1.
In the Sermon on the Mount Christ said: "You have heard that it
was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that
everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed
adultery with her in his heart" (Mt 5:27-28). We have been
trying for some time to penetrate the meaning of this statement,
analyzing the single elements in order to understand better the
text as a whole.
When
Christ spoke of a man who looks lustfully, he indicated not only
the dimension of intentionality in looking, thus indicating
lustful knowledge, the psychological dimension, but also the
dimension of the intentionality of man's very existence. In the
situation Christ described, that dimension passes unilaterally
from the man, who is the subject, to the woman, who has become
the object (this does not mean, however, that such a dimension
is only unilateral). For the present we will not reverse the
situation analyzed, or extend it to both parties, to both
subjects. Let us dwell on the situation outlined by Christ,
stressing that it is a question of a purely interior act, hidden
in the heart and stopping on the threshold of the look.
It
is enough to note that in this case the woman—who owing to her
personal subjectivity exists perennially "for man," waiting for
him, too, for the same reason, to exist "for her"—is deprived of
the meaning of her attraction as a person. Though being
characteristic of the "eternal feminine," she becomes at the
same time only an object for the man. That is, she begins to
exist intentionally as an object for the potential satisfaction
of the sexual need inherent in his masculinity. Although the act
is completely interior, hidden in the heart and expressed only
by the look, there already occurs in him a change (subjectively
unilateral) of the very intentionality of existence. If it were
not so, if it were not a question of such a deep change, the
following words of the same sentence: "...has already committed
adultery with her in his heart" (Mt 5:28) would have no meaning.
2.
That change of the intentionality of existence, by means of
which a certain woman begins to exist for a certain man not as a
subject of call and personal attraction or as a subject of
communion, but exclusively as an object for the potential
satisfaction of the sexual need, is carried out in the heart,
since it is carried out in the will. Cognitive intentionality
itself does not yet mean enslavement of the heart. Only when the
intentional reduction, illustrated previously, sweeps the will
along into its narrow horizon, when it brings forth the decision
of a relationship with another human being (in our case: with
the woman) according to the specific scale of values of lust,
only then can it be said that desire has also gained possession
of the heart. Only when lust has gained possession of the will
is it possible to say that it is dominant over the subjectivity
of the person and that it is at the basis of the will, and of
the possibility of choosing and deciding, through which—by
virtue of self-decision or self-determination—the very way of
existing with regard to another person is established. The
intentionality of this existence then acquires a full subjective
dimension.
3.
Only then—that is from that subjective moment and on its
subjective prolongation—is it possible to confirm what we read,
for example, in Sirach (23:17-22), about the man dominated by
lust, and what we read in even more eloquent descriptions in
world literature. Then we can also speak of that more or less
complete compulsion, which is called elsewhere compulsion of the
body. This brings with it loss of the freedom of the gift,
congenital in deep awareness of the matrimonial meaning of the
body, of which we have also spoken in preceding analyses.
4.
When we speak of desire as the transformation of the
intentionality of a concrete existence, of the man, for example,
for whom (according to Mt 5:27-28), a certain woman becomes
merely the object of the potential satisfaction of the sexual
need inherent in his masculinity, it is not at all a matter of
questioning that need, as an objective dimension of human nature
with the procreative finality that is characteristic of it.
Christ's words in the Sermon on the Mount (in its whole context)
are far from Manichaeism, as the true Christian tradition also
is. In this case, there cannot arise, therefore, objections of
the kind. It is a question, on the contrary, of the man's and
the woman's way of existing as persons, that is, of that
existing in a mutual "for," which—also on the basis of what,
according to the objective dimension of human nature, can be
defined as the sexual need—can and must serve the building up of
the unity of communion in their mutual relations. Such is the
fundamental meaning characteristic of the perennial and
reciprocal attraction of masculinity and femininity, contained
in the very reality of the constitution of man as a person, body
and sex together.
5.
The possible circumstance that one of the two persons exists
only as the subject of the satisfaction of the sexual need, and
the other becomes exclusively the object of this satisfaction,
does not correspond to the union or personal communion to which
man and woman were mutually called from the beginning—on the
contrary, it is in conflict with it. Moreover, the case in which
both the man and the woman exist reciprocally as the object of
satisfaction of the sexual need, and each on his or her part is
only the subject of that satisfaction, does not correspond to
this unity of communion—but on the contrary it clashes with it.
This reduction of such a rich content of the reciprocal and
perennial attraction of human persons in their masculinity or
femininity does not at all correspond to the "nature" of the
attraction in question. This reduction extinguishes the personal
meaning of communion, characteristic of man and woman, through
which, according to Genesis 2:24, "a man...cleaves to his wife,
and they become one flesh." Lust turns away the intentional
dimension of the man's and woman's mutual existence from the
personal perspectives, "of communion," characteristic of their
perennial and mutual attraction, reducing it, and, so to speak,
pushing it toward utilitarian dimensions, within which the human
being uses the other human being, for the sake merely of
satisfying his own needs.
6.
It seems possible to find this content again, charged with the
human interior experience characteristic of different ages and
environments, in Christ's concise affirmation in the Sermon on
the Mount. At the same time, we cannot in any case lose sight of
the meaning that this affirmation attributes to man's
interiority, to the integral dimension of the heart as the
dimension of the inner man. Here lies the core of the
transformation of ethos aimed at by Christ's words according to
Matthew 5:27-28, expressed with powerful forcefulness and at the
same time with admirable simplicity.
Taken from: L'Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English 29
September 1980, page 11
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