A Lenten Treasure Hunt: Third Clue

“We have been consecrated through the offering of the Body of Jesus Christ.” Hebrews 10:10

My neighborhood seems to have a magnet to attract all types of animals... from the cute to the bizarre. We have the usual tiny and not-so-tiny bugs that seem to be everywhere in South Florida: ants, spiders, roaches, mosquitoes, bees, butterflies, etc. We can also spot dragonflies at certain times of the year. We have our share of rodents, reptiles, and amphibians. Our assortment of birds is too many to list, but one of my favorites is the peacock who loves to display his beautiful feathers when I’m walking around the golf course. And of course, we cannot leave out the cats and dogs who seem to be everywhere I look. I love animals, and I look forward to my morning walks because I never know what I may discover. My favorite time was when I spotted a fox. At first, because it was still dark, I thought it was a cat. But when I realized it was a fox, I was thrilled because I had never seen one. It’s a good thing that no one in our neighborhood keeps chickens in their backyards. 

The one animal that I know also resides in my neighborhood, but thankfully, I have only seen it once, and through the window, it’s the snake. My daughter, who was about eight years old at the time, was on her way to play with her friends who lived across the street from us. I was keeping an eye on her through our front window. As she was walking, a large black snake cut in front of her. My daughter stood frozen, and I almost jumped out through the glass of the window. The snake turned out to be an innocent garden snake who was in a hurry to get into the bushes. After her initial fear passed, my daughter ran across the street and never looked back. I, on the other hand, was shaken up for days to come. Snakes simply terrify me. I guess because of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, I have always associated them with the devil. Their slimy bodies repulse me. And since I cannot distinguish which ones are good and which ones are poisonous, I much rather err on the side of caution. Therefore, I try to stay away from all of them.

We first encounter the snake in the book of Genesis: “The serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made.”[1] This in and of itself did not mean that the serpent was a bad animal. It was just crafty, which simply could mean that it was clever or astute. Unfortunately, crafty also means cunning, devious, and tricky. This is exactly what the serpent did. It tricked Eve into doing the one thing that God had asked her not to do. The serpent tells the woman, “God knows that when you eat of (the forbidden fruit) your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”[2] Up until that moment, this tree had probably not mattered much to Eve. There were plenty of trees in the garden, and they all gave good fruit. But now, the serpent has turned Eve’s attention to the tree in the middle of the garden. She has noticed, probably for the first time, the forbidden tree. “The woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes.”[3] The serpent changed the way Eve perceived the forbidden fruit. She no longer looks at the fruit in a disinterested way. Now, she notices that “the tree was to be desired... (so) she took of its fruit and ate.”3

Eve has now crossed the threshold of concupiscence. By allowing the serpent to deceive her, she brings down into the world a series of curses that we are still experiencing today: war, famine, illness, natural disasters, and death. She has ruptured the natural order that God had intended for us, and the collapse of the world began. Death entered the world for all of humankind. Eve thought that the fruit looked desirable, but on the contrary, she tasted disappointment. Instead of becoming like God, she discovered that she was naked and experienced shame and confusion. She destroyed the order that God had established. And regrettably, she is the first one to experience this disorder when her son Cain slays his brother Abel. 

Even though the first sin can be associated in one way or another with all the capital sins, when I think of the way the snake lured Eve into making her realize that the forbidden fruit was desirable to the flesh, the sin that comes to my mind is the sin of lust. “Lust is an inordinate love of the pleasures of the flesh.”[4] The serpent gives the forbidden tree a sort of worldly glamour that makes Eve desire it more than any other tree in the garden. It wakes up in her a feeling of lust that she had never experienced before. And thus, “she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.”3 She wanted Adam to experience this feeling of lust as well.

Unfortunately, when God discovered what they had done, instead of taking personal responsibility for their choices, Adam accuses Eve, and Eve accuses the serpent. Since then, division and suspicion have disfigured the natural relations between man and woman. Their lust became a deadly vice precisely because it attacked their love for each other. It attacked the ability to see what was truly good and beautiful in each other. When a person is driven by lust, like Eve was, she seldom thinks clearly. In spite of the cunning way she used to lure Adam into eating the forbidden fruit, she was being controlled by the grips of desire. She had fallen prey to the claws of lust. Unfortunately, in the end, lust only leaves desolation in its wake.

The third clue that will lead us to the treasure is: We must counterbalance lust with chastity, so we may become the beautiful person that God has created us to be. 

Being chaste today is quite a challenge because we are constantly being bombarded with sexual images. If we go to the movies or watch cable television, most likely there will be a scene showing people naked. If we are listening to the radio, most of the songs will contain foul language. At the beach, we find an exhibition of body parts we would rather not see. And now, even from the car, many of the billboards on the side of the road are almost pornographic.

Chastity comes from the Latin word castus, meaning “morally pure,” and to some religious believers, chastity is closely related to a sense of purity and wholesomeness. Many people think that to be chaste is to reject the beauty of human sexuality. Even the dictionary defines chastity as “abstaining from sexual relations,” but I do not believe that to be correct. The virtue of chastity should also be practiced by couples who are sexually active. To be chaste is to be in full control of our passions, so we don’t become slaves and act like irrational animals. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: "Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being. Sexuality, in which man’s belonging to the bodily and biological world is expressed, becomes personal and truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of one person to another, in the complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman. The virtue of chastity therefore involves the integrity of the person and the integrality [i.e., completeness] of the gift."[5]

There is nothing more detrimental to a marriage than infidelity. I have witnessed many friends’ marriages dissolve because of infidelity. Even though they have tried to forgive and make it work, only a handful have succeeded. The majority end up in divorce because when that trust is broken, it is very hard to glue it back together the way it was before. It’s like when a precious ceramic vase falls and shatters into a million pieces. You can pick up all the pieces and carefully and painstakingly glue them back together, but it will never be the same. This happened to me when I was a teenager. I was cleaning my mother’s collection of Lladró figurines. She had them in an open etagere with glass shelves. I was on top of a chair cleaning the top shelf when it collapsed, breaking everything in its path. I watched in horror as all her precious figurines, about fifteen of them, broke into pieces. My grandmother, who was sewing in her room, came running thinking that I had fallen. I was crying hysterically, so when she saw all the broken glass on the floor, she thought I had cut myself. Miraculously, I didn’t. I was crying because I knew how much my mother cherished her collection, and I was sure she was going to be very upset when she found out. Surprisingly, she reacted just as my grandmother had. She was just happy that nothing had happened to me. I guess to them, I was more precious than fine ceramics. However, she tried to salvage the pieces that were not beyond repair. She took them to a specialist that glued them back together for her. At first glance, they looked perfect, but if I took a closer look, I could tell where the fissures were located. It’s the same in a marriage. Once infidelity crosses the threshold, the fissure that it causes will never mend completely.

Some religious figures take a vow of chastity. This type of chastity is called celibacy. The Catholic Church “asks her priests and nuns to surrender the pleasures of the flesh, not because she does not want them to love, but because she wants them to love better. She knows that their love for souls will be greater as their love for the flesh is less, just as Our Lord died on the Cross for men because He loved His Own life less... A new passion is born with the vow of chastity, the passion for the love of God.”[6] I always assumed that the vow of chastity was the hardest vow that a priest took, but I asked a priest that question once, and he told me that was not the case. He said that chastity was not hard at all because he was so in love with God, that he did not miss the love of a woman.

Being chaste in today’s world requires courage because we will be swimming upstream, against the current. But God will not allow us to drown. The process to win the battle over the sin of lust begins as we pray, confess our sins, and seek God’s strength. We can crush the snake, thus breaking the clutches that have held us captive under its cunning spell. God has a beautiful vision of the person that He created us to be, and He never gives up until we become that beautiful person. As Pope Benedict XVI has said, “We were made for greatness!” 

[1] Genesis 3:1

[2] Genesis 3:5

[3] Genesis 3:6

[4] Fulton J. Sheen in “The Seven Capital Sins,” 2001.

[5] CCC 2337

[6] Fulton J. Sheen in “Victory over Vice,” Garden City Books: Garden City, New York, 1939.