"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.”


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.

"He is Like a Tree:" Reflections on Psalm 1

Tonight I want to examine Psalm One. This is the very first psalm, as you might have already guessed, and as such initiates the series of psalms known as the book of prayer. I think its pole position in this collection of 150 others is no small matter. Let’s see what this rather short psalm says.

“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.”

First, on the negative side, a man is blessed if he does not delight in what delights the wicked; the way of the wicked will quickly die and be wiped away like so much flimsy dust. Second, on the positive side, the blessed man will delight in and continually ponder what pleases God; as such, he will be known by God—he will be of one heart and mind with Him. Instead of being dead dust like the sinner, the righteous man will be a fruitful tree near flowing water that bears its fruit regularly.

Death results from what sinners do, how the wicked think, and how scoffers are proud of heart. To have life and bear fruit, one must be obedient, believe in God’s words and laws, and be humble of heart. The tree of life is the heart, so those who shun this tree by disobedience, pride and unbelief, produce only death. When one embraces the tree of life and eats from it by obedience, belief, and humility, abundant fruit are produced. The heart of flesh, the living tree of life, loves God and the things of God and spends all its energies on knowing God better. As the four rivers were used to symbolize the heart/tree of life in Genesis 2, so here the tree of life/heart is closely linked with living/flowing water and abundant fruit. The one who seeks God with his whole heart and inwardly cries out to Him night and day continues to grow and bear fruit, in fact, everything that he does brings success in the true sense of the word.

The message of this first entry into the Book of Prayer is to open your heart to God and give your entire self to Him by believing in Him, being so in love with Him that you meditate on Him continually, humbly listening to all that pleases Him, and faithfully obeying His commands and wishes. Therein lies life, life to the full. A heart that has God as its one, primary desire, is a fruitful tree, bearing much beautiful fruit. I think of Saint Therese of Liseux and her beautiful little way of drawing ever so close to the Beloved.


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.

The Eucharist: Our New Heart

As I was saying yesterday, one of the primary underlying points of the Old Testament is that man needs a new heart; in many respects, the Old Testament reads like a soap opera or like Desperate Housewives or some other pathetic reality show. The human condition is in need of a make-over. We need help; apart from God, there is precious little evil that man will not do.

Did you ever wonder why God gave the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone? Of course, writing in stone is great for a permanent and lasting reminder of what is written; however, there is more to it than that. The two tablets with the law engraved on the outside is a symbol of our hearts. We have hearts of stone; our hearts are cold and dead; our tree of life is barren because we only obey when we have to or because we don't want to be punished; whenever we can, we disobey. We love our sin and are slow to give it up.

Ezekiel 36:26-27 states: "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances." A new heart of flesh is one that seeks to please God out of love for Him. It is not a servile, slavish heart; it is the heart of a child with his father or of a bride for her husband. The beating heart seeks to please the beloved.

Jeremiah 31:31ff states: "I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel... not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband....I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God.... for they shall all know me...." This is the only time "new covenant" is mentioned in the Old Testament, and it is connected to God our husband who will write His law upon our hearts, and we shall all know Him.

Connecting both of these passages we have this: when God gives the new covenant, He will give us a new heart of flesh which contains God's law and which will be careful to obey Him and will come to know Him. When Jesus uses the phrase "the new covenant," He is celebrating the first Mass as He fulfills and completes the Passover. He is the Passover Lamb who lays down His life and is lifted up on the cross where He gives His whole self, ending in the piercing of His Sacred Heart and the blood and water flowing forth from it.

From Eucharistic miracles, we know that the flesh of the Eucharist, when the reality is not hiding, is cardiac tissue. The Eucharist is Jesus' heart. His heart is the heart that loves, trusts, obeys; His heart loves to the point of giving Himself completely; His heart lays down His life for the beloved; His heart only seeks to please the Father. Every Holy Communion Jesus gives us His heart anew. He gives us the grace and courage and desire to love God above all things and our neighbor as our self. The problem of our hard, unbelieving heart is solved when we worthily receive Jesus' heart each Eucharist. He is our tree of life; when we are in communion with Him, we have life abundantly.

Tomorrow I would like to explain how the Eucharist is the precise antidote to the condition we find ourselves in due to the Fall.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.