In a culture saturated with pornographic imagery, we would do well to remember Christ’s words from the Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that if you even look at that Victoria’s Secret catalogue and lust, you have already committed adultery in your heart” (Modern Christopher West Translation of Mt 5:27-28).

And lest women think they are off the hook, we could just as aptly say, “If you even read that romance novel or watch Desperate Housewives and lust, you’ve already committed adultery in your heart.”

Christ isn’t saying a mere glance or momentary thought makes us guilty of adultery. As fallen human beings, we’ll always be able to sense the pull of lust in our hearts. This doesn’t mean we’ve sinned. It’s what we do when we experience that pull of lust that matters. Do we seek God’s help in resisting it or do we indulge it? When we indulge it – that is, when we actively choose “in our hearts” to treat another person as merely an object for our own gratification – we seriously violate that person’s dignity and our own. We’re meant to be loved “for our own sakes,” never used as an object for someone else’s sake.

What are we to do, then, just stare at the sidewalk for the rest of our lives? Sure, remember that song we sing in church: “They will know we are Christians by our staring at the sidewalk...?” Or, rather, is it “They will know we are Christians by our love...?” Christ’s words are not merely a command to avert one’s gaze. As John Paul II taught, Christ’s words about lust are “an invitation to a pure way of looking at others, capable of respecting the spousal meaning of the body” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 15).

The body has a “spousal meaning” because it reveals the call of man and woman to become a gift to one another. Maleness and femaleness only make sense in light of each other. Spouses express this truth most fully by becoming “one flesh.” In this gift, spouses are meant to express the very love of God. They are meant to reveal the “great mystery” of Christ’s love for the Church (see Eph 5:31-32). Those who are pure of heart are able to see this “great mystery” – this great plan of God’s love – revealed through the human body. Seeing this and rejoicing in this is very different than looking at the body as an object of lust.

Obviously, if a person needs to avert his (or her) gaze in order to avoid lusting, then, by all means, that person should do so. We classically call this “avoiding the occasion of sin” by “gaining custody of the eyes.” This is a necessary first step, but John Paul II described such an approach as a negative purity. As we grow in virtue we come to experience a positive, more mature purity. “In mature purity man enjoys the fruits of the victory won over lust.” He enjoys the “efficacy of the gift of the Holy Spirit” who restores to his experience of the body “all its simplicity, its explicitness, and also its interior joy” (Theology of the Body, April 1, 1981).

Purity is not prudishness. It does not reject the body. “Purity is the glory of the human body before God. It is God’s glory in the human body, through which masculinity and femininity are manifested” (ToB, March 18, 1981). Purity in its fullness will only be restored in heaven. Yet, as the Catechism teaches, “Even now [purity of heart] enables us to see according to God...; it lets us perceive the human body – ours and our neighbor’s – as a temple of the Holy Spirit, a manifestation of divine beauty” (CCC, n. 2519).
If you find that lust blinds you to the true beauty of the human body, take heart: Jesus came preaching sight for the blind. Like the blind man in the Gospel, we must all cry out to him, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me, I want to see!”
We’ll look more at the challenge of purity in part II of this column.