Lust: Path into Darkness

As Aquinas observes in the Summa, the vice of lust gravely disorders the powers of reason and will.

By Deacon Frederick Bartels
31 May 2024

What’s one major element behind the downward moral spiral in the U.S. and other parts of the world?

How did we go from approving the artificial birth control pill in 1960 to the sexual revolution to legal abortion to pushing gender theory on children in schools and mutilating the bodies of teenagers? How did we get from marriage as a lifelong union of one man and one woman to the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry and that states cannot deny them the right to do so?

Why is it that a majority of American’s now approve of cohabitation?

Why is it that the entertainment industry, social media, billboards, and countless advertisements are permeated with pornography and explicit sexual content?

The effects of lust

As Aquinas observes in the Summa, (ST II-II, q.153, a. 5), the vice of lust gravely disorders the powers of reason and will. Due to lust, the understanding (reason) is darkened and disfigured. Blindness of the mind is the result. Additionally, lust corrupts the will. Instead of desiring and choosing what is truly good, the will now desires and chooses various disordered activities, not only in the sexual realm but in other areas as well.

Said another way, the vice of lust corrupts the human person. It father’s one’s being in darkness.

But what is lust?

The Church teaches in the Catechism that lust “is disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure. Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes” (CCC 2351).

Here we think about masturbation, fornication (as in cohabitation, for example), adultery, homosexual activity and homosexual unions, polygamy, pornography, and the use of contraceptives. These lustful activities lead into support for abortion and other moral evils, hate for the moral teaching of the Church, and even hate of God and spiritual goods.

Corrupted by lust, the person lives in absence of the light and, instead, prefers darkness.

What’s the solution?

Repentance and the grace obtained through the sacrament of confession; prayer; forming one’s conscience by Tradition, Scripture, and the teaching of the magisterium of the Church; the Eucharist; and living a life of virtue and holiness in Christ. In a word, the Catholic Church is the answer because she offers the fullest means of truth, grace, and salvation. Living in full communion with the Church is indeed healing.

Additionally, one must avoid—as if one’s very life depends on it, as it most surely does—every occasion of lust and other sins.

The grace of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit truly does have the power to recreate the human person. With the help of God, it is possible to move from darkness into light and live a virtuous life, which is the life of excellence and happiness.

In that transformed life, our desires are purified and elevated, as C.S. Lewis writes in The Great Divorce: “Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering, whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed.”

Christ frees, lust enslaves.