
The human "heart" experiences the degree of this limitation or distortion, especially in the sphere of man-woman mutual relations. Precisely in the experience of the "heart" femininity and masculinity, in their mutual relations, no longer seem to be the expression of the spirit which aims at personal communion, and remain only an object of attraction, in a certain sense as happens "in the world" of living beings which, like man, have received the blessing of fertility (cf. Gen 1).
2. This similarity is certainly contained in the work of creation; also Genesis 2 and particularly verse 24 confirms this. However, already in the mystery of creation, that which constituted the "natural", somatic and sexual substratum of that attraction, fully expressed the call of man and woman to personal communion. After sin, on the contrary, in the new situation of which Genesis 3 speaks, this expression was weakened and dimmed: as if it were lacking in the shaping of mutual relations, or as if it were driven back to another plane.
The natural and somatic substratum of human sexuality was manifested as an almost autogenous force, marked by a certain "coercion of the body," operating according to its own dynamics, which limits the expression of the spirit and the experience of the exchange of the gift of the person. The words of Genesis 3:15 addressed to the first woman seem to indicate this quite clearly ("your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rile over you").
3. The human body in its masculinity/femininity has almost lost the capacity of expressing this love, in which the man-person becomes a gift, in conformity with the deepest structure and finality of his personal existence, as we have already observed in preceding analyses. If here we do not formulate this judgment absolutely and add the adverbial expression "almost," we do so because the dimension of the gift - namely, the capacity of expressing love with which man, by means of femininity or masculinity, becomes a gift for the other - has continued to some extent to permeate and mold the love that is born in the human heart. The nuptial meaning of the body has not become completely suffocated by concupiscence, but only habitually threatened.
The "heart" has become a battlefield between love and lust. The more lust dominates the heart, the less the latter experiences the nuptial meaning of the body, and the less it becomes sensitive to the gift of the person, which, in the mutual relations of n-an and of woman expresses precisely that meaning. Certainly, that "lust" also of which Christ speaks in Matthew 5:27-28, appears in many forms in the human heart: it is not always plain and obvious, sometimes it is concealed, so that it passes itself off as "love," although it changes its true profile and dims the limpidity of the gift in the mutual relationship of persons. Does this mean that it is our duty to distrust the human heart? No. It only means that we must keep it under control.
4. The image of the concupiscence of the body, which emerges from the present analysis, has a clear reference to the image of the person, with which we connected our preceding reflections on the subject of the nuptial meaning of the body. Man, indeed, as a person is "the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake" and, at the same time, he is the one who "can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself" (1). Lust in general - and the lust of the body in particular attacks precisely this "sincere giving." It deprives man, it could be said, of the dignity of giving, which is expressed by his body through femininity and masculinity, and in a way it "depersonalizes" man making him an object "for the other." Instead of being "together with the other" - a subject in unity, in fact in the sacramental unity "of the body" - man becomes an object for man: the female for the male and vice versa. The words of Genesis 3:16 - and, even before, of Genesis 3:7 - bear witness to this. with all the clearness of the contrast, as compared with Genesis 2:23-25.
5. Violating the dimension of the mutual giving of the man and the woman, concupiscence also calls in question the fact that each of them was willed by the Creator "for his own sake." The subjectivity of the person gives way, in a certain sense, to the objectivity of the body. Owing to the body man an object for man - the female for the male and vice versa. Concupiscence means, so to speak, that the personal relations of man and of woman are unilaterally and reductively linked with the body and sex, in the sense that these relations become almost incapable of accepting the mutual gift of the person. They do not contain or deal with femininity/masculinity according to the full dimension of personal subjectivity, they are not the expression of communion, but they remain unilaterally determined, "by sex."
6. Concupiscence entails the loss of the interior freedom of the gift. The nuptial meaning of the human body is connected precisely with this freedom. Man can become a gift - that is, the man and the woman can exist in the relationship of mutual self-giving - if each of them controls himself. Concupiscence, which is manifested as a "coercion 'sui generis' of the body," limits interiorly and reduces self-control, and for that reason, makes impossible, in a certain sense, the interior freedom of giving. Together with that, also the beauty that the human body possesses in its male and female aspect, as an expression of the spirit, is obscured. There remains the body as an object of lust and therefore as a "field of appropriation" of the other human being. Concupiscence, in itself, is not capable of promoting union as the communion of persons. By itself, it does not unite, but appropriates. The relationship of the gift is changed into the relationship of appropriation.
At this point, let us interrupt our reflections today. The last problem dealt with here is of such great importance, and is, moreover, so subtle, from the point of view of the difference between authentic love (that is, between the "communion of persons") and lust, that we shall have to take it up again at our next meeting.
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 30 JULY, 1980
Opposition in the human between the spirit and the body
During the General Audience in St. Peter's Square on Wednesday evening, 30 July, the Holy Father delivered the following address.
1. The reflections we are developing in the present cycle refer to the words which Christ uttered in the Sermon on the Mount on man's "lust" for woman. In the attempt to proceed with a thorough examination of what characterizes the "man of lust," we went back again to the Book of Genesis. Here, the situation that came into being in the mutual relationship of man and woman is portrayed with great delicacy. The single sentences of Genesis 3 are very eloquent. The words of God-Yahweh addressed to woman in Genesis 3:16: "Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you," seem to reveal, upon a careful analysis, in what way the relationship of mutual giving, which existed between them in the state of original innocence, changed after original sin to a relationship of mutual appropriation. If man in his relationship with woman considers her only as an object to gain possession of and not as a gift, he condemns himself thereby to become also for her only an object of appropriation, and not a gift. It seems that the words of Genesis 3:16 deal with this bilateral relationship, although the only thing they say directly is: "he shall rule over you." Furthermore, in unilateral appropriation (which indirectly is bilateral) the structure of communion between persons disappears. Both human beings become almost incapable of attaining the interior measure of the heart, directed to the freedom of the giving of oneself and the nuptial meaning of the body, which is intrinsic to it. The words of Genesis 3:16, seem to suggest that it is often at the expense of the woman that this happens, and that in any case she feels it more than man.
2. It is worth turning our attention now to this detail at least. The words of God-Yahweh according to Genesis 3:16: "Your desire shall be for yourhusband, and he shall rule over you", and those of Christ according to Matthew 5:27-28: "Everyone who looks at a woman lustfully, make it possible to perceive a certain parallelism. Perhaps it is not a question here of the fact that the woman particularly becomes the object of man's "lust," but rather that-as we have already stressed previously-" from the beginning" man was to have been the guardian of the reciprocity of donation and its true balance.
The analysis of that "beginning" (Gen 2:23-25) shows precisely man's responsibility in accepting femininity as a gift and in borrowing it in a mutual, bilateral exchange. To take from woman her own gift by means of concupiscence; is in open contrast with that. Although the maintenance of the balance of the gift seems to have been entrusted to both, a special responsibility rests with man above all, as if it depended more on him whether the balance is maintained or broken or - even if already broken - reestablished.
Certainly, the diversity of roles according to these statements, to which we are referring here as to key-texts, was also dictated by the social marginalization of woman in the conditions of that time (and the Holy Scripture of the Old and the New Testament gives us sufficient proofs of this); nevertheless, it contains a truth, which has its weight independently of specific conditionings due to the customs of that given historical situation.
3. As a consequence of lust, the body becomes almost a "ground" of appropriation of the other person. As is easy to understand, that entails the loss of the nuptial meaning of the body. And together with that also the mutual "belonging" of persons, who, uniting so as to "become one flesh" ( Gen 2:24 ), are called at the same time to belong to each other, acquires another meaning. The particular dimension of the personal union of man and woman through love is expressed in the word "my." This pronoun, which has always belonged to the language of human love, often recurs in the verses of the Song of Songs and also in other biblical texts ( 1). It is a pronoun which, in its "material" meaning, denotes a relationship of possession, but in our case indicates personal analogy of this relationship.
The mutual belonging of man and woman, especially when they belong to each other as spouses "in unity of the body," is formed according to this personal analogy. An analogy - -as is well known-indicates at the same time similarity and also the lack of identity (namely, a substantial dissimilarity). We can speak of persons belonging to each other only if we take such an analogy into consideration. In fact, in its original and specific meaning, belonging presupposes the relationship of the subject to the object: a relationship of possession and ownership. It is a relationship that's not only objective, but above "material" . . . he belonging of something, and therefore of an object to someone.
4. In the eternal language of human love, the term "my" certainly does not have this meaning. It indicates the reciprocity of the donation, it expresses the equal balance of the gift-precisely this, perhaps, in the first place-namely, that balance of the gift in which the mutual communio personarum is established. And if this is established by means of the mutual gift of masculinity and femininity, there is also preserved in it the nuptial meaning of the body.
In the language of love, in fact, the word "my" seems a radical negation of belonging in the sense in which an object-thing belongs to the subject-person. The analogy preserves its functions until it falls into the meaning set forth above. Triple lust, and in particular the lust of the flesh, takes away from the mutual belonging of man and woman the specific dimension of the personal analogy, in which the term "my" preserves its essential meaning. This essential meaning lies outside the "law of ownership," outside the meaning of "object of possession"; concupiscence, on the contrary, is directed towards the latter meaning.
From possessing, a further step goes towards "enjoyment": the object I possess acquires a certain meaning for me since it is at my disposal and I avail myself of it, I use it. It is evident that the personal analogy of belonging is decidedly opposed to this meaning. And this opposition is a sign that what, in the mutual relationship of man and woman, "comes from the Father," still persists and continues in confrontation with what comes "from the world." However, concupiscence in itself drives man towards possession of the other as an object, drives him to "enjoyment", which brings with it the negation of the nuptial meaning of the body. In its essence, disinterested, giving is excluded from selfish "enjoyment." Do not the words of God-Yahweh addressed to woman inGenesis 3:16, already speak of this?
5. According to the first letter of John 2:16, lust shows above all the state of the human spirit. Also the lust of the flesh bears witness in the first place to the state of the human spirit. It will be opportune to devote a further analysis to this problem. Applying Johannine theology to the field of the experiences described in Genesis 3, as well as to the words spoken by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount ( Mt 5:27-28), we find, so to speak, a concrete dimension of that opposition which - together with sin - was born in the human heart between the spirit and the body.
Its consequences are felt in the mutual relationship of persons, whose unity in humanity is determined right from the beginning by the fact that they are man and woman. Since another law at war with the law of (my) mind" ( Rom 7:23) has been installed in man, there exists almost a constant danger of this way of seeing, evaluating, and loving, so that "the desire of the body" is more powerful than "the desire of the mind." And it is precisely this truth about man, this anthropological element that we must always keep in mind, if we wish to understand completely the appeal made by Christ to the human heart in the Sermon on the Mount.
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 6 AUGUST, 1980
Sermon on the Mount to the men of our day
During the General Audience on Wednesday, 6 August, John Paul II delivered the following address.
1. Continuing our cycle, let us take up again today the Sermon on the Mount, and precisely the statement: "Every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Mt 5:28). Jesus appeals here to the "heart."
In his talk with the Pharisees, Jesus, referring to the "beginning" (cf. the preceding analyses), uttered the following words with regard to the certificate of divorce: "For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so" (Mt 19:8). This sentence undoubtedly contains an accusation. "Hardness of heart" (1) indicates what, according to the ethos of the people of the Old Testament, had brought about situation contrary to the original plan of God-Yahweh according to Genesis 2:24. And it is there that the key must be sought to interpret the whole legislation of Israel in the sphere of marriage and, in the wider sense, in relations between man and woman as a whole. Speaking of "hardness of heart," Christ accuses, so to speak, the whole "interior subject" who is responsible for the distortion of the Law. In the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:27-28), he also refers to the "heart," but the words pronounced here do not seem only to accuse.
2. We must reflect on them once more, placing them as far as possible in their "historical" dimension. The analysis made so far - aimed at highlighting "the man of lust" in his genetic moment, almost at the initial point of his history interwoven with theology - constitutes an ample introduction, particularly an anthropological one, to the work that must still be undertaken. The following stage of our analysis will have to be of an ethical character.
The Sermon on the Mount, and in particular that passage we have chosen as the center of our analyses, is part of the proclamation of the new ethos: the ethos of the Gospel. In the teaching of Christ, it is deeply connected with awareness of the "beginning," namely with the mystery of creation in its original simplicity and riches. At the same time, the ethos that Christ proclaims in the Sermon on the Mount, is realistically addressed to "historical man," who has become the man of lust. Lust in its three forms, in fact, is the heritage of the whole of mankind, and the human "heart" really participates in it.
Christ, who knows "what is in every man" (cf. Jn 2:25) ( 2 ), cannot speak in any other way than with this awareness. From this point of view, in the words of Matthew 5:27-28 it is not the accusation that prevails but the judgment: a realistic judgment on the human heart, a judgment which, on the one hand, has an anthropological foundation, and, on the other hand, a directly ethical character. For the ethos of the Gospel it is a constitutive judgment.
3. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ addresses directly the man who belongs to a well-defined society. The Master, too, belongs to that society, to that people. So we must look in Christ's words for a reference to the facts, the situations, the institutions, with which he was familiar in everyday life. These references must be analyzed at least in a summary way, in order that the ethical meaning of the words of Matthew 5:27-28 may emerge more clearly.
However, with these words, Christ also addresses, in an indirect but real way, every historical" man (understanding this adjective mainly in a theological sense). And this man is precisely the "man of lust", whose mystery and whose heart is known to Christ ("for he himself knew what was in man" Jn 2:25). The words of the Sermon on the Mount enable us to establish a contact with the interior experience of this man almost at every geographical latitude and longitude, in the various ages. in the different social and cultural conditionings. The man of our time feels called by name by this statement of Christ, no less than the man of "that time," whom the Master was addressing directly.
4. The universality of the Gospel which is not at all a generalization, lies in this. And perhaps precisely in this statement of Christ, which we are analyzing here, this is manifested with particular clearness. By virtue of this statement,. the man of all times and all places feels called, in an adequate, concrete, unrepeatable way: precisely because Christ appeals to the human "heart," which cannot be subject to any generalization. With the category of the "heart," everyone is characterized individually even more than by name, is reached in what determines him in a unique and unrepeatable way, is defined in his humanity "from within."
5. The image of the man of lust concerns his inner being in the first place (3). The history of the human "heart" after original sin is written under the pressure of lust in its three forms, with which even the deepest image of ethos in its various historical documents is also connected. However, that inner being is also the force that decides "exterior" human behavior, and also the form of multiple structures and institutions at the level of social life. If we deduce the content of ethos, in its various historical formulations, from these structures and institutions, we always meet this inner aspect, characteristic of the interior image of man. This, in fact, is the most essential element. The words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, and especially those of Matthew 5:27-28, indicate it unmistakably. No study on human ethos can regard it with indifference.
Therefore, in our subsequent reflections, we shall try to analyze in a more detailed way that statement of Christ's which says: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (or "has already made her adulterous in his heart").
To understand this text better, we shall first analyze its single parts, so as to obtain afterwards a deeper overall view. We shall take into consideration not only those for whom it was intended at that time, those who actually heard the Sermon on the Mount, but also, as far as possible, modern men, the men of our time.
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 13 AUGUST, 1980
Content of Commandment: Thou shalt not commit adultery
Continuing the catechetical cycle begun some weeks ago, the Holy Father delivered the following address to the faithful gathered by the General Audience in St. Peter's Square.
1. Christ's affirmation made during the Sermon on the Mount regarding adultery and "desire," which he calls "adultery of the heart," must be analyzed from the very beginning. Christ says: "You have understood that it was said: Thou shalt not commit adultery . . . " (Mt 5:27). He has in mind God's commandment, the sixth in the Decalogue, included in the so-called second Table of the Law which Moses received from God-Yahweh.
First of all, let's place ourselves in the situation of the audience present during the Sermon on the Mount, those who actually heard the words of Christ. They are sons and daughters of the Chosen People-people who had received the "Law" from God-Yahweh himself. These people had also received the "Prophets" who, time and time again throughout the centuries, had reproved the people's behavior regarding this very commandment, and the way in which it was continually broken. Christ also speaks of similar transgressions. But he speaks more precisely about a certain human interpretation of the Law, which negates and does away with the correct meaning of right and wrong as specified by the will of the Divine Legislator. The Law is in fact, above all, a means-an in-dispensable means if "justice is to abound" (Mt 5:20). Christ desires such justice to be "superior to that of the Scribes and Pharisees". He does not accept the interpretation which through the centuries they gave to the authentic content of the Law, inasmuch as such content, or rather the purpose and will of the Legislator, were subjected in a certain way to the varied weaknesses and limits of human will-power deriving precisely from the threefold concupiscence. This was a casuistic interpretation which was superimposed on the original version of right and wrong connected with the Law of the Decalogue. If Christ tends to transform the ethos, he does so mainly to recover the fundamental clarity of the interpretation: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish but to fulfill" (Mt 5:17). Fulfillment is conditioned by a correct understanding, and this is applied, among others, also to the commandment: "Thou shalt not commit adultery."
In Old Testament times
2. Those who follow the history of the Chosen People from the time of Abraham in the pages of the Old Testament, will find many facts which bear witness as to how this commandment was put into practice, and as a result of such practice, how the casuistic interpretation of the Law developed. First of all, it is well known that the history of the Old Testament is the scene for the systematic defection from monogamy, which fact must have a fundamental significance in our understanding of the prohibition: "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Especially at the time of the Patriarchs, the abandonment of monogamy was dictated by the desire for offspring, a very numerous offspring. This desire was so profound, and procreation as the essential end of marriage was so evident, that wives who loved their husbands but were not able to give them children, on their own initiative asked their husbands who loved them, if they could carry "on their own knees," or welcome, his children born of another woman, for example, those of the serving woman, the slave. Such was the case of Sarah regarding Abraham (1) or the case of Rachel and Jacob (2). These two narratives reflect the moral atmosphere in which the Decalogue was practiced. They illustrate the way in which the Israelite ethos was prepared to receive the commandment "Thou shalt not commit adultery," and how such a commandment was applied in the most ancient tradition of this people. The authority of the Patriarchs was in fact the highest in Israel and had a religious character. It was strictly hound to the Covenant and to the Promise.
Awareness of David
3. The commandment "Thou shalt not commit adultery" did not change this tradition. Everything points to the fact that its further development was not limited by the motives (however exceptional) which had guided the behavior of Abraham and Sarah, or of Jacob and Rachel. If we take as an example the most renowned Israelites after Moses; the Kings of Israel, David and Solomon, the description of their lives shows the establishing of real polygamy, which was undoubtedly for reasons of concupiscence.
In the history of David who also had other wives, we are struck not only by the fact that he had taken the wife of one of his subjects, but also by the fact that he was clearly aware of having committed adultery. This fact, as well as the repentance of the King, is described in a detailed and evocative way (3). Adultery is understood as meaning only the possession of another man's wife, but it is not considered to be the possession of other women as wives together with the first one. All Old Testament tradition indicates that the real need for monogamy as an essential and indispensable implication of the commandment "Thou shalt not commit adultery" never reached the conscience and the ethos of the following generations of the Chosen People.
Within special limits
4. Against this background one must also understand all the efforts which aim at putting the specific content of the commandment "Thou shalt not commit adultery" within the framework of the promulgated laws. It is confirmed by the books of the Bible in which we find the Old Testament legislation fully recorded as a whole. If we take into consideration the letter of such legislation, we find that it takes a determined and open stand against adultery, using radical means, including the death penalty (4). It does so however, by effectively supporting polygamy, even fully legalizing it, at least indirectly. Therefore adultery was opposed only within special limits and within the sphere of definitive premises which make up the essential form of the Old Testament ethos. Adultery is under-stood above all (and maybe exclusively) as the violation of man's right of possession regarding each woman who may be his own legal wife (usually, one among many). On the contrary, adultery is not under-stood as it appears from the point of view of monogamy as established by the Creator. We know now that Christ referred to the "beginning" precisely in regard to this argument (Mt 19:8).
Voice of conscience
5. Furthermore, the occasion in which Christ takes the side of the woman caught in adultery and defends her from being stoned to death is most significant. He says to the accusers: "Whoever of you is without sin, let him throw the first stone." (Jn 8:7). When they put down the stones and go away he says to the woman: "Go, and from now on, sin no more." (Jn 8:11). Therefore Christ clearly identifies adultery with sin. On the other hand when he turns to those who wanted to stone the adulteress, he doesn't refer to the precepts of Israel's Law but exclusively to conscience. The discernment between right and wrong engraved on the human conscience can show itself to be deeper and more correct that the content of a norm.
As we have seen, the history of God's People in the Old Testament (which we have tried to illustrate through only a few examples), takes place mainly outside the normative content contained in God's commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." It went along, so to speak, side by side with it. Christ wants to straighten out these errors, and thus we have his words spoken during the Sermon on the Mount.
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 20 AUGUST, 1980
Adultery according to the Law and as spoken by the Prophets
To the thousands of faithful present at the 20 August General Audience in St. Peter's Square, the Holy Father delivered the following address.
1. In the Sermon on the Mount, when Christ says: "You have heard that it was said: You shall not commit adultery" (Mt 5:27), he refers to what each person present knew perfectly well, and by which everyone felt himself bound by virtue of the commandment of God-Yahweh. However, the history of the Old Testament shows us that both the life of the people bound to God-Yahweh by a special covenant, and the life of each single man, often wanders away from this commandment. A brief look at the legislation, of which there is a comprehensive documentation in the Books of the Old Testament, also shows this.
The precepts of the Law of the Old Testament were very severe. They were also very detailed and entered into the smallest details of the daily life of the people (1). One can presume that the more the legalizing of actual polygamy became evident in this law, even more the necessity increased to uphold its juridical dimension, and protect its legal limits. Hence we find the great number of precepts, and also the severity of the punishments provided for by the legislator for the violation of such norms. On the basis of the analysis which we have previously carried out regarding Christ's reference to the "beginning," in his discourse on the dissolubility of marriage and on the "act of repudiation," it is evident that he clearly sees the basic contradiction that the matrimonial law of the Old Testament had hidden within itself by accepting actual polygamy, namely the institution of the concubine, together with legal wives, or else the right of cohabitation with the slave (2). It can be said that such a right, while it combated sin, at the same time contained within itself, or rather protected, the "social dimension of sin," which it actually legalized. In these circumstances it became necessary for the fundamental ethical sense of the commandment "you shall not commit adultery" to also undergo a basic reassessment. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ reveals that sense again, namely by going beyond its traditional and legal restrictions.
Old Testaments matrimonial law
2. Maybe it is worth adding that in the interpretation of the Old Testament, to the extent that the prohibition of adultery is balanced - you could say - by the compromise with bodily concupiscence, the more the position regarding sexual deviations is clearly determined. This is confirmed by the relevant precepts which provide for the death penalty for homosexuality and bestiality. Regarding onanism, it had already been condemned in the tradition of the Patriarchs (cf. Gen 38:8-10). The behavior of Onan, son of Judah (from where we have the origin of word "onanism")" . . . was displeasing in the sight of the Lord, and he slew him also" (Gen 38:10).
The matrimonial law of the Old Testament, in its widest and fullest meaning, puts in the foreground the procreative end of marriage and in certain cases tries to be juridically equitable in the treatment of the woman and the man-for example it says explicitly, regarding the punishment for adultery: "If a man commits adultery with his neighbor's wire, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death" (Lev 20:10) - but on the whole it judges the woman with greater severity.
Judgment marked by an objectivism
3. Maybe the terminology of this legislation should be emphasized. As always in such cases, the terminology tends to make objective the sexuality of that time. And this terminology is important for the completeness of reflections on the theology of the body. We find the specific confirmation of the characteristic of shame which surrounds what pertains to sex in man. And more than that, what is sexual is in a certain way considered as "impure", especially when it regards physiological manifestations of human sexuality. The "discovery of nudity" (Lev 20:11; 17:21) is branded as being the equivalent of an illicit and completed sexual act; the expression itself seems already eloquent enough here. There is no doubt that the legislator has tried to make use of the terminology relating to the con-science and customs of contemporary society. Therefore the terminology of the legislation of the Old Testament confirms our conviction that, not only are the physiology of sex and the bodily manifestations of sexual life known to the legislator, but also that these things are evaluated in a specific way. It is difficult to avoid the impression that such an evaluation was of a negative character. Certainly this in no way nullifies the truths which we know from the Book of Genesis, nor does it lay the blame on the Old Testament - and, among others, also on the Books of Laws - as forerunners of a type of manicheism. The judgment expressed therein, regarding the body and sex, isn't so much negative" or severe, but rather marked by an objectivity motivated by a desire to put in order this area of human life. This isn't concerned directly with putting some order in the "heart" of man, but with putting order in the entire social life, at the base of which, stands, as always, marriage and the family.
Practical precepts
4. If we take into consideration the "sexual" problem as a whole, perhaps we should briefly turn our attention again to another aspect, and that is to the existing bond between morality, law, and medicine, emphasized in their respective Books of the Old Testament. These contain many practical precepts regarding hygiene, or medicine, drawn rather from experience than from science, according to the level reached at that time (3). And besides, the link between experience and science is distinctly still valid today. In this vast sphere of problems, medicine is always very closely accompanied by ethics; and ethics, as does theology, seeks ways of collaborating with it.
Prophets present analogy
5. In the Sermon on the Mount when Christ spoke the words: "You have heard that it was said: You shall not commit adultery", and he immediately adds: "But I say to you . . . ", it is clear that he wants to restore in the conscience of his audience the ethical significance of this very commandment, disassociating himself from the interpretation of the "doctors of the law," official experts in it. But other than the interpretation derived from tradition, the Old Testament offers us still another tradition to understand the commandment "do not commit adultery." And it is the tradition of the Prophets. In reference to adultery, they wanted to remind Israel and Judah" that their greatest sin was in abandoning the one true God in favor of the cult of various idols, which the Chosen People, in contact with other peoples, had easily and thoughtlessly adopted. Therefore, a precise characteristic of the language of the Prophets, is the analogy with adultery, rather than adultery itself; and nevertheless, such analogy also helps to understand the commandment "do not commit adultery" and the relevant interpretation, the absence of which is noted in the legislative documents. In the pronouncements of the Prophets, and particularly of Isaiah, Hosea, and Ezekiel, the God of the Covenant-Yahweh is often represented as a spouse, and the love which united him to Israel can and must be identified with the nuptial love of a married couple. And so Israel, because of its idolatry and abandonment of God-the-Spouse, commits, in regard to him, a betrayal, which can be compared to that of a woman in regard to her husband: Israel commits, precisely, "adultery."
Love and betrayal
6. The Prophets, using eloquent words, and often by means of images and extraordinarily flexible metaphors, show both the love of Yahweh-Spouse and the betrayal of Israel-Spouse who gives itself over to adultery. This is a theme which must be taken up again in our meditations, that is, when we will analyze the question of the "Sacrament"; however, we must already touch on the subject, inasmuch as it is necessary to understand the words of Christ, according to Matthew 5:27-28, to appreciate that renewal of he ethos, implied in these words: 'But I say unto you . . . ". If on the one hand, Isaiah (4) in his texts lays emphasis, above all, on the love of Yahweh-Spouse who always takes the first step towards his spouse, passing over all her infidelities, on the other hand, Hosea and Ezekiel abound in comparisons, which clarify primarily the ugliness and moral evil of the adultery by Israel-the Spouse.
In the next meditation we will try to penetrate still more profoundly the texts of the Prophets, to further clarify the content which, in the conscience of those present during the Sermon on the Mount, corresponded to the "commandment"; "you shall not commit adultery."
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 27 AUGUST, 1980
Adultery: a breakdown of the personal covenant
Continuing the catechetical cycle on the subject of adultery, the Holy Father gave the following address to over thirty thousand people assembled for the weekly audience
1. In the Sermon on the Mount Christ says: 'Think not that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them." (Mt 5:17). In order to understand clearly what such a fulfillment consists of, he then passes on to each single commandment, referring also to the one which says: "You shall not commit adultery." Our previous meditation aimed at showing in what way the correct content of this commandment, desired by God, was obscured by the numerous compromises in the particular legislation of Israel. The Prophets, who in their teachings often denounce the abandonment of the true God-Yahweh by the people, comparing it to "adultery," point out such content in a very true way.
Hosea, not only with words, but (as it seems) also in his behavior, is anxious to reveal to us (1), that the people's betrayal is similar to that in marriage, or rather, even more, to adultery practiced as prostitution: "Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry, and have children of harlotry, for the land commits great harlotry by forsaking the lord" (Hos 1:2). The prophet takes heed within himself of this command and accepts it as coming from God-Yahweh: "And the Lord said to me, 'Go again, love a woman who is beloved of a paramour and is an adulteress' (Hos 3:1). In fact, although Israel may be so unfaithful with regard to its God, like the wife 'who went after her lovers and forgot me' (Hos 2:13), nevertheless Yahweh never ceases to search for his spouse, and doesn't tire of waiting for her conversion and her return confirming this attitude with the words and actions of the Prophet: "And in that day, says the Lord, you will call me, 'My Husband,' and no longer will you call me, 'My Baal' . . . And I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord" (Hos 2:16, 19-20). This fervent call to conversion of the unfaithful wife-consort goes hand in hand with the following threat: "That she put away harlotry from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts; lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born." (Hos 2:4-5).
2. The unfaithful Israel-spouse was reminded of this image of the humiliating nudity of birth, by the Prophet Ezekiel, and even within a wider sphere ( 2 ) " . . . but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born. And when I passed by you, and saw you weltering in your blood, I said to you in your blood, 'Live, and grow up like a plant in the field.' And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full maidenhood; your breasts were formed, and your hair had grown; yet you were naked and bare. When I passed by you again and looked upon you, behold, you were at the age for love; and I spread my skirt over you, and covered your nakedness: yea, I plighted my troth to you and entered into a covenant with you, says the Lord God, and you became mine . . . And I put a ring on your nose, and earrings in your ears, and a beautiful crown upon your head. Thus you were decked with gold and silver; and your raiment was of fine linen, and silk and embroidered cloth . . . And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor which I had bestowed upon you . . . But you trusted in your beauty, and played the harlot because of your renown, and lavished your harlotries on any passer-by . . . How lovesick is your heart, says the Lord God, seeing you did all these things, the deeds of a brazen harlot, making your lofty place in every square. Yet you were not like a harlot, because you scorned hire. Adulterous wife, who receives strangers instead of her husband!" ( Ez 16:5-8 , 12-15; 30-32).
3. The quotation is a little long, but the text is so important that it was necessary to bring it up again. The analogy between adultery and idolatry is expressed therein in a particularly strong and exhaustive way. The similarity between the two parts of the analogy consists in the covenant accompanied by love. Out of love, God-Yahweh settles the covenant with Israel - which is not worthy of it - and for him Israel becomes as a most affectionate, attentive, and generous spouse-consort is towards his own wife. Yahweh-spouse receives in exchange for this love, which ever since the dawning of history accompanies the Chosen People, numerous betrayals: "haughtiness" - here we have the cult of idols, in which "adultery" is committed by Israel-spouse. In the analysis we are carrying out here, the essential thing is the concept of adultery, as put forth by Ezekiel. However, it can be said that the situation as a whole, in which this concept is included (in the analogical sphere), is not typical. Here it is not so much a question of the mutual choice made by the husband and wife, which is born from mutual love, but of the choice of the wife (which was already made at the moment of her birth), a choice deriving from the love of the husband, a love which on the part of the husband himself, is an act of pure mercy. This choice is outlined in the following way: it corresponds to that part of the analogy which defines the covenant of Yahweh with Israel; but on the other hand, it corresponds to a lesser degree to the second part of it, which defines the nature of marriage. Certainly, the mentality of that time was not very sensitive to this reality - according to the Israelites, marriage was rather the result of a unilateral choice, often made by the parents - nevertheless, such a situation seldom forms part of our mentality.
4. Apart from this detail, we must be aware that in the texts of the prophets can be noted a different meaning of adultery from that given by the legislative tradition. Adultery is a sin because it constitutes the breakdown of the personal covenant between the man and the woman. In the legislative texts, the violation of the right of ownership is pointed out, and primarily the right of ownership of the man in regard to that woman who was his legal wife: one of many. In the texts of the prophets, the background of real and legalized polygamy does not alter the ethical meaning of adultery. In many texts monogamy appears as the only correct analogy of monotheism as understood in the categories of the covenant, that is, of faithfulness and confidence towards the one true God Yahweh: Spouse of Israel. Adultery is the antithesis of that nuptial relationship. It is the antinomy of marriage (even as an institution) inasmuch as the monogamous marriage accomplishes within itself the interpersonal alliance of the man and the woman, and achieves the alliance born from love and received by both parties, precisely as marriage (and, as such, is recognized by society). This type of covenant between two people constitutes the foundation of that union when "man . . . cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh" ( Gen 2:24 ). In the above-mentioned context, one can say that such bodily union is their "right" (bilateral), but above all that it is the regular sign of the communion of the two people, a union formed between the man and the woman in the capacity of husband and wife. Adultery committed by either one of them is not only the violation of this right, which is exclusive to the other marriage partner, but at the same time it is a radical falsification of this sign. It seems that in the pronouncements of the prophets, precisely this aspect of adultery is expressed in a sufficiently clear manner.
5. In observing that adultery is a falsification of that sign which has not so much its "legality", but rather its simple interior truth in marriage - that is, in the cohabitation of the man and the woman who have become a married couple - then, in a certain sense, we refer again to the basic statements made previously, considering them essential and important for the theology of the body, from both an ethical and anthropological point of view. Adultery is "a sin of the body." All the tradition of the Old Testament bears witness to it, and Christ confirms it. The comparative analysis of his words, pronounced in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt5:27-28), like the several relevant enunciations contained in the Gospels and in other parts of the New Testament, allows us to establish the exact reason for the "sinfulness" of adultery. And it is obvious that we determine such reason for ''sinfulness," or rather for moral evil, basing ourselves on the principle of contraposition, in regard to that moral goodness which is faithfulness in marriage, that goodness which can be adequately achieved only in the exclusive relationship of both the parties (that is, in the marriage relationship between a man and a woman). Such a relationship needs precisely nuptial love, the interpersonal structure of which (as we have already pointed out) is governed by the interior "normativity" of the "communion of the two people concerned." It is precisely this which gives a fundamental significance to the Covenant (either in the relationship of man-woman, or, analagously, in the relationship of Yahweh-Israel). One can pronounce judgment on the basis of the contraposition of the marriage pact as it is understood, with adultery, its sinfulness, and the moral evil contained in it.
6. All this must be kept in mind when we say that adultery is a "sin of the body"; the "body" is considered here in the conceptual bond with the words of Genesis 2:24, which in fact speaks of the man and the woman, who, as husband and wife, unite so closely so as to form "one body only." Adultery indicates an act through which a man and a woman, who are not husband and wife, unite as "one body only" (that is, those who are not husband and wife in a monogamous sense, as was originally established, rather than in the legal casuistic sense of the Old Testament). The "sin" of the body can be identified only in regard to the relationship between the people concerned. One can speak of moral good and evil according to whether in this relationship there is a true "union of the body" and whether or not it has the character of the truthful sign. In this case, we can therefore judge adultery as a sin, according to the objective content of the act.
This is the content which Christ has in mind, when, in the Sermon on the Mount, he reminds us: "You have understood that it was said: You shall not commit adultery". However Christ does not dwell on such an aspect of the problem.
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 3 SEPTEMBER, 1980
Meaning of adultery transferred from the body to the heart
Continuing his catechetical series devoted to the theme of adultery, the Holy Father delivered the following