YOUCAT Catechism + Catechism of the Catholic Church Lesson 405
Ave Maria series
405 How can anyone live a chaste life? What can help?
Someone lives chastely when he is free to be loving and is not the slave of his drivers and emotions. Anything, therefore, that helps one to become a more mature, freer, and more loving person and to form better relationships helps that person to love chastely, also. [2338-2345]
Don C. Bragg (red shirt) splitting a paper birch for firewood for aging parents May 29, 2015.….. 405
One becomes free to be loving through self-discipline, which one must acquire, practice, and maintain at every state of life. It is helpful in this regard to obey God’s commandments in all situations, to avoid temptations and any form of double life or hypocrisy, and to ask God for protection against temptations and to strengthen one in love. Being able to live out a pure and undivided love is ultimately a grace and a wonderful gift of God.
“I do not know yet whom I will marry. But I do not want to betray my future wife today.” A student, when asked why he had never been in bed with a girlfriend.
[2338-2345]
The integrity of the person
2338 The chaste person maintains the integrity of the powers of life and love placed in him. This integrity ensures the unity of the person; it is opposed to any behavior that would impair it. It tolerates neither a double life nor duplicity in speech. (Compare Matthew 5:37.)125––Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition
2339 Chastity includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training in human freedom. The alternative is clear: either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy. (Compare Sirach 1:22.)126 "Man's dignity therefore requires him to act out of conscious and free choice, as moved and drawn in a personal way from within, and not by blind impulses in himself or by mere external constraint. Man gains such dignity when, ridding himself of all slavery to the passions, he presses forward to his goal by freely choosing what is good and, by his diligence and skill, effectively secures for himself the means suited to this end." (Gaudium et Spes 17.)127–CCC
2340 Whoever wants to remain faithful to his baptismal promises and resist temptations will want to adopt the means for doing so: self-knowledge, practice of an ascesis (self-discipline) adapted to the situations that confront him, obedience to God's commandments, exercise of the moral virtues, and fidelity to prayer. "Indeed it is through chastity that we are gathered together and led back to the unity from which we were fragmented into multiplicity." (St. Augustine, Conf. 10,29,40:PL 32,796.)128–CCC
2341 The virtue of chastity comes under the cardinal virtue of temperance, which seeks to permeate the passions and appetites of the senses with reason. –CCC
2342 Self-mastery is a long and exacting work. One can never consider it acquired once and for all. It presupposes renewed effort at all stages of life. (Compare Titus 2:1-6.)129 The effort required can be more intense in certain periods, such as when the personality is being formed during childhood and adolescence. –CCC
2343 Chastity has laws of growth which progress through stages marked by imperfection and too often by sin. "Man . . . day by day builds himself up through his many free decisions; and so he knows, loves, and accomplishes moral good by stages of growth." (Familiaris Consortio 34.)130–CCC
2344 Chastity represents an eminently personal task; it also involves a cultural effort, for there is "an interdependence between personal betterment and the improvement of society." (Gaudium et Spes 25 § 1.)131 Chastity presupposes respect for the rights of the person, in particular the right to receive information and an education that respect the moral and spiritual dimensions of human life. –CCC
2345 Chastity is a moral virtue. It is also a gift from God, a grace, a fruit of spiritual effort. (Compare Galatians 5:22.)132 The Holy Spirit enables one whom the water of Baptism has regenerated to imitate the purity of Christ. (Compare 1 John 3:3.)133–CCC
People Don C Bragg splitting firewood
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