Transform lust through prayer

Look at a woman with eyes of love, advises author

By RAMON GONZALEZ
WCR Staff Writer
Edmonton

"The only way we can live a life of integrity, the only way we can be men of integrity, is if we overcome lust," Christopher West told about 250 men from across Alberta and BC who attended the Catholic men's conference at the Mayfield Inn.

"Lust disorients our whole being, not only sexually; it disorients the way we see the whole world."

Like hell, lust is the absence of God's love and the only way to overcome it is to allow God to transform our sexuality, he said.

West, an author and father of two who serves as director of marriage and family life for the Archdiocese of Denver, Col., was keynote speaker at the May 3-4 conference. Other speakers included Archbishop Thomas Collins, Father Paul Moret and Father Stephen Hero, director of vocations for the Edmonton Archdiocese.

The conference is an annual event put together by Catholic Family Ministries, an organization committed to strengthening marriages and families.

West, the holder of a masters degree from the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washington, focuses his ministry on the pope's 'Theology of the Body' and has written several books, catechetical programs and articles on the subject.

He said in the beginning, both men and women were filled with the love of God and they were therefore able to share that love with one another. But when they denied the love of the Father, love died in their hearts and lust set in.

And that's what is at the root of it all, he said. "The deepest root of the problem, gentlemen, is that we have denied the love of God and this has disoriented us at the deepest level of our being.

"The deepest root of the problems in our culture, the root cause of the culture of death is the denial of the love of the father and the first manifestation of it is lust and it all goes downhill from there. This is why our pope says that liberation from lust is the indispensable foundation of all life together in truth."

Men of lust are not men who receive the love of God and share it with others. They are men who don't believe really and surely that God loves them and who therefore live a life of taking, a life of grasping and a life of using other people for their own gratification, West said.

"God gave us sexual desire as the fuel of a rocket that is meant to launch us into eternity." - Christopher West

"If we cannot control ourselves and our own appetites and desires, we will inevitably seek to control others in order to satisfy our desires and appetites."

"Gentlemen, God gave us the sexual urge as a vector of aspiration along which our whole being is meant to grow and perfect itself from within.

"God gave us sexual desire, you might say, as the fuel of a rocket that is meant to launch us into eternity because it's meant to be the very power to love as God loves. But because we have denied the love of the father these rocket engines have become inverted."

West said if men allow Christ to slay the lizard of lust, "we will rise" and "become the men we are meant to be."

How do we do this? West used scriptures to provide the answer, reminding his audience that in the Sermon of the Mount, Jesus had warned against adultery, saying "Even if you look at a woman lustfully you have already committed adultery in your hearts."

West acknowledged women also play a role in adultery but warned men against looking at women to blame them.

"This is what Adam did and we are not going to do the same," he said. "Yes, women have a particular responsibility to help us in our weakness not to lust, but even if a woman is inciting us to lust, we are obligated to look at her with eyes of love and never treat her as a thing for our selfish gratification."

The end result of lust is hell, he warned, noting that the two "are intimately connected because both are the constant state of the absence of God's love."

In the beginning, Adam was able to see in Eve the mystery of God's love revealed. "Her body was a sign of heaven to him, a sign that made visible God's plan of love," West said. "And Adam had no desire in the beginning to look at Eve's body as a thing for his kicks. That's a sin. That's flat tire syndrome. But the good news, gentlemen, is that God came into the world to re-inflate our tires. Christ came into this world to change our hearts."

The audience welcomed West's message with many agreeing that transformation is necessary. "I wish I'd heard this long ago," said 26-year-old Luke Godin of St. Paul. "I'm ready to be transformed. We have the power to change our impulses toward what God intended them."

His brother Paul Godin, 30, of Whitecourt, thinks West made a lot of sense. "I don't think he is mincing any words in terms of church teaching," he said. "He tells it like it is. We all needed to hear this." Paul, a father of four with another on the way, is planning to bring West's message to the men in his parish.

"Lust is natural but I think it's possible to overcome it," he said.

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