I like Saint Joseph for many reasons. He is a symbol for me of the many good men and women who are quietly obedient to God’s will, people who don’t get much recognition and who are not looking for any, people who sacrifice themselves taking care of an aged parent or an infirm spouse, people who put their own gratification off to the side because life has thrust other priorities upon them. This is Joseph. Because the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus are entrusted to his care, he embraces a life not of chaste married love, but of self denial, of celibacy. He lets go of the good and legitimate pleasures of married sexual intercourse that he could normally enjoy. His day will come, his fulfillment will occur, only in the kingdom of God.

Some men in our society feel cheated because their sex lives are not the uninhibited romps with playboy bunnies that Hugh Hefner says they should be. They don’t have a long string of conquests or affairs. If they are faithful, it is more from lack of opportunity than from strength of character. Secretly they feel they are missing out on something. Life has passed them by.

Well, no doubt about it, sex is pleasurable. Not a discovery of Freud, or Dr. Ruth, but the teaching of the early fathers of the church, philosophers and theologians. Since God invented sex and pleasure it’s not hard to see why they should be so much fun. In fact, St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that before Adam and Eve fell into sin, they would have gotten more enjoyment out of lovemaking than afterwards. In their original state, their bodies and souls would have been more sensitive and capable of pleasure, than in their fallen, disordered, condition after their sin.

To attraction and desire, another two elements have to be added for the sin of lust : willed consent and illicit activity.

Sexual desire is not sin. When God told Adam and Eve to increase and multiply, he was taking for granted their attraction to each other. Husbands and wives should want each other.

Lust, however, is a sin. Lust is not simply attraction or even arousal, both of which can be spontaneous or involuntary. Lust is the desire for illicit sexual activity. It is an act of the will that my mind consents to. I want this even though I have no right to it, and I am going to give myself permission to go for it. If I start to deliberately fantasize about different sexual acts, or about this person or that, then I am guilty of lust. It doesn’t matter if I don’t carry those acts out, as long as I want them and say yes to them. Our Lord tells us that if we say yes to the desire, that’s equivalent to doing to act. "He who looks on a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." The intention is as good as the deed (or as bad) as far as God is concerned.

Certainly lust is widespread. It is one of the most popular sins in our sex-obsessed society. You know that a big worry today is how to pay off the national debt? I have the answer. Take all the dollars that sex generates in our economy from advertising jeans to making movies and apply it to the debt. In a few couple of years it could be paid off.

How do we live in a sex saturated culture and not get seduced? How to keep ourselves free from the lust that surrounds us? Some remedies:

Humility. Lust arrogantly says - : " This is there for me. Everything is for my pleasure. It is all right to treat other human beings as objects for my consumption. Sex is simply recreation. I can take you the way I drink a can of soda and then disregard the empty can. ( Although I might pay some attention to the can since it is worth five cents ). Humility says I have no right to put myself above others, to treat them as things for my use, as objects of my will and pleasure. I have to see others as equals, as brothers and sisters, as children of God.

Mind Control. The mind is the big sex organ in our bodies, not our genitals. Sure the body with its drives and instincts can be unruly and stubborn, but it is not the problem we make it out to be. It is the mind that turns the body on. The mental activity of reading, looking at pictures, imagining, fantasizing - that is what gets the body excited to the point of no return. If we did not let our minds get started, our bodies would not cause much problem.

The best way for the mind to fight sexual temptations is to run the other way. This is a case where cowardice wins the battle. Usually fighting means confronting, negating. But to fight temptation directly by struggling with it is to give it attention and power over us. Better simply to refuse to focus on it. The mind can only give its attention to one thing at a time. By controlling what we let our mind focus on, we avoid the whole problem.

Purity of Heart. This is the overall remedy that includes all the others. It is an attitude, a way of being, a life direction.

When all is said and done, human beings cannot live without pleasure. If we do not experience the higher pleasures we will lose ourselves in the lower ones. In order to lead a chaste life, I do not have to turn myself into a stone or an unfeeling stoic. I do need to turn myself into a person who lives a spiritual life. If I put off the pleasures of the body, it is in the hope of one day putting on the resurrected body. If I say no to lustful desire, it is so I can replace it with the strong, unselfish desire for God’s kingdom. If I detach myself from consuming others, it is so that I can be consumed by God.

This is what purity of heart is all about. It means to focus on God totally because He is my fulfillment. He is the one thing necessary I have to live for, and live by. May the beatitude that applies so well to the humble, hidden life of St. Joseph, apply to our lives as well: "blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God."

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