Jesus said to his disciples: ‘You have learnt how it was said: You must not commit adultery. But I say this to you: if a man looks at a woman lustfully, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Sometimes people take this as Jesus saying, “it’s just as bad to look at a woman lustfully as it is to commit adultery in real life.” But think about it for a second. That would be an extremely weird thing for Jesus to say. He’s not saying, “An interior act of lust is just as bad as a completed exterior act of adultery,” because we know (if we think about it for a second) that that’s not true. So what is he saying? He is saying, I don’t just want you to avoid the exterior act, but also to avoid the interior act. Because I want your heart to be whole. I don’t want you to live in a fantasy world. For I am the ground of all reality, and I want you to live in contact with me. I don’t want you to live hypnotised by visible beauty, because it will prevent you from tuning in to my invisible beauty.
In other words: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” The custody of our gaze is not just about avoiding sin, it is about not letting the visible distract us from a deeper perception. Of God first of all, but also of the poor. Yesterday at St Antony’s, fr Conor McDonough made this beautiful reflection: as Christians, we need to be able to see those that are invisible. Those that society marginalises and invisibilises. The custody of our gaze is relevant to this as well. (It is not just the gaze: I am reminded of a parenthesis in St John of the Cross where he criticises people who are too sensitive to delicate fragrances and perfumes and have low tolerance for bad smells – he says that this can prevent us from loving the poor, who are often malodorous.)
Casting Fire 