Continuing his weekly catechesis, the Holy Father addressed the following message to the numerous pilgrims gathered in the Paul VI Hall.

1. St Paul writes in the Letter to the Galatians: "For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself "' (Gal 5:13-14). We have already dwelled on this enunciation a week ago; however, we are taking it up again today, in connection with the main argument of our reflections.

Although the passage quoted refers above all to the subject of justification, here, however, the Apostle aims explicitly at driving home the ethical dimension of the "body-Spirit" opposition, that is, the opposition between life according to the flesh and life according to the Spirit.  Precisely here, in fact, he touches the essential point, revealing, as it were, the very anthropological roots of the Gospel ethos.  If, in fact, "the whole Law" (moral law of the Old Testament) "is fulfilled" in the commandment of charity, the dimension of the new Gospel ethos is nothing but an appeal to human freedom, an appeal to its fuller implementation and, in a way, to fuller "utilization" of the potential of the human spirit.

Freedom linked with command to love

2. It might seem that Paul was only contrasting freedom with the Law and the Law with freedom. However a deeper analysis of the text shows that St Paul in the Letter to the Galatians emphasizes above all the ethical subordination of freedom to that element in which the whole Law is fulfilled, that is, to love, which is the content of the greatest commandment of the Gospel. "Christ set us free in order that we might remain free", precisely in the sense that he manifested to us the ethical (and theological) subordination of freedom to charity, and that he linked freedom with the commandment of love. To understand the vocation to freedom in this way (“You were called to freedom, brethren”: Gal 5:13), means giving a form to the ethos in which life "according to the Spirit" is realized. There also exists, in fact, the danger of understanding freedom wrongly, and Paul clearly points this out, writing in the same context: "Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another" (ibid.).

Bad use of freedom

3. In other words: Paul warns us of the possibility of making a bad use of freedom, a use which is in opposition to the liberation of the human spirit carried out by Christ and which contradicts that freedom with which "Christ set us free". In fact, Christ realized and manifested the freedom that finds its fullness in charity, the freedom thanks to which we are "servants of one another". In other words: the freedom that becomes a source of new "works" and "life" according to the Spirit. The antithesis and, in a way, the negation of this use of freedom takes place when it becomes for man "a pretext to live according to the flesh". Freedom then becomes a source of "works" and of "life" according to the flesh. It stops being the true freedom for which "Christ set us free", and becomes "an opportunity for the flesh", a source (or instrument) of a specific "yoke" on the part of pride of life, the lust of the eyes, and the lust of the flesh. 

Anyone who in this way lives "according to the flesh", that is, submits— although in a way that is not quite conscious, but nevertheless actual— to the three forms of lust, and in particular to the lust of the flesh, ceases to be capable of that freedom for which "Christ set us free"; he also ceases to be suitable for the real gift of himself, which is the fruit and expression of this freedom. He ceases, moreover, to be capable of that gift which is organically connected with the nuptial meaning of the human body, with which we dealt in the preceding analyses of the Book of Genesis (cf. Gen 2:23-25).

The Law fulfilled

4. In his way, the Pauline doctrine on purity, a doctrine in which we find the faithful and true echo of the Sermon on the Mount, permits us to see evangelical and Christian "purity of heart" in a wider perspective, and above all permits us to link it with the charity in which "the Law if fulfilled". Paul, in a way similar to Christ, knows a double meaning of "purity" (and of "impurity"): a generic meaning and a specific meaning. In the first case, everything that is morally good is "pure", everything that is morally bad is, on the contrary, "impure". Christ's words according to Matthew 15:18-20, quoted previously, affirm this clearly. In Paul's enunciations about the "works of the flesh", which he contrasts with the "fruit of the Spirit", we find the basis for a similar way of understanding this problem. Among the “works of the flesh" Paul puts what is morally bad, while every moral good is linked with life "according to the Spirit". In this way, one of the manifestations of life "according to the Spirit" is behaviour in conformity with that virtue which Paul, in the Letter to the Galatians, seems to define rather indirectly, but of which he speaks directly in the First Letter to the Thessalonians.

Virtue of self-control

5. In the passages of the Letter to the Galatians, which we have previously already submitted to detailed analysis, the Apostle lists in the first place among the "works of the flesh": "fornication, impurity, licentiousness". Subsequently, however, when he contrasts with these works the "fruit of the Spirit", he does not speak directly of "purity", but names only self-control, enkrateia. This "control" can be recognized as a virtue which concerns continence in the area of all the desires of the senses, especially in the sexual sphere. It is therefore in opposition to "fornication, impurity, licentiousness", and also to "drunkenness", "carousing". It could therefore be admitted that Pauline "self-control" contains what is expressed in the term "continence" or "temperance", which corresponds to the Latin term temperantia. In this case, we would find ourselves in the presence of the well-known system of virtues which later theology, especially Scholasticism, will borrow, in a way, from the ethics of Aristotle. Paul, however, certainly does not use this system in his text. Since by "purity" must be understood the correct way of treating the sexual sphere according to one's personal state (and not necessarily absolute abstention from sexual life), then undoubtedly this "purity" is included in the Pauline concept of "self-control" or enkrateia. Therefore, within the Pauline text we find only a generic and indirect mention of purity; now and again the author contrasts these "works of the flesh", such as "fornication, impurity, licentiousness" with the "fruit of the Spirit"—that is, new works, in which "life according to the Spirit" is manifested. It can be deduced that one of these new works is precisely "purity": that is the one that is opposed to  "impurity" and also to "fornication" and "licentiousness".

Called to holiness

6. But already in the First Letter to the Thessalonians, Paul writes on this subject in an explicit and unambiguous way. We read: "For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from unchastity; that each one of you know how to control his own body (1) in holiness and honour, not in the passion of lust like heathens who do not know God" (1 Thess 4:3-5). And then: "God has not called us for uncleanness, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you" (1 Thess 4:7-8). Although in this text too we have before us the generic meaning of "purity", identified in this case with "holiness" (since "uncleanness" is named as the antithesis of "holiness"), nevertheless the whole context indicates clearly what "purity" or "impurity" it is a question of, that is, the content of what Paul calls here "uncleanness", and in what way "purity" contributes to the "holiness" of man.

And therefore, in the following reflections, it will be useful to take up again the text of the First Letter to the Thessalonians, which has just been quoted.

1) Without going into the detailed discussions of the exegetes, it should. however, be pointed out that the Greek expression to heautou skeuos can refer also to the wife (cf. 1 Pet 3:7).