In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says: “everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). Many people hear this as a heavy and discouraging word. Saint John Paul II spent a long section of the Theology of the Body on this one verse, and he heard in it something quite different, a call to have our hearts transformed so that we can love freely.
What lust is and what it is not
It is important to be precise. Sexual attraction is not lust. Noticing that someone is beautiful is not lust. Desire for one's spouse is not lust. These belong to the goodness of how God made us.
The Catechism defines lust as “disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure,” which is disordered “when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes” (CCC 2351). John Paul II described lust as a way of looking at another person that reduces them to an object for one's own satisfaction. It cuts the body off from the person.
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Sources
- Matthew 5:27-28 Jesus on adultery in the heart
- CCC 2351 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Offenses against chastity, lust
- CCC 2354 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Pornography
- CCC 2514-2517 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Purification of the heart
- CCC 2342-2343 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Chastity as a long and exacting work
- TOB 1979-1984, Man and Woman He Created Them John Paul II, General Audiences on Christ's appeal to the human heart