Reflection on September 10, 1980

https://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/jp2tb38.htm

The image of fire being used to describe passion and satisfaction is interesting. If you have a passion (fire), give into that passion in order to satisfy it (feed the fire), you do not extinguish or satisfy the passion but make it bigger. Fueling a fire does not extinguish it but helps it to grow. The same thing happens with our passions, especially our physical and sexual passions. The world tells us to feed these passions in order to satisfy our desires and find peace. But indulging the passion only builds the fire and makes us seek more and more. Rather than achieving freedom from the passion, we become enslaved to it until the passion (fire) consumes us.

JPII talks about Christ not pointing to the physical act of adultery because He points to the heart. Christ isn’t looking at the fiery blaze that we become when we are a slave to sin, He wants us to put the fire out when it starts, He never wants us to catch fire in the first place. When it is small, when it first starts, that is when you need to resist and extinguish these passions. Christ wants us to understand that letting that fire kindle, not putting it out, looking with lust, is a sin and will only grow into bigger flames unless it is extinguished. He understands how hard it is to put out the large fires, so He wants us to stop them from becoming large. He knows that we all have these fires, these battles, to deal with, but calls us to extinguish, not indulge, the fire so that we do not become consumed and enslaved.

We have already seen that adultery (physical) is so harmful because of so much of our human understanding coming from that communion of persons. JPII brings about the same type of harm through adultery of the heart. When you think about the emphasis on the idea that each person is a gift to the other, when you look at someone with lust, they are not a gift, they are likely to not even know what you are doing. Basically, you are stealing their gift of self. When what we experience is so important to our understanding of the world and our human nature, such an experience that is so divergent from what God intended can only lead to a distorted understanding of humanity.

The idea of seeking pleasure from looking at another is most easily applicable in the issue of pornography. There you have an image that is looked upon with lust to elicit physical pleasure. Looking at what is meant to be in the communion of persons, pornography distorts almost every aspect and becomes the cause of a truly distorted image of humanity. There is no communion, there is no gift, a person becomes an object, (literally only a picture or film) And it is not something that you can simply use and then go back to living a life. The experience of pornography, every experience, affects the person, changes who they are, how they see themselves, how they see others (especially the other sex). Not only does it affect them, it is addictive. Not only is it addictive, but like the fire above, it builds on itself and requires a person to seek more and more, increase the intensity. It can get to the point where “real” life is not satisfactory anymore, or a person mistreats their “real” partners in order to get the pleasure they seek from their fantasy world. This increase can also lead to seeking out different “objects” that they feel will please them, possibly leading into a world of pedophilia and other extremes. I don’t think there is any doubt that the sexual revolution and increase in “freedom” has lead to an increase in abuses of this kind, but anyone that cares to look, the connection is obvious and will only get worse as we continue to push for more indulgences in our sexual “freedom”.

Words I looked up.

Connatural - belonging to a person or thing by nature or from birth or origin; inborn.

Dynamism - any of various theories or philosophical systems that seek to explain phenomena of nature by the action of force.