1. St. Paul
writes in the First Letter to the Thessalonians: "...this is the
will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from
unchastity, that each one of you know how to control his own
body in holiness and honour , not in the passion of lust like
heathens who do not know God" (1 Th 4:3-5). After some verses,
he continues: "God has not called us for uncleanness, but in
holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man
but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you" (ibid. 4:7-8). We
referred to these sentences of the Apostle during our last
meeting. We take them up again today because they are especially
important for the subject of our meditations.
Purity a
capacity
2. The purity
which Paul speaks of in First Thessalonians (4:3-5, 7-8) is
manifested in the fact that man "knows how to control his own
body in holiness and honour , not in the passion of lust." In
this formulation every word has a particular meaning and
therefore deserves an adequate comment.
In the first
place, purity is a "capacity," that is, in the traditional
language of anthropology and ethics, an aptitude. In this sense
it is a virtue. If this ability, that is, virtue, leads to
abstaining from unchastity, that happens because the man who
possesses it "knows how to control his own body in holiness and
honour , not in the passion of lust." It is a question here of a
practical capacity which makes man capable of acting in a given
way, and at the same time of not acting in the opposite way. For
purity to be such a capacity or aptitude, it must obviously be
rooted in the will, in the foundation of man's willing and
conscious acting. In his teaching on virtues, Thomas Aquinas
sees in an even more direct way the object of purity in the
faculty of sensitive desire, which he calls appetitus
concupiscibilis. Precisely this faculty must be particularly
mastered, subordinated and made capable of acting in a way that
is in conformity with virtue, in order that purity may be
attributed to man. According to this concept, purity consists in
the first place in containing the impulse of sensitive desire,
which has as its object what is corporeal and sexual in man.
Purity is a different form of the virtue of temperance.
Requires
mastering
3. The text
of the First Letter to the Thessalonians (4:3-5) shows that in
Paul's concept, the virtue of purity consists also in the
mastery and overcoming of the passion of lust. That means that
the capacity for controlling the impulses of sensitive desire,
that is, the virtue of temperance, belongs necessarily to its
nature. At the same time, however, this Pauline text turns our
attention to another role of the virtue of purity. It could be
said that this other dimension is more positive than negative.
That is, the task of purity, which the author of the letter
seems to stress above all, is not only (and not so much)
abstention from unchastity and from what leads to it, and so
abstention from the passion of lust, but, at the same time, the
control of one's own body and, indirectly, also that of others,
in holiness and honour ,
These two
functions, abstention and control, are closely connected and
dependent on each other. It is not possible to "control one's
body in holiness and honour " if that abstention from unchastity
and from what leads to it is lacking. Consequently it can be
admitted that control of one's body (and indirectly that of
others) in holiness and honour confers adequate meaning and
value on that abstention. This in itself calls for overcoming
something that is in man and that arises spontaneously in him as
an inclination, an attraction, and also as a value. This acts
above all in the sphere of the senses, but often not without
repercussions on the other dimensions of human subjectivity, and
particularly on the affective-emotional dimension.
4.
Considering all this, its seems that the Pauline image of the
virtue of purity—an image that emerges from the very eloquent
comparison of the function of abstention (that is, of
temperance) with that of "control of one's body in holiness and
honour "—is deeply right, complete and adequate. Perhaps we owe
this completeness to nothing else than the fact that Paul
considers purity not only as a capacity (that is, an aptitude)
of man's subjective faculties, but at the same time, as a
concrete manifestation of life according to the Spirit. In this
life, human capacity is interiorly made fruitful and enriched by
what Paul calls in Galatians 5:22 the "fruit of the Spirit." The
honour that arises in man for everything that is corporeal and
sexual, both in himself and in any other person, male and
female, is seen to be the most essential power to control the
body in holiness. To understand the Pauline teaching on purity,
it is necessary to penetrate fully the meaning of the term "honour
," which is obviously understood here as a power of the
spiritual order. Precisely this interior power confers its full
dimension on purity as a virtue, that is, as the capacity of
acting in that whole field in which man discovers within himself
the multiple impulses of the passion of lust and for various
reasons, sometimes surrenders to them.
About the human body
5. To grasp
better the thought of the author of First Thessalonians, it will
be a good thing to keep in mind also another text, which we find
in First Corinthians. Paul sets forth in it his great
ecclesiological doctrine, according to which the Church is the
Body of Christ. Paul takes the opportunity to formulate the
following argumentation about the human body: "...God arranged
the organs in the body, each one of them, as he chose" (1 Cor
12:18). Further on he said: "On the contrary, the parts of the
body which seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those parts
of the body which we think less honour able we invest with the
greater honour , and our unpresentable parts are treated with
greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not
require. But God has so composed the body, giving the greater
honour to the inferior part, that there may be no discord in the
body, but that the members may have the same care for one
another" (ibid. 12:22-25).
Worthy of
honour
6. The
specific subject of the text in question is the theology of the
Church as the Body of Christ. However, in connection with this
passage it can be said that Paul, by means of his great
ecclesiological analogy (which recurs in other letters, and
which we will take up again in due time), contributes, at the
same time, to deepening the theology of the body. While in First
Thessalonians he writes about control of the body in holiness
and honour , in the passage now quoted from First Corinthians he
wishes to show this human body as worthy of honour . It could
also be said that he wishes to teach the receivers of his letter
the correct concept of the human body.
Therefore,
this Pauline description of the human body in First Corinthians
seems to be closely connected with the recommendations of the
First Letter to the Thessalonians: "...that each one of you know
how to control his own body in holiness and honour " (1 Th 4:4).
This is an important thread, perhaps the essential one, of the
Pauline doctrine on purity.
Taken from:
L'Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English 2 February 1981,
page 19
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