Reflection on June 25, 1980

https://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/jp2tb30.htm

I thought it was interesting that he talks about shame as something positive in a way. When you think about it, it isn’t that hard to see. Shame makes you cover yourself, keep yourself from tempting others, protects them from others eyes and their motivations. At the same time, that was not the intent of the body. We struggle against two competing emotions. One emotion is to seek a union with others and the other is to hide ourselves, to protect ourselves. You often hear that in a relationship, you must make yourself vulnerable, let the other person in. This is the exactly what JPII is talking about here. Before you can be with someone in an intimate way, you have to bring down that shield you use to protect yourself against the prying eyes of the world. When you let it down, you allow the person to see you in a new way. There is a danger there because they are fallen and they have the tendency to use that vulnerability to make you an object, but that is the risk you take in seeking out a unique communion with another in our fallen state.

Our bodies do not cease to arouse desire, but concupiscence distorts this desire, it turns desire into an appeasement to the body, a longing for physical fulfillment, at a cost to the full communion that was intended. Is there a more accurate statement about the worldly view of love and desire? The world wants us to appease or ease all our physical desires, really at any cost. There is no price too high for the fulfillment of all your physical urges. It has always shocked me that we spend so much time telling young people to not use drugs but insist on giving them condoms so that they can fulfill those urges. Perhaps we are moving away from that with the legalization of marijuana, but DARE is still a powerful group. But we are basically encouraging premarital sex and appears to encourage homosexual activity if you have the urge to do that. These actions are promoted at the cost of this authentic union that we were made for. That is why lent and sacrifice are such an important time and lesson that need to be taught and practiced. When the world is saying give in, we need to be building up our strength to hold back.

We have looked at the language in Genesis that man will dominate the woman. I thought last time that this bleeds into the idea of making the female an object. I didn’t connect it with the command given to man about the rest of the world, that he should have dominion over it. Not only does dominance objectify the female, it lowers her humanity down to that of the animals and other worldly things. Maybe that is the same as thinking of here as an object, but I hadn’t made the connection with man’s relationship to the rest of the world. This fits again with the way the world wants us to see us.

Words I looked up.

Appeasement - to bring to a state of peace, quiet, ease, calm, or contentment; pacify; soothe: to appease an angry king.

Impetus - a moving force; impulse; stimulus: The grant for building the opera house gave impetus to the city's cultural life.