(Audio)
But I say to you,
everyone who looks at a woman with lust
has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Jesus calls us what has been called custody of the eyes. He is not criticizing thoughts which arise without our consent. But he is challenging not just the thoughts to which we do give consent, which we encourage on which we willingly dwell. Those can indeed be sinful. But he is even challenging our readiness to put ourselves in circumstances where such thoughts are likely. He is calling us to avoid what the tradition calls near occasions of sin.
Kind though he is, and though he knows our weaknesses, Jesus doesn't not moderate the teaching on adultery. He intensifies it. He does not do so merely to keep us from pleasure. It is not simply a negation. It is rather because marriage is meant to be so good that all false substitutes must be rejected. It is because our purity of heart is meant to allow us to behold and to love God and neighbor that we must not allow that vision to be dulled. We can either keep our attention and awareness as a sacred space where we can encounter and love the other or we can allow it to turn inward until it becomes blind to other. The union of marriage is meant to open beyond itself to love of other and of the children that are lovingly welcomed. If the pleasure that is meant for that union is sought for its own sake our whole ability to love other as other is compromised. Because marriage is an icon of the even more profound relationship between God and his people the risk is not just to relationships with others, but also to our relationship with God.
"Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church (See Ephesians 5:31-32)
We must keep our attention as a sacred space which is not so crowded with the noise of pleasure that we are unable to respond to others. The risk is that we experience wind, earthquakes, and fire, and assume that God is in those things simply becomes of how pressing and dominating they seem to be to our attention. And this is certainly how we experience temptation. There is a violence in the way it seeks to monopolize our attention. If we give in to it we will dull ourselves to the still small voice where we are meant to find him.
After the fire there was a tiny whispering sound.
When he heard this,
Elijah hid his face in his cloak
and went and stood at the entrance of the cave.
Jesus calls us to be zealous for Kingdom, to prefer nothing to the love of Christ (see RB 72) just as Elijah is "zealously zealous" (see this translation) for the LORD, the God of hosts. It is the same zeal. And the end is meant to be the same, to be the vision of God himself, and to be immersed in his love for us.
Thou hast said, “Seek ye my face.”
My heart says to thee,
“Thy face, Lord, do I seek.”
Hide not thy face from me.
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