April 14, 2003

 "Lust Part I: I Want You to Be Holy"

Paul tells us that God choose us from the very beginning of the world to be holy and sinless in His sight (see Eph 1:4).  In other words, we are to be full of love (of course that means full of God's love).  Sometimes we are full of our own love-our self-love, self-interest, and self-concern.  But we are called to be saints.  St. Paul tells us that to be a saint is simply to be full of God's love.  We often wonder, "What is God's will?"  I hear people asking us that.  It's very simple.  Paul tells us it is our sanctification.  It is to be holy.  It is to become a saint.  This is all throughout the Bible.  The Father Himself tells us, "I want you to be holy because I am holy" (see Lv 11:44-45).  It's so simple.  We can really tell that we're hearing from God in any prophetic word if it's simple because God is simple.  He wants us to be holy because He wants us to be like Himself.  Everything He has He wants to give us.  He has given this already in the tremendous gift of Jesus.  We need to take a closer look at one of the reasons why we are not yet as holy as God wants us to be. 

The saints and some of the theologians tell us that the most popular of all the sins is lust.  All we have to do is look around our world.  Lust is an inordinate love of pleasures of the flesh.  Lust can change a beautiful and very good power that God has given to us into sin.  God has given us the beautiful gift of sexuality.  There's a power there if we use it for His greater honor and glory, but we can also use it for sin.  We have that choice. 

Lust is opposed to chastity.  It seeks the unlawful pleasures of the flesh, especially through the sense of touch.  Scripture tells us that sins of impurity defile both soul and body (which is the temple of God).  That's who we are.  We're destined at Resurrection for that final glorification forever and ever and ever.  So if we can be mindful that we are temples of God and beg God for these graces of purity now, we will enter into that so much more quickly.  We don't ever want to shoot for Purgatory.  Go for the top.  Go for the gold.  Jesus chose to become enfleshed in a body.  We'll never understand His humility.  We'll never understand that kind of love that He chose to become enfleshed in a body-the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity, chose to do that.  He was sent by the Father to do it.  It's a tremendous, awesome love.  We can get lost in it in contemplation.  But even more so, Jesus continues to choose to be enfleshed in our bodies.  

Some of the sins committed through lust are adultery, fornication, incest, rape, artificial contraception, abortion, masturbation, and sterilization.  There are many.  What does this impurity do to us?  Theologians tell us that sins of lust somehow wrap themselves around all our senses and enter our souls through our senses.   So lust is powerful.  Satan attacks us big time through our senses; he hates our flesh.  He hates the human body.  Satan hates the way God came and in this lowliness of human nature has given us power and authority over him.  He hates it.  It was bad enough when Satan had to fight angels.  Now he has to fight God housed in human temples, in human bodies.  That is a tremendous put-down to Satan, and so he attacks our bodies through our senses, and particularly through the capital sin of lust, which is another one of those heads of the dragon.

Lust will blind us to spiritual values.  If we're blinded, we can't see the light.  We can't see truth, and so we are not going to experience freedom.  Lust has a powerful effect upon us.   It darkens our mind.  It weakens our will, which is even more dangerous because without that will to be strong, we cannot make God-like choices.  We cannot make right choices.  It leads us to place a created good before God.  In other words, it doesn't lead us to God at all.  It puts God in second- or third- or fourth-place or maybe in no place at all.  It puts creation, things, people, and pleasures of the flesh before God.

We may commit sins of the mind, and lust can enter there.  Having impure thoughts or even day-dreaming may open a door to the enemy.  Day-dreaming can be fun sometimes when we're a child because of our imagination, but it can take us downhill very quickly into the flesh, and the enemy will move right in.

We may commit sins of lust through our eyes, giving into curiosity by impure looks at persons, pictures, things, or sinful reading.  Remember, the eyes are the windows of the soul.  So Satan will start there.  He might not attack our soul directly, but he can enter our soul through our senses.  He may attack through our ears as well-listening to talk, suggestive stories, or off-color jokes or music that are not good or healthy.  There is a lot of music that is very dangerous because it will bypass even the senses (so to speak) and go right into our spirit.  That's why some of this hard rock is so diabolical.  It's difficult to do deliverance when things get directly into the spirit of a person.  It's not impossible, all things are possible with God, but when evil spirits get into our spirit, it's more difficult.

We can open ourselves to this sin of lust through our nose in sensual smells or odors of any kind.  We can open ourselves to this sin of lust through our mouth through impure words, failure to stop what other people are saying, or failure to stop what we want to say but know we shouldn't so we go ahead and say it anyway.  Sinful touches can also open the door for the enemy to get right into our hearts.  Once he gets into our heart and soul through our senses, then seeds of impure desires are born and failure to repress the sensations can come from that.  Desires are powerful.  Sometimes we overlook them.  They're so tiny.  If we don't have those God-given desires in our heart and are allowing Satan to enter into us through our senses, he'll plant his desires and have a stronghold in our heart, and it will be more difficult then to remove those desires.   

The virtue of chastity  is totally opposite.  It will regulate our central desires.  Pray for the gift of chastity.  So whether chastity is in the consecrated chastity of priesthood, of brotherhood, of sisterhood, whether it's chastity of those not married, or chastity of those married, we must see chastity as a dedication of our ourselves always and first to the service of God.  (more on this next week)

Excerpt from Mother Nadine's Prayer Warrior Summit: The Holiness of Prayer Warriors,"  2002.