The Role of Shame

            The experience of shame is expressed through “nakedness.” Nakedness here is not merely a bodily nakedness but also an expression of the shame before God caused by personal sin. Through nakedness, we discover the original deprivation of the participation in the original gift given to man in divine love.[1] That gift included freedom from concupiscence which opened the heart to holiness, innocence, and justification allowing the heart to love unfettered. However, what remained after the fall was a weakened and wounded free will.[2] That devastating loss becomes more poignant with the entrance of lust in its three forms—lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and pride of life. Lust in the heart manifests a privation of a good, namely the good of original nakedness. Original nakedness showed that man, male and female, accepted one another without any constraint of the body or sex. Therefore, they were able to make a mutual gift of each other thereby manifesting the nuptial meaning of the body (also expressed as asymmetrical reciprocity). It was through the body that Adam and Eve created a communion of persons and realized themselves as persons. All this is completely inverted with the beginning of the consciousness of his nakedness. “In a way, man loses his original certainty of the image of God, expressed in his body.”[3] Now with the entrance of sin into his heart, the body has lost its nuptial significance as a sign of the person for man in the visible world.[4] All of these “losses” left man vulnerable and conscious of his vulnerability. That is why we read those piercing words of fear and shame: “I heard the sound of thee in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”[5]    

            Because of the tragedy of the fall of man into sin, the man of original innocence who experienced the beatifying reality of his status in the world was replaced by the man of lust, who lost the self-discipline and purity that was innately a part of his nature before the fall. Man is now interiorly disordered, no longer able to see the woman in her nakedness nor is the woman able to see man in his nakedness without the temptation to appropriate the body as an object of pleasure on account of the presence of lust. For this reason, man and woman become aware that their bodies are no longer only a means of realizing the communion of persons that renders them icons of God. Now, their bodies are the potential source for selfish carnal gratification which mars that image and likeness to God through the curse of lust. “Lust, especially the lust of the body,” writes John Paul II, “is a specific threat to the structure of self-control and self-mastery, through which the human person is formed.”[6]  In other words, lust undermines innocence by challenging it from within. In state of original innocence, the body was understood as the means through which the two become one flesh so as to realize a communion of persons. All this was done in the freedom of the gift[7] with an end to love inherent in the nuptial meaning of the body. However, shame signals the birth of lust which opens the human heart to what “comes from the world” and closes it to what “comes from the Father.”[8] Consequently, the drama of redemption begins and the human person must now struggle with an interior disorder that will direct him not towards personal realization and communion, but towards physical satisfaction and degradation. The end result is that man is now ashamed of his body on account of lust and has lost the original virtue of self-mastery.

            However, shame does not retain only a negative value. It also serves as an interior defense mechanism which prevents man and woman from objectifying the other. Hence, shame is an interior disposition which manifests itself externally in the form of modesty that protects the value of the person. We can see that despite the interior disorder within man and woman, there remains that internal call to preserve his true identity which is intimately tied to his body. Man, male and female, is the only creature God created for its own sake, hence, never to be used as an object but only to be given and received as a gift. The nuptial meaning of the body is, therefore, preserved after the fall, but its recognition and realization is threatened by lust and in a peculiar way defended by shame.[9] Shame acts as that delicate link between original innocence and original sin. “Man and woman, through shame, almost remain in a state of original innocence.”[10] Within their hearts they will strive to guard the self through the veil of shame caused by original and personal sin from the threat of being made an object. Man and woman are “the guardians of the mystery of the subject, that is, of the freedom of the gift.”[11]

            The enemy of the realization of the nuptial meaning of the body is therefore, not shame, but lust. Shame, in fact, seeks to defend the nuptial meaning of the body. Lust, however, calls into question the original function of the body in the consciousness of man and woman.[12] “Shame bears witness to this loss of the original certainty of the human body,” that is to say, it testifies to the fact that the nuptial meaning of the body is no longer a natural attribute of man, male and female.[13] Man has lost the sense of the image of God in himself, which was manifested through the body in its nuptial meaning and realized in the communion of persons.[14] Now sex has potentially become an obstacle rather than the act of consummating the covenant of marriage. Shame illustrates this reality, for man and woman now seek to hide what is distinctively masculine and feminine of the body.[15] This indicates the tragic consequence of the fall of man and woman, for it shows a lack of trust on the part of either and the collapse of the original relationship of communion they shared previous to the original sin.[16] Both man and woman fear that the other will not see them as a person but as an object. Shame is the inward sign of that fear and threat. God confirms it with the outward sign of clothing Adam and Eve.[17]

Article by Fr. Alejandro Valladres, Archdiocese of Mobile