Dear Friends,
 
See below for more from Dr. Brant Pitre on the Theology of the Body:
 
What does it mean when Genesis 2:25 says Adam and Eve were "naked and not ashamed"?  Shame involves fear of another person, when we're not sure we can trust that person.  We fear being used or being hurt, so we are afraid of being vulnerable in letting others see us as we really are.
 
Originally, Adam and Eve were not ashamed.  They each had complete confidence, trust, and security in their relationship. Their bodily nakedness pointed to an even deeper personal "nakedness" in which they felt free to bare their souls completely to each other without any fear of being used, misunderstood, or let down.  Adam and Eve understood "the nuptial meaning of the body" — not just the body at face value, but the body's capacity to express love and the communion of persons.
 
How were they able to have this ideal relationship?
 
Imagine living in a relationship in which there were absolutely no selfishness.  You knew that your beloved was always seeking what was best for you, not just his own interests.  He truly viewed you as a gift that was uniquely entrusted to him and he took this role seriously with a profound sense of responsibility.
 
This is the kind of relationship Adam and Eve had in the Garden.  Before the Fall, sin had not yet entered the world, and human persons had self-mastery over their passions and appetites.  Thus, with total purity of heart, they each were free from selfish desires and approached each other with reverence, seeking the good of the other and never viewing the other merely as an object to be used.
 
John Paul II explains that Adam and Eve saw each other with a supernatural perspective — with "the vision of the Creator" (p. 57).  In other words, they saw each other the way God Himself saw them.  Adam saw not just the beauty of Eve's body, but the whole truth of his beloved as a person.  And just as God rejoiced in creating man and woman by saying, "It is good!," so Adam would have looked upon his wife with a profound sense of awe and wonder, seeing her as the daughter of God who had entrusted herself to him in marriage.  Likewise, Eve would have accepted Adam interiorly as a gift and responded to him with similar love and responsibility.  "Seeing each other, as if through the mystery of creation, man and woman see each other even more fully and distinctly than through the sense of sight itself... They see and know each other with all the peace of the interior gaze, which creates precisely the fullness of the intimacy of persons" (p. 57).
 
In this kind of environment of complete mutual love and responsibility, personal intimacy could flourish.  In such a relationship of total security and total trust in the other person — when there is no fear of being used or hurt — one feels free to give himself as he really is, knowing that he will be welcomed and fully received as a gift.  "The affirmation of the person is nothing but acceptance of the gift, which .  .  .  creates the communion of persons" (p. 65).  Thus, originally man and woman did not experience the walls of shame in their relationship. They had no fear that the other would use them, hurt them, or ever reject them.  Free from sin, they were free to love.  In a relationship of total reciprocal love, the walls of shame are not necessary.    Indeed, as John Paul II explains, "immunity from shame" is "the result of love" (p. 67).
 
However, once sin entered the world, man lost the self-mastery necessary to keep selfish desires from growing in his heart and poisoning his relationship. Wounded by original sin, man finds that it is no longer easy for him to control his passions and appetites.  No longer does man easily look upon his wife with "the vision of the Creator" ("It is good!").  No longer does he easily see her as a person who has been entrusted to him and as a gift which he longs to serve with selfless love and responsibility.
 
Now his heart's love for her is tainted by selfish desires to use her.  He begins to view her primarily in terms of her sexual value — the value of her body or the value of her femininity — as an object to be exploited for his own sensual or emotional pleasure.  He no longer easily sees her value as a person to be loved for her own sake.
 
In such a relationship of total security and total trust in the other person — when there is no fear of being used or hurt one feels free to give himself as he really is, knowing that he will be welcomed and fully received as a gift.  Imagine the shock Adam must have experienced at that first moment in which he felt the effects of original sin in his life.  John Paul II says it is as if Adam "felt that he had just stopped .  .  .  being above the world of" the animals, which are driven by instinct and desires (p. 116). Almost like the animals, Adam now finds himself powerfully swayed by his desire to satisfy his sexual desires.
 
No longer mastering their passions, man and woman tend to approach each other with selfish and lustful hearts.  That's why Adam and Eve instinctively conceal their sexuality from each other the moment sin and lust enters their lives (p. 117).  They each no longer have total trust that the other is truly seeking what is best for them.  They instinctively know that their beloved may use them.  Thus, the biblical account of the Fall tells us that right after Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden, they were naked and ashamed (Gen.  3:7).
 
The introduction of sin shatters the original unity of man and woman and hinders personal intimacy in their relationship, for now the defense mechanism of shame enters their relationship. "This shame took the place of the absolute trust connected with the previous state of original innocence in the mutual relationship between man and woman" (p. 120).
 
John Paul II explains that the original unity of Adam and Eve dissolved at the Fall because, without the total mutual selfless love and trust, they no longer felt free to truly give themselves to each other: "Having facilitated an extraordinary fullness in their mutual communication, the simplicity and purity of the original experience disappear... That simple and direct communion with each other, connected with the original experience of reciprocal nakedness, disappeared.  Almost unexpectedly, an insuperable threshold appeared in their consciousness. It limited the original giving of oneself to the other, in full confidence in what constituted their own identity" (p. 118).