Chastity and the White Martyrdom
Rediscover the Forgotten Virtue of Chastity In a culture that often reduces love to pleasure and people to objects, this thought-provoking article presents the timeless Christian vision of chastity as the path to authentic love. Drawing from Scripture, the teachings of St. John Paul II, and the wisdom of the Church, it explains how chastity is not repression but the proper ordering of our capacity to love. Whether single, married, celibate, or experiencing same-sex attraction, every Christian is called to grow in self-mastery and holiness. With clarity, compassion, and conviction, this article challenges modern misconceptions and invites readers to embrace a virtue that safeguards human dignity and leads to genuine freedom, purity, and joy. A must-read for anyone seeking to understand God's beautiful plan for human sexuality.
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A person's rightful due is to be treated as an object of love, not as an object for use’ – St John Paul II.
The post-sexual revolution epoch has undoubtedly engendered an aversion towards the virtue of chastity. Today, chastity has become a forgotten virtue and is in dire need of rehabilitation. An exhaustive and in-depth understanding of the true meaning of this angelic virtue is essential in today’s world inundated by the vices like masturbation, pornography, homosexuality, premarital sex, contraception, etc. Hoping in God’s promise: Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more (Romans 5:20), let us earnestly strive to assimilate this virtue and grow in it cooperating with the gratuitous grace abundantly offered to us.
True Meaning of Chastity
Chastity is a moral virtue that falls under the category of the cardinal virtue of temperance. The virtue of temperance enables a person to bridle his passions, emotions and natural appetites, and keep them under the control of reason. It moderates a person’s attraction to mental and bodily pleasures and gives balance in the use of created goods. The virtue of temperance helps a person to approach pleasures of the world in the light of faith and reason suitable to one’s vocation and circumstances of life. Chastity as a virtue falling under the cardinal virtue of temperance aims at the right and rational ordering of the pleasure of sex according to God’s will.
Pope John Paul the Great, in his magnum opus, Love and Responsibility, clearly explains that the opposite of ‘to love’ is not ‘to hate’ but ‘to use’. This is key in understanding the virtue of chastity. If our sexual desires are not properly ordered by the virtue of chastity, be assured that we will
end up using the other as an object for our own sexual gratification. This is applicable even within the wedlock.
Our sexuality is in fact our capacity for love, that is, our capacity to make ourselves a gift to the other. The proper and right ordering of this capacity is inevitable in our growth towards holiness, as holiness is all about authentic loving. Chastity is that virtue which equips us for pure and authentic love. This moral virtue preserves the purity in love by preventing it to degenerate into lust. It has immense reverence and sensitivity towards the dignity of the human person and never allows our concupiscent desires to degrade the dignity of the human person.
It is the virtue of chastity that directs our sexual faculty, which is a great gift from God, towards its true purpose and end. The greatest fallacy the modern world has been stumbling upon when it comes to chastity is the belief that the purpose of sex is solely pleasure. God has not created any pleasure for its own sake; pleasure is always characterised by a function. For instance, take the case of the pleasure of taste in the process of ingestion. God in his infinite wisdom has attached pleasure with eating so that man is attracted to good food, eats healthy, and remains in good health, thereby sustains his life. How difficult it is to imagine a world where eating and drinking is a horrible and unpleasant experience? In the same way, God has attached pleasure with sex for the sustenance of the race. Sexual pleasure should be oriented such that its end is the propagation of the race. It is apt to quote the Lebanese-American writer and poet Kahlil Gibran here: ‘All pleasures of the world are the baits set by God to lead man into his plan’. Is it not bluffing God when the pleasure alone is stolen discarding the purpose He attached to it? Whenever the purpose and ends of sex is evaded, the act degenerates into the use of another person, reducing him as a mere object of pleasure. It also mocks God deviating from the divine plan on human sexuality.
Self-mastery and self-possession are prerequisites for authentic love. Love is all about making oneself as a free and total gift for the good of the other. This is impossible if we are enslaved by our own passions. We must subjugate our concupiscent tendencies and bring them under the control
of reason in order to love truly and authentically. Chastity is all about self-mastery and self-possession in the area of sexuality.
It is also important to understand what chastity is not. Chastity obviously is not about having a puritan and repressive outlook on sex. In fact, being prudish and naive in matters related to sexuality is to be seen as a lack of the virtue of chastity. A clear distinction is also to be made between chastity and virginity. Virginity is a form of expression of the virtue of chastity where one totally abstains from sexual pleasure for the sake of the kingdom of God. So, chastity is not to be misconceived as an absolute abstinence from sexual pleasure. What the Church advocates is not the repression of our sexual desires, but the redemption of it through the grace of God.
The expression of the practice of the virtue of chastity differs depending on one’s state of life and one’s sexual orientations. Despite the varying expressions of the virtue, what runs through all in common is that it emanates from authentic charity: love of God and love of neighbour, and that it pays due reverence to the dignity of the human person. The virtue never tolerates reducing human persons of invaluable dignity to mere objects of sexual indulgence.
Chastity for the Single
The season of singleness is a wonderful phase in our lives when we are so robust, vibrant, and full of energy. During this period, God is busy forming us into the persons we are called to be, to make our future and life work for his kingdom. May be, during our wait, God is preparing us for the vocation that we will embrace. It is a period to dedicate quality time for our vocation discernment. This phase teaches us beauty, patience, culture, etc. Build wonderful friendships during this phase of life, and cherish them like family. Chastity in fact blooms in real friendships.
Being chaste in the season of singleness is a real challenge. There are constant temptations to fall into the sins of masturbation and pornography. There is no doubt that the struggle is real and hard. Strong men never elude their struggles, but face it. The Church has endowed us
with the sacraments, especially the Sacrament of Reconciliation and Holy Eucharist. Many men who have grown in the virtue of chastity are the ones who embraced the practise of frequent and honest confessions with great humility, even twice or thrice a week, to combat the sin of masturbation and pornography.
Chastity during the season of singleness is also to be seen as an apprenticeship to live the virtue within the wedlock. If you do not confront and conquer your passions in the season of singleness, be assured that you will end up using your spouse sexually, failing to love him/her authentically.
Chastity for the Married Couple
To most people, chastity in marriage makes no sense. A chaste marriage would sound like a good oxymoron for them – because many people regard marriage as a license for promiscuity. But this is far from the truth. The right ordering of sexual desires is important even within wedlock. Otherwise one could end up using their spouse as a mere object of sexual indulgence rather than loving him/her.
Totally opposed to the secular perspectives on marriage, the Christian marriage is a sacrament which reflects the epitomal love between Jesus and his bride, the Church. No saint or Doctor of the Church has articulated the beauty of this mystical spousal love with more splendour than St Augustine: ‘Like a bridegroom, Christ went forth from his nuptial chamber. He came even to the marriage bed of the cross, and there, ascending it, he consummated a marriage’. Saint Mechtilde, a German mystic and Benedictine nun of the 13th century, echoed the same idea when she wrote: ‘Christ’s noble nuptial bed was the very hard wood of the cross on which he leaped with more joy and ardour than a delighted bridegroom’. So, it was on the cross, the marital bed of Christ, that the greatest expression of immaculate spousal love was manifested. Therefore, the sanctity demanded in the marital bed is the sanctity of the act that took place on the cross.
Even if there is mutual consent for the marital act, if the ends of the sexual act are not fulfilled, it degenerates to ‘using one’s spouse’. How could a person whose rightful due is love alone be treated as an object of use, that too in marriage, where the purest form of love is to be found? The Church can never be tolerant to any act which does not give due reverence to the dignity of the human person. The Church is crystal clear in articulating that the primary end of marriage is the begetting of offspring and their education. This is why the Church condemns contraception which evades the ends of the sexual act. Contraception is an act which is inherently against the very fruitful nature of marital love. Every sexual act should be open to the natural possibility of a new life. St John Paul II in his great work on chastity, Love and Responsibility lucidly expounds this forgotten moral truth: ‘Openness to life in the sexual act is an indispensable condition for authentic marital love, and hence for its moral uprightness. When the idea that “I may become a father/I may become a mother” is totally rejected in the mind and will of husband and wife, nothing is left of the marital relationship except mere sexual enjoyment. One person is reduced to a sheer object of use for the other.’
At this juncture, having realised the difficulty of practising chastity within the wedlock, a common misconception that the Church has a discriminatory attitude towards homosexuals when it comes to being chaste requires addressing. Even in marriage, there will be occasions when one must practise continence for the sake of love. Living out chastity for a married couple is equally difficult or sometimes more difficult than for a person having same-sex attraction. So, those who think that the Church is being unfair and tough to homosexuals, it is high time that their perspective is revised.
Chastity for Celibates
The celibates are the glorious and living witnesses of the beauty of the virtue of chastity. Their example encourages us to pursue a life deeply rooted in this virtue. We clearly learn from them that the carnal expression of sexuality is not an indispensable requirement for authentic
love. Their life is an apology to the much-promoted popular cultural lie that sex is an imperative without which one cannot survive.
Never assume that celibates are free from the concupiscent tendencies of the flesh. Do not come to a cursory conclusion that the journey for them is easy. Celibacy is not repression of sexual desires or hatred towards matters related to sexuality, but it is the sublimation of those desires for a greater good. It is their intimacy with God that keeps them going in their tough journey. They forego the earthy marriage out of their overflowing love for God, the Bridegroom of the soul; they live spinning their wedding garment (Rev 19:8) and fixing their interior gaze on the Heavenly marriage with the Lamb in eternity. (Rev 19:7)
Celibacy is not limiting one’s capacity for love. Instead, it is the celebration of self-less and self-giving love towards God and one’s neighbour. A celibate’s story is the story of a man who falls in love several times; every time he meets another greater love, he answers that love, ultimately clinging on to God, the supreme love.
Chastity for Homosexuals
Having understood that all men whether single, married or a celibate, go through a difficult path to progress in the virtue of chastity, let us acknowledge the reality that a homosexual person also must tread through the same burdensome track of self-denial.
There is no greater misconception than the idea that the Church condemns the homosexuals who are created in the image and likeness of God. She teaches that acting on homosexual tendencies is gravely sinful in the same way as it is sinful for a married man to act on a sexual attraction to someone other than his wife, or in the same way as it is vicious for a man to act on his temptation to watch pornography or to masturbate.
A reminder as there is a ubiquitous outcry to persuade the Church to approve homosexual acts: the Church’s teaching on chastity is built on strong philosophical and theological foundation. The Church is as firm as a rock and is intransigent when it comes to preserving the moral and dogmatic truths handed over to her by her Bridegroom, Lord and Master. She has unswervingly been faithful to the ministry of truth entrusted to her for the last two millenniums. Looking at the problem of approving homosexual acts in a different angle, if at all the Church relaxes her stand on homosexuality, she will have to relax her stand on other sins against chastity as well, even the heinous act of paedophilia, ,bestiality etc. This will ultimately lead to a cascaded moral collapse. The Church truly knows what she is doing even when accused of obstinacy and pig-headedness in such sensitive moral issues. Though she listens to the difficulties and struggles of the faithful and accompanies them in their arduous journey, she pays heeds solely to the voice of God when it comes to deciding what is morally right or wrong.
The Church is always willing to offer pastoral care to the homosexuals and accompany them in their journey to holiness. Being fully aware of their difficulties and struggles, she is at their service to administer the sacraments which are the fount of grace for them to grow in self-mastery and holiness. But let us also keep in mind that the Church cannot or will not have any association with people who deliberately want to continue in their sinful life and celebrate their culture of sin.
Chastity and the White Martyrdom
No virtue is easy to acquire, let alone chastity. Growing in virtues requires consistent and relentless effort. The path to holiness is never a bed of roses and it demands great struggle. Jesus makes this very clear: For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few (Matthew 7:14) Being chaste is a long and exacting work and it presupposes renewed effort at all stages of life.
Chastity is difficult. But it is attainable, attainable through the grace of God. In today’s sexualised culture pervaded with pornographic content all around, there is the least exaggeration in the words of an anonymous
Greek monk from Mount Athos: ‘Young people today who remain pure and chaste will be counted among the martyrs of our Church on the Day of Judgement’. Now it is all up to us: Are we willing to lead a life embracing this white martyrdom and be counted among the saints like St Maria Goretti, St Agnes of Rome, Bl Veronica Antal, etc. who preferred death to defilement?