“And his wife looking behind her was turned into a statue of salt.” (Genesis 19:26)
I have always been fascinated with this scene from The Bible; especially as a child, after seeing the beautiful Pier Angeli, playing the wife of Lot in the film “Sodom & Gomorrah,” turning back to see the cities destroyed and then immediately transforming into a pillar of salt. But I never understood it. After years of trying to escape my past, I spent countless eons looking back. Even when I locked myself into a religious community on the East Coast, my gaze always went westward – towards the towering citadel of San Francisco. For, it was a place on the map, but also a location in my mind. It was home. It was also a point of revelry; and as time progressed – a locus of nostalgia. For some strange reason, the longer I was away from what I had done; the past appeared less horrible, less desperate, and less sinful. During those hapless moments of loneliness, struggle, and pain, it almost felt like a calm oasis: a place of comfort and soothing relief. I wanted to go back. The images of pornography flashed through my brain and I gave into the need to behold something familiar; and something that I thought was beautiful. Like the wife of Lot, this choice damned me all over again, and my feet fused with the ground below. I couldn’t turn away. Yet, through the Passion and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, we have been given the choice, as St. Josemaria Escriva wrote: “This Lord of ours never forces himself on us. He wants us to turn to him freely, when we begin to grasp the purity of his Love which he has placed in our souls.” Now, we can turn towards the all healing Love of Christ, or back to the cold grasp of death.