"Wretched Man That I Am!"

Tonight at my monthly evening of recollection, the priest speaker, Father Charles, talked about concupiscence. That got me thinking. My understanding of concupiscence is it is the result of original sin which weakens our will, darkens our intellect, and disorders our passions, with an emphasis on disordered passions. Saint Paul explains his own struggle with concupiscence in the letter to the Romans that could be summarized with the saying: the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

There he says in 7:15-25: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate….So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”

All of us can relate to that. The question I want to address tonight is why did concupiscence or the flesh come together with the Fall? Does God superimpose concupiscence onto us because our first parents fell? We had no responsibility in their sin, so why do we and billions of others through history have to pay for their stupid deed? Baptism takes away original sin, so why doesn’t it take away concupiscence? Since we don’t feel original sin but we do feel the effects of concupiscence, it seems that nothing much even happens when we get baptized. Baptism doesn’t seem to be very effective in undoing the Fall for it doesn’t seem to cause a change in me.

Let us look to the book in the Bible called The Wisdom of Solomon 11:15-26 where the author is talking about the Egyptians and the plagues God sent upon them. Remember, the plagues were the destruction of all the gods of Egypt by the True God. They worshipped those false gods, so God either killed those gods or swamped them with them: “In return for their foolish and wicked thoughts, which led them astray to worship irrational serpents and worthless animals, thou didst send upon them a multitude of irrational creatures to punish them, that they might learn that one is punished by the very things by which he sins. For thy all-powerful hand, which created the world out of formless matter, did not lack the means to send upon them a multitude of bears, or bold lions, or newly created unknown beasts full of rage, or such as breathe out fiery breath, or belch forth a thick pall of smoke, or flash terrible sparks from their eyes; not only could their damage exterminate men, but the mere sight of them could kill by fright. Even apart from these, men could fall at a single breath when pursued by justice and scattered by the breath of thy power. But thou hast arranged all things by measure and number and weight. For it is always in thy power to show great strength, and who can withstand the might of thy arm? Because the whole world before thee is like a speck that tips the scales, and like a drop of morning dew that falls upon the ground. But thou art merciful to all, for thou canst do all things, and thou dost overlook men’s sins, that they may repent. For thou lovest all things that exist, and hast loathing for none of the things which thou hast made, for thou wouldst not have made anything if thou hadst hated it. How would anything have endured if thou hadst not willed it? Or how would anything not called forth by thee have been preserved? Thou sparest all things, for they are thine, O Lord who lovest the living.

Pardon me for the lengthy quote. The main part of the passage is, “that they might learn that one is punished by the very things by which he sins.” My theory is that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that God commanded our first parents not to eat was sexual relations; there was nothing wrong with it in and of itself, but he was asking them to forgo the greatest of earthly goods as a trial of faith. If that is true, the woman sought a child to fulfill God’s command to be fruitful and multiply but on her own terms. She sought the man as husband and physical father of the child, rejecting God as Husband and Father, and so her punishment is that now she has man as her husband; she got what she wanted. Many women can relate at times that they are “stuck” with their husbands who don’t cherish them as they seek to be cherished.

The man used his body as the source for fulfilling God’s command to be fruitful and multiply. His disobedience utilized his body, which was made good, but since he sinned with his body, now his body is master over him. It is my understanding, being a man and from what I hear and read, that men have a much more difficult time living a pure and chaste life; not being a woman it is hard to compare, but there are many studies showing the sex-crazed mentality of men, especially those who live by their basest passions. With men, apart from God’s help, the question is not so much what sexual sins would they commit, but what ones wouldn’t they. Men’s master has become his body. Therein lies the primary battlefield. One only needs a cursory understanding of the garbage rampant on the internet of the mutual degradation of men’s and women’s bodies to get an idea of what happens when men are ruled by their bodies.

Concupiscence, then, is not something superimposed by God upon the human race due to the Fall. It came as the natural consequence of choosing who our master would be and being sons of men. As sons of God we would have been perfectly ordered and grace-filled, but as temporal sons of men we have disordered bodies of death. That’s ok. The Son of God became the Son of Man so that the sons of men might become the sons of God to quote Saint Athanasius. We have hard hearts and disobedient bodies, but in baptism we are given new hearts and are made a new creation. It is still a struggle, but we have hope. It is still a struggle, but it is in the very struggle itself that we draw closer to God and cling to Him for help and life. Paul said it well in his letter to the Philippians 2:12-13: “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”


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