The Theology of the Body: 39. Concupiscence as a Separation From Matrimonial Significance of the Body

In his General Audience of 10 September 1980, the Holy Father continued his series on Theology of the Body. He gave a description of the inner effects of lust from the Wisdom tradition and then compared it with the teaching of Christ on "adultery in the heart."


Concupiscence as a Separation From Matrimonial Significance of the Body

The following is the Holy Father's address to about thirty thousand faithful assembled for the weekly audience in St. Peter's Square.


1. Let us reflect on the following words of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount: "Everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" ("has already made her an adulteress in his heart") (Mt 5:28). Christ said this before listeners who, on the basis of the books of the Old Testament, were in a certain sense prepared to understand the significance of the look that comes from concupiscence. Last Wednesday we referred to the texts taken from the so-called Wisdom Books.

Here is, for example, another passage in which the biblical author analyzes the state of the soul of the man dominated by concupiscence of the flesh: "The soul heated like a burning fire / will not be quenched until it is consumed; / a man who commits fornication / will never cease until the fire burns him up; / to a fornicator all bread tastes sweet; / he will never cease until he dies. / A man who breaks his marriage vows / says to himself: 'Who sees me? / Darkness surrounds me, and the walls hide me; / no one sees me. Why should I fear? / The Most High will not take notice of my sins.' / His fear is confined to the eyes of men; / he does not realize that the eyes of the Lord / are ten thousand times brighter than the sun; / they look upon all the ways of men, / and perceive even the hidden places. / So it is with a woman who leaves her husband, / and provides an heir by a stranger (Sir 23:17-22).

2. Analogous descriptions are not lacking in world literature.(1) Certainly, many of them are distinguished by a more penetrating discernment of psychological analysis and a more intense significance and expressive force. Yet, the biblical description from Sirach (23:17-22) includes some elements maintained to be "classic" in the analysis of carnal concupiscence. One element of this kind, for example, is a comparison between concupiscence of the flesh and fire. Flaring up in man, this invades his senses, excites his body, involves his feelings and in a certain sense takes possession of his heart. Such passion, originating in carnal concupiscence, suffocates in his heart the most profound voice of conscience, the sense of responsibility before God; and in fact that is particularly placed in evidence in the biblical text just now quoted. On the other hand, external modesty with respect to men does persist... or rather an appearance of decency. It shows itself as fear of the consequences rather than of the evil in itself. In suffocating the voice of conscience, passion carries with itself a restlessness of the body and the senses. It is the restlessness of the external man. When the internal man has been reduced to silence, then passion, once it has been given freedom of action, exhibits itself as an insistent tendency to satisfy the senses and the body.

This gratification, according to the criterion of the man dominated by passion, should put out the fire; but on the contrary, it does not reach the source of internal peace and it only touches the outermost level of the human individual. And here the biblical author rightly observes that man, whose will is committed to satisfying the senses, finds neither peace nor himself, but, on the contrary, "is consumed." Passion aims at satisfaction; therefore it blunts reflective activity and pays no attention to the voice of conscience. Thus, without itself having any principle of indestructibility, it "wears out." The dynamism of usage is natural for its continuity, but it tends to exhaust itself. Where passion enters into the whole of the most profound energies of the spirit, it can also become a creative force. In this case, however, it must undergo a radical transformation. If instead it suppresses the deepest forces of the heart and conscience (as occurs in the text of Sirach 23:17-22), it "wears out" and indirectly, man, who is its prey, is consumed.

3. When Christ in the Sermon on the Mount spoke of the man who lusts, who looks lustfully, it can be presumed that he had before his eyes also the images known to his listeners from the Wisdom tradition. Yet, at the same time he referred to every man who on the basis of his own internal experience knows the meaning of lust, looking at lustfully. The Master did not analyze this experience nor did he describe it, as Sirach had, for example (cf. 23:17-22). He seemed to presuppose, I would say, an adequate knowledge of that interior fact, to which he called the attention of his listeners, present and potential. Is it possible that some of them do not know what it is all about? If they really know nothing about it, the content of Christ's words would not apply to him, nor would any analysis or description be capable of explaining it to him. If instead he knows—this in fact in such case deals with a knowledge completely internal, intrinsic to the heart and the conscience—he will immediately understand when the quoted words refer to him.

4. Christ, therefore, does not describe or analyze what constitutes the experience of lust, the experience of concupiscence of the flesh. One even has the impression that he did not penetrate this experience in all the breadth of its interior dynamism, as occurs, for example, in the text quoted from Sirach, but rather he paused on its threshold. Lust has not yet been changed into an exterior action. It has still not become the act of the body, but is until now the interior act of the heart. It expresses itself in a look, in the way of looking at the woman. Nevertheless, it already lets itself be understood and reveals its content and its essential quality. It is now necessary for us to make this analysis. A look expresses what is in the heart. A look expresses, I would say, the man within. If in general it is maintained that man "acts according to his lights," (operari sequitur esse), Christ in this case wanted to bring out that the man looks in conformity with what he is: intueri sequitur esse. In a certain sense, man by his look reveals himself to the outside and to others. Above all he reveals what he perceives on the "inside."(2)

5. Christ, then, teaches us to consider a look almost like the threshold of inner truth. In a look, "in the way in which one looks," it is already possible to single out completely what concupiscence is. Let us try to explain it. Lust, looking at lustfully, indicates an experience of value to the body, in which its nuptial significance ceases to be that, just because of concupiscence. Its procreative meaning likewise ceases (we spoke about this in our previous considerations). When it concerns the conjugal union of man and woman, it is rooted in the nuptial meaning of the body and almost organically emerges from it. Now then, man, lusting, looking at lustfully (as we read in Mt 5:27-28), attempts in a more or less explicit way the separation of that meaning of the body. As we have already observed in our reflections, this is at the basis of the communion of persons, whether outside of marriage, or—in a special way—when man and woman are called to build their union "in the body" (as the "gospel of the beginning" proclaims in the classic text of Gn 2:24). The experience of the nuptial meaning of the body is subordinate in a special way to the sacramental call, but is not limited to this. This meaning qualifies the liberty of the gift that—as we shall see more precisely in further analyses—can be fulfilled not only in marriage but also in a different way.

Christ says: "Everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Mt 5:28). Did he not perhaps mean by this that concupiscence itself—like adultery—is an interior separation from the nuptial meaning of the body? Did he not want to refer his listeners to their internal experiences of such detachment? Is it not perhaps for this reason that he defines it as "adultery committed in the heart"?

NOTES

1) Cf. Confessions of St. Augustine, VI, 12, 21, 22; VII, 17; VIII, 11; Dante, The Divine Comedy, "Inferno" V. 37-43; C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1960), p. 28.

2) A philological analysis confirms the significance of the expression ho blépon ("one who looks"; Mt 5:28).

"If blépo of Mt 5:28 has the value of internal perception, equivalent to 'I think, I pay attention to, I look'—a more precise and more sublime evangelical teaching may result regarding the interpersonal relationship among the disciples of Christ.

"According to Jesus not just a lustful glance makes a person adulterous, but a thought in the heart suffices" (M. Adinolfi, "The Desire of a Woman in Matthew 5:28," Fondamenti biblici della teologia morale. Proceedings of 22nd Italian Biblical Week, Brescia 1973, Paideia, p. 279).