Opening Prayer:

But early in the morning he arrived again in the temple area, and all the people started coming to him, and he sat down and taught them. Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and made her stand in the middle. They said to him, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?" They said this to test him, so that they could have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger. But when they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, "Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." Again he bent down and wrote on the ground. And in response, they went away one by one, beginning with the elders. So he was left alone with the woman before him. Then Jesus straightened up and said to her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" (John 8: 1-11)

I have entitled this March Lenten meditation: "The Sixth Commandment: Sex, Marriage and Purity of Heart." The sixth commandment can be found at Ex 20: 14 and Deut 5: 18. Not unlike the Fifth Commandment, there is more to the sixth than meets the eye. The catechism teaches that "the tradition of the Church has understood the sixth commandment as encompassing the whole of human sexuality." CCC 2336

For our purposes, we will continue the three-fold approach to this commandment which we have used in this series--l.) The Hebrew Understanding of the Commandment; 2.) The Effect of the Christ Event and 3.) Some Practical Implications for us today.

l.) The Hebrew Understanding

"You shall not commit adultery." As with the fifth commandment, this commandment is extremely terse, short and laconic. Unlike the fifth commandment, where the word "kill" was open to various meanings and interpretations, the Hebrew word n'p means to commit adultery. There are no major linguistic problems. There is a specific understanding of what adultery means, however.

In the Old Testament, this commandment meant that the wife was prohibited from sexual intercourse with any other male and the husband from sexual intercourse with any other married woman. A man could have intercourse with a concubine or a prostitute without coming under the sanction of this commandment. That does not necessarily mean that a wife was viewed as the property of her husband. It does reflect both the patriarchal structure of Israelite society and probably also the desire to guard the question of the paternity of the offspring of a marriage. (Miller, Deuteronomy, 88-89)

As in the case of killing, the law against adultery simply states the prohibition and does so in an unqualified way. It is a paradox of human nature, moreover, that there was no sin regarded in Judaism with greater horror than adultery. Yet there was no sin, to judge by the rebuke of the sages and prophets, that was more common.

Yet the fact remains that the writings and the rebukes of the prophets make it clear that the horror that attached to the sin of adultery did not stop its committal. Jeremiah (5:7,8) writes:

'How can I pardon you?
Your children have forsaken me,
and have sworn by those who are no gods.
When I fed them to the full,
they committed adultery
and trooped to the houses of harlots.
They were well-fed lusty stallions,
each neighing for his neighbour's wife.'

'Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house?' (Jeremiah 7:9). Again he says (23:14):

'But in the prophets of Jerusalem,
I have seen a horrible thing:
they commit adultery and walk in
lies.'

Destruction will come upon them, 'because they have committed folly in Israel, they have committed adultery with their neighbour's wives' (Jeremiah 29:23). Ezekiel flings his accusation against the nation in his day: 'Adulterous wife, who receives strangers instead of her husband!' (Ezekiel 16:32). 'And I will judge you as women who break wedlock and shed blood are judged' (Ezekiel 16:38).

(Barclay, The Ten Commandments for Today, 94-95)

In Hosea 2:7, we hear : "Yes, their mother has played the harlot; she that conceived them has acted shamefully." Deut 22:22 tells us that a man or woman caught in adultery were subject to death -both of them--an indication of how serious it was considered. "Thus shall you purge evil from your midst."

While adultery is often and frequently mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures, only in II Sam 11-12, the well known account of the adulterous King David and Bathsheba is the crime spelled out in detail with names of persons, places and the specific occasions. After having an adulterous relation with Bathsheba, after the birth of their child, after David had her legitimate husband killed in battle to conceal the original crime, David did repent.

Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." Nathan answered David: "The LORD on his part has forgiven your sin: you shall not die. But since you have utterly spurned the LORD by this deed, the child born to you must surely die." Then Nathan returned to his house. The LORD struck the child that the wife of Uriah had borne to David, and it became desperately ill. (II Sam 12:13-15)

Yes, the compassion of God! But David had to live with the consequences of his act--and so do we.

For the author/editor of Samuel, David's adultery with Bathsheba was a turning point not only in David's reign, but in the history of the kingdom. All the subsequent trials and ills of the later years, the rebellions and machinations, are described as stemming from that violation by the king, who compounded adultery with murder, forfeited the respect and loyalty of his troops and thus distanced himself from Yahweh, the covenant and the privileged status he had enjoyed as the anointed of Yahweh. The peril for the country is amply documented, as well as the act of divine remission and compassion. Once again, the kingdom escapes its fate, and the dynasty is preserved for the sake of the nation. (Bible Review, Dec. 1989, 36-37 )

This language of "covenant" gets us to the heart of the matter. As Fr. McBride so beautifully tells us in is his book.

The primary concern of the Sixth Commandment is not adultery so much as fidelity. In fact, no other commandment so fundamentally reflects the covenant, the basis of the commandments, as does the covenant fidelity of husband and wife illumined by this sixth invitation from God.

Hence the proper context of this commandment is the sanctity of marriage and family values. The Sixth Commandment speaks of the sacredness of the person and the importance of a permanent relationship based on love and the nurturing of children.

In the Hebrew covenant, marriage was meant to reflect the wedding between God and Israel. God is the faithful spouse who loves Israel with irresistible affection. Religious ideals are positive, not negative. Such fidelity implies more than abstention from adultery; it rejoices in the challenge to be faithful.

(Ten Commandments, Sounds of Love from Sinai, 8)

The challenge to be faithful! That underlies, for the Hebrew mind, the proscription against adultery. It parallels the first commandment against having other gods. Both portray a clear unfaithfulness and both are thus reprehensible to the God of the covenant whose character it was to be totally faithful. Yes, I speak of faithfulness expressed in loving obedience. And it permeates every sphere of life, both religious and secular. That is the way free people live. That gives a distinctive character to the Hebrew law on adultery. Adultery of one partner in a marriage involved not only unfaithfulness to the other partner, but unfaithfulness to God.

The essential value involved here is the protection of the sanctity of the marriage relationship, of the family, that covenant of the two persons freely entered into for life. For the Hebrew mind, and we learn this from Genesis 2:24, "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife, and they become one body"--the monogamous ideal of marriage. And adultery--taken very seriously--assuredly undercuts and damages this sacred relationship and undercuts the covenant with the God of Israel.

In addition, the Hebrew law, the law given by Yahweh, was counter-cultural and stood in some tension with the legality of polygamy and the toleration of prostitution in the culture of that time, the surrounding Canaanite neighbors, the linkage of prostitution and the religious cult of Baal and others. In sum, chastity, particularly in the context of marriage, was a high value under Jewish law. The sixth commandment sought to protect it. And in a world replete with pagan temple prostitutes, the Hebrew law--despite the praxis--stood squarely on the side of monogamy and faithfulness. The strictness of the law is rooted in the sanctity of the institution being protected.

2.) The Effect of the Christ Event

There are two ways in which the Christ event deepened the Hebrew understanding of the proscription against adultery. The catechism teaches that "Jesus came to restore creation to the purity of its origins." CCC 2336

First, we look once again at the Sermon on the Mount where He interprets God's plan strictly. Jesus teaches: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Mt 5: 27-28 Not only the act but the lustful thought is proscribed by Jesus . As with the Christ event, the teaching of Jesus, turns the sixth commandment on its head. He seeks to turn something external into something internal without abandoning the external precept. Jesus demands more than the absence of adultery. He even proscribes looking lustfully at a woman.

And He gives us the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of His abiding, ever-faithful love, to help us, to renew our minds, to make us pure in thought, word and deed. We are exhorted by St. Paul in his letter to the Romans: "Do not conform yourself to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the Will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect." Rom 12:2 In the face of temptation, we must yield to the movement of the Holy Spirit that our minds might be renewed. Our bodies, after all, are temples of the Holy Spirit, the living God within us, renewing us, molding us into His loving image --His heart and mind--that great benefit of being reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, of being a member of His body, the Church.

Before leaving this deepened understanding of sixth commandment, you might ask what does it mean to look at someone lustfully?

Commenting on the words of Christ, the Pope says that a lustful look is an "interior act of the heart", but "a look expresses, I would say, the man within". In this look, the other person is reduced to an object which is viewed as a means to one's own personal gratification. The men or women who look lustfully wish to gratify their physical desires without the sincere giving of themselves that would be present in a true communion of persons. There are, however, further problems with this behavior. The lustful look violates the dignity of the one who looks and the one who is desired. The one who is desired becomes an object, a thing. But those who look lustfully are, at the same time, reducing themselves to things. If people seek to unite themselves to things, then how are they superior to them? The look violates the infinite dignity of both persons….

Lust also "entails the loss of the interior freedom of the gift". Since a gift ceases to be a gift when it is the result of compulsion, lust makes the self-surrender, the gift of one spouse to the other, impossible. When lust dominates one of the spouses, the mutual, selfless, free giving necessary to the expression of the communion of persons is missing. Only God's grace allows the spouses to gain control over themselves and makes it possible for them to give themselves to each other freely without any tinge of selfishness stemming from lust or any other cause.

(Hogan & LeVoir, Covenant of Love, 91-92)

Second, in another significant way, Jesus transformed and deepened the Hebrew understanding of adultery.

Some Pharisees approached him, and tested him, saying, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause whatever?" He said in reply, "Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate." They said to him, "Then why did Moses command that the man give the woman a bill of divorce and dismiss (her)?" He said to them, "Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) and marries another commits adultery." [His] disciples said to him, "If that is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry." (Mt 19:3-10)

To add to the credibility and biblical authenticity, this teaching of Jesus is found, in addition to the Matthew text, in Mark 10:2-12; Luke 16:18 and 1 Cor 7:10)

Divorce and remarriage permitted--not encouraged- by Moses thus abrogated--forbidden--with the coming of Jesus as a form of adultery. The catechism teaches that " the sixth commandment and the New Testament forbid adultery absolutely." CCC 2380

Jesus uses as the basis of His teaching the language of Genesis which reads "from the beginning [of creation]" man leaves father and mother and is joined to his wife and the "two shall become one flesh." Indissoluble--forever one! Short of that, adultery takes place--another radical spin placed by Jesus on the law of Moses. This firms up the sanctity of marriage and the permanence of the marriage covenant.

Please note: it is important to understand that what is forbidden by the Church, by the teaching of Jesus, is divorce and remarriage without an annulment. An annulment, the pastoral juridical process of reconciliation, which the Church strongly encourages for one who has received a civil divorce and hopes to remarry , is a necessary process to be married in the Church. It is a juridical determination that the prior union was never a Catholic Christian marriage ab initio, (from the beginning). Hence a finding of an annulment would mean that a person would be free to marry again without committing adultery prohibited by Jesus in the passage we just heard. I would encourage you to support a person who finds him/herself in the often traumatic and very difficult situation of a divorce and encourage that person to consider exploring the process of an annulment. The same compassionate Jesus awaits that person who forgave the adulterous woman in the story we heard at the beginning of this meditation.

III. Some Practical Implications for each of us

Three topics--

First, the catechism has a whole section on the Vocation to Chastity--that successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus "the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being." CCC 1337 Most of us have never quite thought that each of us has this vocation to chastity regardless of our state in life. Each of us is called, after all, to "put on Christ." This applies to us at the moment of our Baptism. It is for sure a work in progress for the vast majority of us. The Bennett Report on clergy misconduct concluded that one of the reasons for the awful crimes against young people was the Church's failure to screen candidates for the priesthood at that time. "As a result, many sexually dysfunctional and immature men were admitted into seminaries and later ordained to the priesthood." (p.7) I certainly accept his observation and am happy that the Church now has in place wide screening methods. On another but related challenge to chastity so understood, we see in the staggering number of divorces today so often similar failures in successful integration of sexuality, albeit with different but at the same time painful consequences to family life.

More effort must be placed in our human development beginning in the family. As followers of Jesus, the means set forth, the means to live out one's baptismal promises and resist temptations to chastity, include: "self-knowledge, practice of ascesis adapted to the situations that confront him, obedience to God's commandments, exercise of the moral virtues and fidelity to prayer."CCC 2340

The catechism lists as offenses to chastity the following: lust, masturbation, fornication, pornography, prostitution and rape." For sure, chastity is a moral virtue but also a gift from God, a grace, "a fruit of spiritual effort. The Holy Spirit enables one whom the water of Baptism has regenerated to imitate the purity of Christ." CCC 2345

Second, in one of the papers this week, the op-ed page headline reads "In Search for the Syntax on Gay Marriage." I would argue that this kind of "syntax" is not possible to find. When the specific word "marriage" is used, by definition--from the order of nature, the light of human reason and confirmation by Divine Revelation in scripture--the word "marriage" is only properly understood as an institution created by God which applies to a faithful, exclusive and lifelong union between a man and a woman. Any other "syntax" is not marriage.

There are, after all, two ends, or purposes, in marriage--the good of the spouses and the transmission of life, I.e. the openness to children. The catechism clearly teaches that "these two meanings or values of marriage cannot be separated without altering the couple's spiritual life and compromising the goods of marriage and future of the family." CCC 2363 Both are essential for a proper understanding of marriage itself. So important is the openness to children as an integral part of marriage that the church teaches consistently that "'it is necessary that each and every marriage act remain ordered per se to the procreation of human life.'" CCC 2366 This can only happen, if the gift of a child is to be given by God, between a man and a woman in marriage. Note well: "Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality." CCC 2370

Third, the sixth commandment is fundamentally about the respect for human sexuality. Archbishop Cafarra, the new Archbishop of Bologna, has written beautifully on this and I end with this passage from his book entitled Living in Christ.

The prohibition of adultery expresses, in substance, the rejection of every exercise of sexuality that sees the other party as a good to be used. It therefore implies a whole conception of sexuality, a definition of its integral and original truth that man and woman must actualize in every act of sexual union.

This truth is substantially reducible to the affirmation that every act of sexual union carries indelibly inscribed within itself the sense of being both a gift of total, definitive and faithful love and an act intrinsically ordered to the co-creation of human life. It immediately follows that this act realizes the sexual dimension of the human person in accordance with his dignity when it is carried out by a man and a woman united in marriage.

We conclude from this that every sexual act performed outside marriage (premarital relations, adultery, homsexuality, masturbation) is gravely illicit. But even within marriage there can be an exercise of sexuality that does not respect its moral value: when the conjugal act does not truly respect the dignity of the person of one's spouse, as well as when it is deprived, through a positive intervention of the spouses, of its natural capacity to give origin to new life.

Respect for the value of sexuality-obedience to the Sixth Commandment-thus presupposes and implies a sort of reverence for the beloved person as a sexual human being: it is the reverence expressed in modesty. Modesty is born of an awareness of the grandeur of the sexual sphere and of its preciousness as a dimension expressive of the human person in his intimate inviolability. It is modesty that defends sexuality from being reduced to banality, to a purely physiological fact or to consumer goods or product of utilitarian commerce. Immodesty is therefore a sign and a cause of the loss of the integrally human meaning of sexuality in a person or culture.

(Living in Christ, 219-220)

I conclude with a word of respect and encouragement for those of you who are and have and continue to live a life of faithfulness and chastity both in the single and married state. Your witness reminds each of us ever anew that with proper understanding, and God's faithful love, the sixth commandment--as challenging as it can be- continues to be a powerful sign of God's love for us and our families in this world of ours.

Amen.