The Redemption of the Body – Members Content
“The man and his wife were both naked yet they felt no shame” – Gn 2:25
The BattleGround of the heart
We all know that it is possible to follow the rules or ‘the law of God’, without ever attaining holiness. We might do all the right things, but not really be committed in our hearts. This is what Jesus was speaking of when he said,
“You have heard it said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’. But I say to you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart”.
Mt 5:27-28
The heart is our deep, interior self, where we experience the forces of good and evil in battle. Jesus is calling us to not just act externally in accordance with the law, but to conform our internal desires to the spirit of the law.
Lust is self-centred sexual desire, devoid of love and of God. It seeks to satisfy only the sexual need of the person, be it physical, emotional or intellectual gratification. Lust is not limited to merely physical expressions common in our age of sexual promiscuity such as pornography, masturbation, rape and self-serving married sex. It also includes the abuses of emotional dependency, conditional or demanding ‘love’ and psychological manipulation.
The ‘heart’ has become a battlefield between love and concupisence [lust]. The more [lust] dominates the heart, the less the heart experiences the spousal meaning of the body. TOB, n 32. page 258.
Rather than respecting the other as a person created for his/her own sake, lust treats him/her as an object to be used for one’s own benefit, to satisfy one’s needs or wants. Lust leads us to use the other, rather than love him or her. It inhibits our capacity to freely give ourselves to our loved one totally, faithfully and fruitfully. In other words, it reduces our ability to experience union and communion (that is, the nuptial meaning of our bodies).
All things are possible
“For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want to do…Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Rom 7:19, 24-5
St Paul vividly describes the interior battle of the heart in his letter to the Romans, but he also speaks of the power of redemption at work within us. Jesus’ suffering and death makes it possible for us to live in freedom from lust. His total gift of self on the cross allows us to experience pure, other-centred love, uncorrupted by self-centred desires. Redemption in Christ offers us liberation from lust so that we can be free: free to love without fear; free to receive love; free to be naked in body and soul and not be ashamed.
The promise of Jesus is freedom; freedom to live according to the purpose and meaning for which we were created: to be in union and communion with God, within ourselves (body united with soul), with others and with creation. Living in the Spirit means that we open our hearts to God’s Spirit so that we can be re-integrated, or reunited in body and soul.
“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore and do not submit to the yoke of slavery.”
Gal 5:1
