The Deadlies: Lust

 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.   1 John 2:16

In my last post, I spoke of the underlying habits of action and thought that keep us full of the world and the flesh and prevent us from emptying ourselves to allow God to enter into us and fill our souls—the big seven that separate us from God.

Lust isn't as destructive as pride for instance but it is pervasive, and the one many people obsess on, and/or accuse the church of obsessing on, so it seems like a good starting point. I begin with a definition from the Catechism of the Catholic Church: 

Lust is disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes.

Legalistic that, full of careful adjectives. Clearly, it doesn't refer to all desire or all sexual pleasure, but the specific list of sins related to lust is so long and sometimes detailed, people forget the underlying good, the thing that sin overturns. Let's begin with that.

Sexuality is a fundamental aspect of humanity, hard-wired into our bodies exactly as God made them. What was the Creator up to? Well. Reproduction for one. The mechanics of attraction/arousal/intercourse are designed to make babies, but it isn't that simple. A world in which the only acceptable sexual act is one likely to (or as we used to be taught "open to") reproduction puts sexuality in a narrow box devoid of joy and surely much less than God intended.

Sex is many things. Fun for one. That had to be part of the plan. Pleasurable as one. That also was intended. Desire, that complex function of human relationships, involves the mind and heart as well as reproductive organs. The joy and intimacy that come from sexual activity bind two people as closely as is humanly possible--two in one flesh. The act itself is—or should be— a sign and symbol of deep spiritual communion. That's that "unitive" business in the definition.

So, it's basic to being human. Where does it go wrong? Sexuality is intended by God to be used not just enthusiastically but also generously, as an act of giving. The very act of sexual intercourse works best when both parties are giving to the other. Giving, not taking. Yes, reproduction /fecundity is one form of generosity. So is caring for the pleasure, joy, and well-being of the partner.

Remember that long list of sins? They all present some sort of self-centered use of sexuality on a continuum from seemingly innocuous forms of self-indulgence through various levels of exploitation of other people to forced sex of any kind under any circumstances. Why do the little ones matter? Little sin leads to big sin.

In the middle of this is marriage. Commitment not only provides a safe haven for raising children, but it also provides a safe haven for sexual partners, a platform of trust that enables maximum openness and vulnerability to one another. Fidelity to that commitment is another act of generous self-giving.

Few of us can live this ideal perfectly. We're selfish beings, all struggling along that path to full self-giving. I write romance novels in another part of my life. Every one of them explores the dance of attraction and desire with patterns of selfishness and self-giving, character flaws, and challenges. They all end with the self-giving commitment that is marriage, but the road is sometimes rocky. As a result, I think a lot about healthy relationships.  Recently I saw a quote from Pope Francis (on his @pontifax Twitter account!) that struck me as a good guideline:

Where love becomes tangible, becomes closeness, becomes tenderness, becomes compassion, God is there.

In regard to sexuality as in all things, we should be thinking about what can I give, how can I help, and what is the good of the other—rather than how far can I go, how much is ok, and what can I have?

The Deadlies!

There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him 

                        Proverbs 6:12-19


A few months ago I wrote about sin, in which I lamented the Church's historical tendency to "a way of thinking that sliced and diced, analyzed and categorized sin into smaller and smaller bits. I spoke of the relationship of petty sin to petty virtue. What I failed to say in my previous essay is that guilt is pointless. It is guilt that the Church is often accused of fostering by this pettiness, and to some extent that may be a fair judgement. Guilt is a kind of self-centered wallowing. Repentance, on the other hand, is an outward turning reach for The Other, a turning away from what pulls you down. The fundamental necessity is to empty ourselves in order to be filled with the love of Christ, not to keep, no never that, but to be overflowing into the world around us.

The poet, Sara Teasdale, put it this way:

Child, child, love while you may,

For life is short as a happy day;

Never fear the thing you feel-

Only by love is life made real;

Love, for the deadly sins are seven,

Only through love will you enter heaven.

Whether she intended it or not, love is presented as the antidote to sin.

But of what do we empty ourselves? What is it that I should be repenting? It came to me in prayer this week that my starting point for my pondering about repentance and the Sacrament of Reconciliation might have a starting point in the traditional Seven Deadly Sins, the deeper, underlying habits of action or thought that lay behind the things we do.

The list has a long history. Our current version was solidified by Saint Gregory I in 590, but it has its roots in the Egyptian monastic movement two centuries before. The concept is even older. Greek and Roman philosophers long pondered patterns of thought and habit that lay behind a lack of virtue. Aristotle wrote extensively on virtue and saw vice as a existing in mirror image to virtue (Courage he thought, for example, is a virtue, but too much is recklessness and too little cowardice.)

I've begun to think of the list as descriptions of the barriers, the blockage, that keeps me from emptying and fully entering into the life of Christ. So what are they? The traditional list is:

1. Lust
2. Gluttony
3. Greed
4. Sloth
5. Wrath
6. Envy
7. Pride

Is Lust first because it is most important? Heck no. This list is actually in reverse order from the weakest, least important cause of sin to the most harmful, the most deadly. In my next entries I'll go through them in this order, however. Number one is the one most people obsess on, and/or accuse the church of obsessing on. I've read sins which could be placed under the general banner of lust are the ones most commonly confessed, at least by men. That alone tells me we haven't reached a particularly broad understanding of the things that keep us from God!

Over my next posts I'll ponder them one by one in the traditional order, and ponder also the related virtues and good, the way in which love is the antidote to sin.

The Fruits: Love

 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Galatians 5:22-23

When we measure our spiritual life agains the fruits we are meant to produce, there is nothing more important than the first one: Love. Saint Paul tells us, all things pass away but love never ends. (1Cor 13:8)

God is by nature love, entirely love, flowing out over all of us. As we give ourselves over to him entirely and become more like him, our very nature shifts to become, like His, love. 

The catechism of my childhood taught that entire meaning of life is that God made us. Why? God made us to love and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him in the next. In other words, He wishes to be united to us utterly. So love of God implies service and that love drives us, as all love does, toward union, with the Beloved.

But how is it fruit? As we empty ourselves in order to let God in, our capacity for love grows. We begin to see the world and the people in it as God sees them, to love them as God does.

Imperfect person that I am, people irritate. People anger. People make demands that are inconvenient, imposing, and annoying. Imperfect person that I am I prefer my own will, and yet I get up every morning and tell Him I will do His will. When his love bears fruit, I forgive, I give of time and treasure, I build bridges to those who different, difficult, and demanding. When it doesn't, I crawl back into my cave.

In a recent speech Pope Francis called love of neighbor "a daily gymnasium in which we train love for God."

What of marriage? Marriage is the great school of love; done well it burns off selfishness year after year. At a profoundly spiritual moment once He told me I would never learn to love Him until I learned to love in marriage. My vocation has always been clear.

So the mechanism of love goes both directions. Insofar as I learn selfless love and practice it, however imperfectly, I make room for God to pour his love in me. Insofar as I let God pour His love in me, it overflows, bearing fruit in the world. Allow the Holy Spirit full rein, and love takes root to bear fruit.

Free Will

God is love.

                     1 John 4:8

Free will is one of life's great mysteries. We look at the violence, greed, and destruction men choose to do as an exercise of their freedom to choose, and it is tempting to ask What was God thinking when he gave us free will? We could start with the cross, evil doing its level best to suppress supreme Good, and scratch our heads. What is it Jesus meant when he said, "Be it done according to Your will..." What did the Father demand? That He not interfere with the free will of men, and look at the result. Couldn't he have come up with a better plan?

No. the reason is, that God is love. Let me explain.

God by his very nature, we are taught, is love. In Deus Carita Est Benedict XVI beautifully expounds on Eros as it applies to God — the fundamental drive to be united with the other. God loves us. He longs for us. He desires to be united to us. Here's the catch: unity that is forced is not love. It may be submissive correctness. It may involve rule keeping and orthodoxy, but it is not love. Love requires choice. He doesn't want us as poor submissive creatures. He desires union through love. He wants US to choose HIM. Faith is a personal choice, a relationship with another.

Historically, the Church has gotten into trouble when it lost the simple fact that our faith is about relationship, about love, and about choice, and it has allowed itself to be seduced by the methods of this world. That is to say it has chosen power, force, and the hammer of law over love. The obvious examples are the Spanish Inquisition and the crusades, but there are thousands of others in the lives of each of us.

We find ourselves at yet another historical crisis, with the secular world moving farther and farther from God and his call for sacrificial love and the Church slipping into a crisis rooted in the abuse of power at the same time. The tragic stories of sexual abuse by those with power perpetrated on those without it, primarily children, is devastating. The behavior of bishops who've placed the church's perks, privileges, revenue, and prestige above care for victims is far more destructive, undermining as it does the faith of thousands and eroding the moral authority of the clergy to an all-time low. These acts are possible only when presbyters forget that faith is about our relationship with God, not about the exercise of office.

George Bernanos wrote that those who would reform the church must turn aside from solutions learned from politics or business—the things of this world—and look to Saint Francis, who responded to God's call to rebuild his church with humility and poverty, with love. We would do well to think about that when we're tempted to argue about Liberal and Conservative, about celibacy and homosexuality, about putting our will ahead of the Beloved.