Reflection on April 16, 1980

https://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/jp2tb23.htm

I always have loved the idea that Christ did not come to change any of the Jewish law but to fulfill it. It is just so un-revolutionary. When you think of someone that will change the course of human history, He states that He isn’t there to change anything, but only to fulfill what was already started and laid out from the beginning. And we have seen that He points back to the beginning, before the fall. The Jews and all their laws and traditions could never get back to what they had lost. Christ is needed; His death and resurrection are needed, to bridge that gap.

I thought it was interesting to think that the laws trying to define what adultery were led to loopholes for those wanting to get away with as much as they could without violating the law. When I read that I thought of the Clinton affairs and the “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” line. Technically and physically, he may have been telling the truth, but that is Christ point. The command of adultery is about your heart and your soul. If you go through with the act, you actually sinned and committed adultery in your heart well before then. No one blindly falls into the act of adultery. Christ command puts us on guard to stop us from even starting down that road. You can almost hear Him say “you were told to not commit adultery, but in the beginning it was not so”. We see how much the foundation of understanding original innocence and reflecting on creation before the fall is and how it will be the premise to lean on for many other questions on morality, especially those dealing with sexuality and the body.

I thought the footnote in regards to desire was worth reflecting on. JPII talks of desire and the fact that desire, in and of itself, is not bad but necessary. Adam and Eve, in their original innocence, desired the other in a pure sense when they saw each other. Without this desire, procreation would not occur. There must be that desire to lead to a want to join together. When desire becomes harmful is whenever it reduces the person. When this desire reduces a person to an object of pleasure, the pleasure, not the person, becomes the desire and the person merely a means to achieve that end. Then desire becomes sinful.