Flesh, meaning

See also: Sexuality, Sensuality, Lust, Incarnation.

---

The Temptation of Christ. Jesus explains that Satan also tempted him in the realm of 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 speaking of the struggle between the flesh and the spirit, the word flesh then representing the body weighed down by the bad instincts evil that it possesses as a consequence 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 have a flesh too, friends. A real flesh. And it is subject to the same weaknesses that all flesh experiences.
• But flesh is flesh, and Satan is Temptation. And Temptation uses to fight God in a Heart and in his holy decrees, the flesh that excites man: the Woman.  
• "Be opposed to the desire for gold as to the desire of the flesh; to the carnal desire as to the desire for power. This is what Satan offers you. Oh! his deceptive riches! Honors, success, power, money: impure goods that 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 have trust, He will not disappoint you. If you are sober, his daily gift will suffice."  
• To Nicodemus, the sanhedrist who came to see him in secret: "What is born of the flesh is flesh, and dies after having served it in its desires and sins. But what is born of The Spirit is spirit, and lives by returning to The Spirit who engendered it, after having raised it to the perfect Age. The Kingdom of Heavens will be inhabited only by beings who have reached the perfect Age of The Spirit. So do not be astonished 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 him on the Last Day. () – Synagogue of Capernaum.          
• Since matter dominates especially among the pagans, even converted, and since they will always remain connected with this environment where they must live, insist greatly on avoidance of sensual pleasures. It is through the senses that the rest also enters.
• Be holy in your members and your senses to know how to restrain every carnal impulse. In your eyes as well as in your ears, in your tongue as well as in your hands. And holy in your thought to know how to restrain the Pride of making known what you have. For the senses and the organs and the intelligence must serve and not reign.
• And, regarding the flesh, do not imitate worldly people who are constantly shaking about their tomorrow, out of fear of lacking the superfluous, of illness arriving, death arriving, that their Enemies may harm them, and so forth.
  God knows what you need. Therefore, do not fear for your tomorrow. Free yourself from fears, heavier than the chains of galley slaves. Do not trouble yourself about your life, nor for food, nor for drink, nor for clothing.
  The life of the spirit is more than that of the body, and the body is more than clothing, because it is through the body and not through clothing that you live and that, by 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 takes care of the lilies of the valleys and makes them grow and clothes them with a garment more beautiful than Solomon had, without them doing any work but perfuming while adoring, do you think He can forget you even for clothing? (...)
  But do not be people of little faith. You will always have what you need. Do not trouble yourselves 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 the first of your worries be the Kingdom of God and His justice, and all the rest will be given to you in addition.  

In other works of Maria Valtorta

Notebooks 1944

• Catechesis of August 8 : "What horizons of divine science can open to you through a single word of my Gospel! What mystery of love and perfect justice these expressions hold: "he was strengthened" and "he grew"! You read without paying attention. Or you read and meditate, but giving to what is transcendent the color of the human. The strength of your flesh is such that it dominates in you the intellectual forces of the spirit. This is the result: knowledges are granted to those only who have killed the flesh in themselves, its voices and its violences, and established on these ruins the throne of the spirit-king. They are granted to them both by the divine Word and by the divine infusion of an intelligence that is not far from perfection: it in fact proceeds from the Paraclete who, through a spiritual Incarnation of the Word in you, Souls virgins whose only desire is that of the Weddings eternal, communicates himself and engenders in you the Word, thus making you "bearers of the Christ", in the likeness of the virginal Bride who bore her sevenfold ardours".

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 the flesh and The Spirit.

In fundamental Christian texts

In the Bible

• " יהוה Elohîms transformed the rib which he had taken from the man into a Woman whom he brought to him. The man exclaimed: "This time bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh! This one shall be called Woman for she was taken out of man." Therefore, a man leaves his father and his mother to cling to his Woman, and they become one flesh.
• "I constantly keep יהוה before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my Heart rejoices, my Soul exults, and my flesh dwells in safety, for you do not abandon me to hell, you do not let your faithful see corruption."
• "And you, who were dead because of your faults and sins where you were once engaged, when you followed the God of this world, the prince who stands between heaven and earth, the spirit who now acts among the rebellious… We were among them, all of us too, who once abandoned ourselves to the desires of our flesh: we did its will, followed its impulses, and were by nature, just like others, under 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 freed me from the law of sin and death. When God sent His own Son in our human condition of sinners to conquer sin, He did what the law of Moses could not do because of human weakness: He destroyed sin in the carnal man. He wanted thus that the demands of the Law be fulfilled in us, who do not live under the power of the flesh but of The Spirit. Indeed, under the power of the flesh, one tends towards what is carnal; under the power of The Spirit, one tends towards what is spiritual; and the flesh tends toward death, but The Spirit tends toward life and Peace. For the flesh tends to Revolt Against God, it does not submit to the law of God, it is not even able to.
• "Listen to me: walk under the impulse of the Spirit and you will no longer do what the flesh desires. For the flesh, in its desires, opposes the Spirit, and the Spirit opposes the flesh; between them, there is antagonism; so you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are no longer subject to the law. The works of the flesh are known: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and things like these; of which I warn you, as I have before, those who do 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 things there is no law."

Notes and references

Note: Quotations from the work of Maria Valtorta on this page currently use machine-translated text and will gradually be replaced by the official English translation. Until then, the official translation may be consulted through the reference link provided with each quotation.