If you read last week’s description of married love in God’s original plan, you’ll have quickly realized how far away this vision is from ordinary life. Not just being naked without shame, but all that entails about how men and women are called to relate to each other. We live in a very different world from the Garden Adam and Eve inhabited. Their decision to disobey God’s command and reach out to grasp what was not theirs sent shockwaves of sin into the world and corrupted all of creation. From that point on, man lost his harmony with God, with his neighbor, with himself, and with all of creation. Understanding how this corruption invaded the marriage bed will teach us how to reclaim the spousal meaning of the body and live the self-gift of holiness.

   “All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, comes not from the Father” (1 Jn. 2:16). We often equate ‘lust’ with disordered sexual desire in particular, but the word indicates any strong desire that goes beyond what is reasonable. We can have a lust for acquiring sports cars or going on fancy trips or even collecting Beanie Babies (yes, I’m a child of the ‘90’s)! Jesus locates this sin within our hearts even before any action has taken place: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt. 5:27-28).

This inclination to sexual lust only appeared after the Fall, as Genesis tells us: “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves” (Gen. 3:7). The once-happy couple that used to see each other’s bodies as persons to be respected and cherished now can only see the body as a collection of parts that give satisfaction and pleasure. As St. John Paul II describes, upon realizing their own vulnerable nakedness, Adam and Eve viewed each other with suspicion and fear, worried that the other would take advantage of them or use them. So they covered their nakedness with fig leaves which had the texture of sand-paper and secreted a sticky sap. Not the most comfortable undergarments, to be sure!

   After the Fall, human beings lost the self-control they once possessed, and so they dominated others and were dominated by their own passions: “For I take delight in the law of God, in my inner self,  but I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members” (Rom. 7:22-23). So begins the insatiability of lust, often compared to a wildfire. This spiritual sickness afflicts each of us, whether we readily see it or not. We all sometimes fail to see others as integral unions of body and soul that are to be loved and served instead of things that serve my needs. Next week we’ll begin to see how God responded to this corrupting sickness and see Christ’s role in redeeming sexuality as a path to holiness.

   -Fr. Stephen