YOUCAT Lesson 405
YOUCAT
the catechism for Catholic youth
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 splitting firewood from a
paper birch for aging parents. ….. 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 for me 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 me 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.
“Mastery of the moment is
mastery over life.” Marie von
Ebner-Eschenbach
2337 Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being. Sexuality, in which man's belonging to the bodily and biological world is expressed, becomes personal and truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of one person to another, in the complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman. –Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition
The virtue of chastity therefore involves the integrity of the person and the integrality of the gift. --CCC
[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 –CCC
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
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