Flesh, meaning

The Temptation of Christ. Jesus explains that Satan also tempted him in the flesh. Ary Scheffer (1854).

In the Gospel and in the work of Maria Valtorta, "flesh" represents the body. This term is also used when discussing the struggle between the flesh and the spirit, the word flesh then representing the body weighed down by the bad instincts evil it possesses as a result of the Original Sin.

In "The Gospel as it was revealed to me"

• Jesus: "At the borders of your small kingdom, you have a King friend and two enemy powers. [...] The two enemy powers are Satan and the flesh."
• For I too have a flesh, friends. A real flesh. And it is subject to the same weaknesses experienced by all flesh.
• But the flesh is flesh, and Satan is the Temptation. And Temptation uses the flesh that excites man: the Woman, to fight God in a Heart and in His holy decrees.  
• "Be opposed to the desire for gold as you are to the desire for the flesh; opposed to lust as to the desire for power. This is what Satan offers you. Oh! His deceptive riches! Honors, success, power, money: impure goods which you buy at the price of your Soul. Be content with little. God gives you what you need. That is enough. He guarantees this to you, as He guarantees it to the birds of the air, and you are much more than birds. But He wants from you trust and sobriety. If you trust, He will not disappoint you. If you are sober, His daily gift will be enough."  
• To Nicodemus, the sanhedrist who came to see him secretly: "What is born of the flesh is flesh, and remains flesh, and dies after having served it in its desires and its sins. But what is born of the Spirit is spirit, and lives by returning to the Spirit who engendered it, after having made it reach the perfect Age. The Kingdom of Heaven will only be inhabited by beings who have reached the perfect Age of the Spirit. So do not be surprised if I say: "You must be born again."    
• I too began with flesh, but while Satan starts from that to bring them to Hell, I started from it to lead them to Heaven.
• In truth, truly I tell you that if you do not eat the Flesh of the Son of man and drink His Blood, you will not have Life in you. Whoever eats my Flesh worthily and drinks my Blood has eternal life and I will raise them on the Last Day.() – Synagogue of Capernaum.          
• Since matter dominates especially among the pagans, even those converted, and since they will always be in relation to the environment in which they must live, insist strongly on fleeing from sensual pleasures. It is also through the senses that the rest penetrates.
• Be holy in your members and your senses to know how to curb every carnal urge. In your eyes as in your ears, in your tongue as in your hands. And be holy in your thought to know how to curb the Pride of making known what you have. For the senses and organs and intelligence must serve and not reign.
• And, concerning the flesh, do not imitate worldly people who incessantly tremble for their tomorrow, out of fear of lacking superfluous things, that illness will come, that death will come, that their Enemies may harm them, and so on.
  God knows what you need. So do not fear for your tomorrow. Free yourselves from fears, heavier than the chains of galley slaves. Do not worry about your life, nor about food, nor drink, nor clothing.
  The life of the spirit is more than that of the body, and the body is more than the garment, for it is through the body and not the garment that you live and that, through mortification of the body, you help the Spirit to obtain eternal life. God knows how long He will leave your Soul in your body, and until that moment, He will give you what you need.
  And can you think that God, who cares for the lilies of the valleys and makes them grow and clothe them with a garment more beautiful than Solomon ever had, without their doing other work than to perfume while adorning, do you believe He could forget you even concerning clothing? (...)
  But do not be people of little faith. You will always have what you need. Do not worry like the people of the world who toil to provide for their pleasures.
  You have your Father who knows what you need. You only have to seek, and let it be your first concern, the Kingdom of God and His justice, and all the rest will be given to you as well.  

In the other works of Maria Valtorta

The Notebooks of 1944

• Catechesis of August 8: "What horizons of divine knowledge can open to you by a single word of my Gospel! What mystery of love and perfect justice these expressions contain: "he was strengthened" and "he grew"! You read without paying attention. Or you read and meditate, but by giving what is transcendent the color of the human. The strength of your flesh is such that it dominates the intellectual forces of the spirit within you. This results in: knowledge is granted only to those who have killed the flesh in themselves, its voices and its violences, and have founded on these ruins the throne of the spirit-king. It is granted to them both by the divine Word and by the divine infusion of an intelligence that is not far from perfection: it indeed proceeds from the Paraclete who, through a spiritual Incarnation of the Word within you, souls virgin whose only desire is that of Weddings eternal, communicates Himself and engenders in you the Word, thus making you "bearers of the Christ", like the virginal Bride who bore His sevenfold ardors.

Lessons on the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans

• Lesson No. 23 - Romans 7:14-25: Powerlessness of the Law in the struggle between flesh and Spirit.

In fundamental Christian texts

In the Bible

• " יהוה Elohîms formed the rib that he had taken from the man into a Woman and brought her to him. The man exclaimed: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man." Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his Woman, and they become one flesh.
• "I keep יהוה always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my Heart is glad, and my Soul rejoices, and my flesh also dwells in safety, for you will not abandon my faithful one to the grave, nor let your beloved see the decay."
• "And you, who were dead because of your trespasses and the sins in which you once walked, following the god of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among the disobedient... We were of that number, we all also, who formerly indulged in the desires of our flesh: we did the will of the flesh, followed its impulses, and by nature, just like the others, were under the wrath."
• "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ. For the law of the Spirit who gives life in Jesus Christ has set you free from the law of sin and death. When God sent His own Son in our human condition as sinners to conquer sin, He did what the law of Moses could not because of human weakness: He destroyed sin in the carnal man. He thus wanted the requirements of the Law to be fulfilled in us who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Indeed, living according to the flesh means tending toward what is carnal; living according to the Spirit means tending toward what is spiritual; and the flesh tends toward death, but the Spirit tends toward life and Peace. For the flesh rebels against God, it does not submit to the law of God, it is not even able to do so.
• "Listen to me: walk according to the impulse of the Spirit and you will no longer do what the flesh desires. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other; so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. The works of the flesh are known: fornication, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatreds, discord, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, factions, envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and things like these; of which I tell you beforehand, as I have also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is: love, joy, Peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law."