Reflection on April 30, 1980

https://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/jp2tb25.htm

I don’t recall ever hearing or reading about “threefold” concupiscence. 1 John 2:15-17 “Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, sensual lust, enticement for the eyes, and a pretentious life, is not from the Father but is from the world. Yet the world and its enticement are passing away. But whoever does the will of God remains forever.” Obviously, they are slightly different translations here, but you can see the threefold concupiscence there. Because we are in lent, I found myself reflecting on the verse following them and how they will all pass away but only God remains forever. The Homily of Ash Wednesday focused on a similar lessen in regards to the world. You can think of all 3 of them with this limitation. Sensual lust can be physically satisfied through many avenues, but none last and only urge the person to seek another outlet hoping that it will satisfy. Enticement for the eyes, we can all see that physical looks will not last and even those that we think exist in reality are actually only photo shopped computerized illusions. The honors that the world gives a person are based on a “what have you done for me lately” attitude and fade quickly as your usefulness to them fades. All you have to do is look at one hit wonder celebrities to know how fragile a pretentious life can be.

http://youtu.be/mF3z9Y-LJL8

The following is me trying to untangle the idea of the world. When I was reading this, I couldn’t get past the fact that the world before the fall was “good” in the eyes of God, but after the fall is the source of the threefold concupiscence. Hopefully by trying to explain it, I can better understand it myself.

We start with the idea of “authentic human experience”. It is the pure experience of man to the world and to each other. This is what we are to strive for and what God had in mind from the beginning. God is fully united with man before the fall and fills his heart. The fall causes man to reject God and essential detach himself from God or expel God from his heart. (when I thought of that, I thought of Adam and Eve being expelled from Eden in recompense) Man rejects God’s gift, His love, and doubts God because of his selfish desire. When man expels God from his heart, there is a vacuum that remains. Man looks to the world to fill the vacuum.

I don’t think the world changes after the fall, but it is the way that man sees and experiences the world. The world was never meant to fill the “God hole” in our heart, but when we look to the world to do that, when we look to anything other than God to fill it, we reject God, as Adam and Eve did, and follow a path to sin. The threefold concupiscence of the world are not the world’s fault, at least not the world God made, but our longing to fill that hole in our heart with the world, a place it was never meant to fill. That is why the more you fill this hole with God, the more you are able to see the world the way God meant for it. I don’t think any saint rejected the created world as something evil or full of concupiscence. Look to St. Francis of Assisi and how he interacted with the world. That is because they have filled that hole with God and are not looking to the world to do something it isn’t meant for.

I don’t know if I have ever thought about this, but after the fall, Adam and Eve “sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves”. This was, we assume, to hide their private parts from each other. But, when God comes into the garden, “the man and his wife hid themselves from the LORD God among the trees of the garden”. The shame they felt to each other and what they wanted to hide was physical. But from God, they wanted to hide themselves. The shame went beyond physical; it ran through their entire being. They wanted to hide all that they were from God. I was thinking about what that means to us. We hide ourselves physically from others, at least those with modesty do. But, do we hide ourselves from God? Does this refer to those that don’t pray, don’t go to Mass, don’t go to confession, or all of the above? And like Adam and Eve, do you think you can really hide from God? He found them, He can find you, He knows what you have done before you did it. Not just that He will find you, but we must understand that He is looking for us, and the sooner we come out, humbly confess our sins, we can be clothed with His light and love, “The LORD God made for the man and his wife garments of skin, with which he clothed them”, because He does not sent us away from Eden without His protection.

Words I looked up.

Concupiscence - sexual desire; lust.

Pretentious - characterized by assumption of dignity or importance, especially when exaggerated or undeserved:

Substratum - something that underlies or serves as a basis or foundation.