ST AUGUSTINE ON THE ONLY WAY TO CONTROL THE SEXUAL APPETITE

ST AUGUSTINE ON THE ONLY WAY TO CONTROL THE SEXUAL APPETITE

 In 8 years time, 1,600 years will have passed since St Augustine died on August 28th, in the year 430.  Augustine's influence still looms large over us today, and while he lived a long time ago, human nature never changes and his advice on controlling the carnal is as instructive now as it was then. Augustine was hostage to his own fleshly desires, and he lamented, "the habit of satisfying an insatiable appetite grievously tormented me, its captive". His sainted mother, Monica orchestrated for him to be married so that he could have relations within marriage which would thereby not be sinful. Augustine, however, did not want to marry, in fact, he was the opposite of those of us who feel we were made for marriage and he admitted, "I was not so much a lover of marriage as a slave to lust".  

While he waited for his fiancée to come of age, his mistress (the mother of his son) left him for good because she was going to be ditched anyway in favor of a wife and her leaving caused Augustine heartbreak, "My heart still clung to her: it was pierced and wounded within me, and the wound drew blood from it." Nonetheless instead of waiting to get married, Augustine took a second mistress, and he later wrote, "By her my soul's disease would be fostered...not yet healed within me was that wound which had been made by the cutting away of my former companion."

Augustine's great friend, Alypius kept Augustine from getting married because he felt it would interfere with Augustine's quest for wisdom. Alypius had flirted with sex in early adolescence after which he had supplanted his sex drive with an insatiable desire for knowledge. He was chaste at a time when Augustine despaired of ever being chaste. Augustine later confessed that he played the role of the devil in the life of Alypius, because he taunted the younger man with the idea that he had only had sneaky, quick sex and thus he could not understand the lures of the flesh. While Augustine thought he could never be continent and while Alypius was happily in love with books and indifferent to sex, neither of them desired marriage, as Augustine made clear, "For whatever conjugal dignity there is in the duty of well-ordered marriage and in raising children, it attracted neither of us."

A deeper reading of The Confessions of St Augustine (which I've just done) informs as to the vicissitudes of Augustine's sexual addiction. His enslavement was enabled because he was owned by an error; he thought he could overcome his problem on his own, "I believed that continence lay within a man's own powers, and such powers I was not conscious of within myself." He had to discover that it is the Lord and the Lord alone who gives the gift for control over the sexual appetite, "I was so foolish that I did not know that, as it is written, no man can be continent unless You grant it to him." Augustine was referring to Wisdom 8:21, "And as I knew that I could not be otherwise continent, except God gave it, and this was also a point of wisdom to know whose gift it was."

Augustine asked for this grace, was given it so generously that he became totally chaste, which even to this day is an astounding testament to recovery from a very pernicious case of sex addiction. 

We live in an age when sex addiction is largely treated by therapy, support groups and even rehab, if you can afford it. These may all be good and necessary, but they are part of the healing, they are not the Healer and no medicine can substitute for that which cured Augustine: asking the Lord for the gift to be chaste/in control of our sexual appetite. I've heard it said that sex addiction is not as fatal as other addictions, but here I really beg to differ. In my younger days, I was very close to someone who was an astonishingly alluring and influential person who had, ahem, plenty of offers. I soon discovered that they had quite a problem, however, and I became aware of a web of secrecy that shrouded a lifestyle which took large sums of money to maintain and involved making enemies of people who were too hurt (and used) to forget. All they while, they complained to me that they could not find a lasting love. 

Their conscience was disabled and they felt nothing when they broke up a relationship and they were blithe and seemingly unaware of the injury they did themselves until they found a very willing partner who they did not know very well before becoming intimate - and that's when they discovered the person was brutally violent and capable of the worst. They survived, and it really was miraculous, but it caused me to think that if one percent of the population is psychopathic and if a sex addict loses all ability to judge the person who is inviting them home in the interest of getting their fix, then it really is only a matter of time before they meet the wrong person. 

The person I knew did have a conversion and found a wonderful confessor, and they did as Augustine and asked for a special grace because even though they had been very deeply harmed, they would have otherwise gone back to that way of living when the wounds healed.  And while our relationship had ups and downs, we later made amends and are on good terms now. I wish I'd had the maturity and life experience to help them when they were so direly addicted, but they really didn't respect me enough to listen, and I saw that it is the person who need ask for the gift from God to be in charge of their body, just as Augustine did.