The Call to Purity: An Echo of the Beginning

In recent months, we have reflected on Christ’s words in Matthew 5:27-28 in which he condemned interior acts of lust, equating them with adultery committed in the heart.  Pope St. John Paul II taught that this sin can even be committed within marriage if spouses look at each other as a mere “object for the possible satisfaction of his own sexual ‘urge’” (TOB 43:3).  This teaching in no way reflects a condemnation of the body or of human sexuality but rather holds them up as “a value not sufficiently appreciated” (45:3). 

Nonetheless, it is possible to read in Christ’s teachings a stern accusation of the human heart.  He tells us that what comes from outside does not make us unclean but what comes from the heart:  “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness” (Mk 7:21-22).  Christ accurately diagnoses the state of the human heart weighed down by sin.  Thus, His moral teachings do in a sense accuse the heart by pointing out our evil tendencies.  However, they do so only to call us to conversion and a way of life more befitting our dignity. 

According to the pope, Jesus calls us to overcome concupiscence and to experience “a real and deep victory over the evil” of adultery in the heart and all our lustful tendencies through repentance and inner transformation (45:4).  In regard to Christ’s teaching on adultery in particular, “One fulfills the commandment by ‘purity of heart’” (43:5).  Pope St. John Paul II taught us that Our Lord’s “call to master concupiscence of the flesh springs precisely from an affirmation of the personal dignity of the body and of sex and only serves such dignity” (45:5).  Indeed, purity of heart consists in an ever-deeper appreciation for the spousal meaning of the body. 

The more our hearts are purified, the more we behold the dignity of the human person revealed by the body and maintain an awareness of the sacredness of our sexual power to become one flesh in marriage:

This call or appeal of Christ is not imposed from the “outside” but corresponds to our inmost nature and longings.  Pope St. John Paul II taught that we carry within us an “inheritance” of the original beginning in which our first parents experienced their sexuality with purity and holiness.  Christ’s words testify to “the original power (and thus also the grace) of the mystery of creation.”  Through the redemption Christ won for us, this original power and mystery of creation become the “the power (that is, the grace) of the mystery of redemption” (46:5).  In other words, Christ came to redeem us, and by allowing His grace to penetrate and transform our hearts, we can live our sexuality with dignity and sanctity as God originally intended.

Allowing Christ’s words to work in us, we can hear in our hearts an “echo” of the “beginning” (46:5).  We find in the depths of our hearts not only the stirrings of concupiscence but also a deeply felt “need to preserve the dignity” of sexual relations and a “need to impregnate them with everything that is noble and beautiful,” “a need to confer on them the supreme value, which is love” (46:5).  This “inheritance” of the “beginning” is deeper than our disordered desires, and if we surrender fully to Jesus’ teaching and His grace, He can “re-activate that deepest inheritance and give it real power in human life.”  Thus, our own hearts testify that we are not only accused by Christ’s words but also “called with energy… to this supreme value, which is love” (46:6).

Note:  This article is part of an ongoing series on Pope St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body.”

Written by, Dr. Andrew Sodergren, M.T.S., Psy.D.,
Director of Ruah Woods Psychological Services

(Article originally published in The Catholic Telegraph, April 2024 Issue, the official magazine of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati)