 34th General Audience, August 6, 1980
Whoever looks at a woman to desire her [lustfully] has already committed adultery in his heart (Mt. 5:20). Because of the hardness of your heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so (Mt. 19:8). “hardness of the heart” Greek, sklerokardia; Hebrew, “uncricumcision of heart” -- “paganism or shamelessness and distance from the covenant of God.” Associated with paganism because of this opposition to the Holy Spirit. Old Testament ethos gave rise to a practise contrary to the original plan. The deformation of the law in Genesis is when Moses made the allowance. Sermon on the Mount: proclamation of the new ethos -- Gospel. The image of man of concupiscence that Christ brings out in St. Matthew concerns the innermost being. Out of the heart that we have evil intentions, and these evil intentions make the person unclean (Mt. 15:19-20) After original sin the heart has been effected by 3-fold concupiscence: flesh, eyes, pride of life (1Jn. 2:16-17).
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 28th General Audience, May 28, 1980
The shame found in humanity itself, both immanent and relative - manifests itself in human interiority and the other, respectively. SEXUAL SHAME Suggests that “man of concupiscence” in the act of the knowledge of good and evil experienced that he had simply ceased, also through his body and his sex, to remain above the world of living beings. As if he had experienced a specific fracture of the personal integrity of his own body, particularly in that which determines its sexuality and which is directly linked with the call to that unity in which man and woman will be one flesh (Gn. 2:24). Birth of human concupiscence. Human heart possesses both desire and shame. The birth of shame, when man is closed to what comes from the Father, and opens himself to what comes from the world. CORRUPTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS -- LOSS OF UNITIVE MEANING OF THE BODY. 29th General Audience, June 4, 1980 The original power of communicating themselves to each other had been shattered. Radical change in the original meaning of nakedness, a negative change in the whole personal interpersonal relation between man and woman. The purity and simplicity disappears from their original experience, which had helped to bring about a singular fullness of mutual self-communication After original sin, man had lost the sense of the image of God in himself, a loss manifested by shame. That shame, invading the man-woman relation as a whole, was manifested through the imbalance of the body as a specific “substratum of the communion of persons. This communion was given up for the mere sensation of sexuality with regard to the other, as if sexuality became an obstacle in man’s personal relationship with woman.  24th General Audience, April 16, 1980
You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you: Whoever looks at a woman to desire her [in a reductive way] has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Mt. 5:27-29). A fundamental revision of the way of understanding and carrying out the moral law of the Old Covenant. Applies to the Commandments: 5th You shall not kill (Mt. 5:21-26) 6th You shall not commit adultery (Mt. 5:27-32) 8th You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord (Mt. 5:33-37) 18th General Audience, February 13, 1980 Man’s existence continually renews itself through procreation -- self-reproduction. This is the creative perspective rooted in man’s humanity and the consciousness of the spousal meaning of the body. Before becoming husband and wife, man and woman come forth from the mystery of creation first as brother and sister in the same humanity (Gen. 4:1). When man and woman cease being reciprocally a disinterested gift, as they were in the mystery of creation, they recognise that they are naked (Gen. 3:7) Original innocence manifests, and at the same time constitutes, the perfect ethos of the gift.= giving of one self=ethos=disinterested. 19th General Audience, February 10, 1980. 1. Subjectivity of man -- created in the likeness and image of God. 2. The woman is not just an object, although both are present to each other in the objectivity of being. The fact that they did not feel shame means they did not objectify each other.  13th General Audience, January 2, 1980 1. An exterior perception of nakedness, but also interior dimension that shares in the vision of the Creator himself, “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” Gen. 1:31. Nakedness means the original good of the divine vision. The pure value of man as male and female, the pure value of the body and its sex.Through the mystery of creation, the man and woman, see each other more fully, than through the sense of sight. Looking at each other with the peace of an interior gaze, creating the fullness of the intimacy of persons. This interior gaze of tranquility, the personal intimacy is not threatened or troubled because their gaze communicates the fullness of humanity which in them is reciprocal and complementary, as male and female. They communicate the gift they are to each other, masculinity and femininity. Through this reciprocity of complementarity of male and female, they reach an understanding of the meaning of their own bodies. The original meaning of nakedness corresponds to the simplicity and fullness of vision. In the communio personarum, communion of persons, the basis of their understanding of the meaning of the body, born from the heart. In Gen. 2:23-25 the man and the woman emerge at the very “beginning” with the consciousness of the meaning of their own bodies.  10th General Audience, November 21, 1979 1. The function of sex, of being male or female, which is in some ways constitutive of the person, man with all his spiritual solitude, uniqueness and unrepeatability proper to the person, is constitutive of the body as he or she. The Unity of Becoming “One Flesh” 2. The unity of Gen. 2:24 “the two will be one flesh” refers to the unity that is expressed and fulfilled in the conjugal act, the sexual union between man and woman. The union of male and female, by becoming one flesh, places the whole of their humanity under the blessing of fruitfulness. The context does not allow us to stop at the surface of human sexuality; we cannot treat the body and sex outside this full dimension of man and woman and the “communion of persons” The “one flesh” imposes on us from the “beginning” an obligation to see the fullness and depth proper to this unity, the unity that man and woman must constitute in the light of the revelation of the body. In the sexual union of man and woman where the two become one flesh, the mystery of creation is rediscovered, “flesh from my flesh and bone from my bones” They recognise each other reciprocally, and to call each other by name, as they did the first time. This means also reliving the original virginal value of man. Sex is more than the power of human bodiliness that acts by human instinct.  7th General Audience, October 31, 1979
1. The philosophical anthropology is expressed in the Lord God formed man with dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being Gen. 2:7 expressing the relationship between soul and body. This living being is distinguished from all other living beings of the visible world. From the beginning awareness of man’s superiority: only he is able to cultivate the earth and subdue. Only he is able to name the creatures. 2. The structure of this body is such that it permits him to be the author of genuinely human activity -- in this activity the body expresses the person -- who man is and ought to be -- as a result of his consciousness and self-determination. The Alternative between Death and Immortality 2. Man is placed before thy mystery of the tree of knowledge, You may eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for when you eat of it you shall certainly die Gen. 2:16-17). Man’s existence that he received from the Creator is that of subjectivity and bodyliness. John Paul asks the question whether man could have understood the words “you shall die” since man’s only experience was that of existing in this life.This word “die” must have appeared as a radical antithesis of everything that man had been endowed with.  5th General Audience, October 10, 1979
1. In Gen. 2:18, God says, coming from the Yawhist tradition, the second account of creation, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I want to make him a help similar to himself”. John Paul makes two significant points: 1. the first man adam [person] is created from the dust of the ground and this comes before the creation of woman. Gen. 2:7; and 2.the first man is defined as male ish, only after the creation of woman ishshah Gen. 2:21-22  1st General Audience of September 5, 1979 1. John Paul begins his audience in reference to the Synod of Bishops which will meet in Rome in the Fall of 1980, with the topic, De muneirbus famliae christianae “The role of the Christian family.” [Delivered as an Apostolic Exhortation on the feast of Christ the King in 1981, Familiaris Consortio.] The family as the community of Christian life that has been fundamental from the beginning. The Lord used the word “beginning” in reference to marriage in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark. |
AuthorFr. David Bellusci, O.P. List of Titles
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