I was just about to sip my coffee when a friend of mine asked me, “But Simon, what is chastity? The definition that the Catechism gives makes almost no sense to me! The language is really complex and confusing.”
To his disappointment, I had to admit that the definition of chastity the Catechism provides has never been a simple definition for me either. However, all that means is that I have had to work harder at defining chastity in a way that makes sense to me and the average Catholic. For me, I don’t claim to understand something unless I can explain it in simple terms to someone else.
I have come to define chastity as “The virtue that orders our sexual desires and actions for the good of another person.” St John Paul II says, “Only the chaste man and chaste woman are capable of true love”. St Thomas says, “Love is to will the good of the other.” Simply put, chastity is the virtue that helps us order our sexual desires and actions toward the good of another person, and willing the good of another person is to love them.
The human heart longs for real love, but sadly, so few understand that chastity is the key that unlocks the door to real love. We cannot experience the love that satisfies without chastity. So, what is chastity? Here are 7 simple keys to understanding what chastity is and how to live it out.
- Chastity, above all, is a ‘Yes’ to Love: Chastity is not a ‘no’ to all things sexual and pleasurable; it is, above all, a resounding yes to love. Chastity sets a person free to love by setting them free from the compulsion to lust. Only the chaste person – a sexually free person – can recognize the difference between love and lust and exercise the necessary self-mastery over their passions to say ‘no’ to lust in order to say ‘yes’ to love.
- Chastity Affirms the Goodness of the Sexual Urge: Contrary to what many people outside – and sadly inside – the Church think, the Catholic Church does not dismiss or demonize our sexuality or sexual desires. The Catholic Church, more than any other institution, affirms and upholds the goodness of our sexuality. Rather than viewing our sexual desires as something to run away from or repress, the Church reminds us that, above all, the sexual urge is a call to love and communion. The virtue of chastity helps us to rightly order the inherent goodness that exists within our sexuality.
- Chastity Honors the Objective Meaning of Sex: In his Theology of the Body, St John Paul II speaks of the “Language of the Body”. The sexual act “speaks” an objective meaning or language to the other person. It “says” to the other person, “I love you freely, totally, faithfully and fruitfully.” Sex is where the words of the wedding vows are made flesh. The husband and wife are communicating the same words they spoke to each other on their wedding day, yet in a more perfect way with their bodies. It is for this reason that JPII says that when a person engages in a sexual act, they either speak the truth or a lie with their bodies, depending on the disposition of their hearts or the context of their relationship. If a husband has sex with his wife, but is just using her for selfish sexual pleasure, he is lying to her. With his body, he is communicating the free, total, faithful and fruitful love and self-gift of his marital covenant, but in his heart, he is contradicting this. Chastity as the integration of body and soul. The soul (or heart) should always express and desire the same objective language the body speaks. If it does not, that is not chastity, and therefore not love.
- Chastity Safeguards the Context of Sex: Sexual love is synonymous with marital love. The only context within which free, total, faithful and fruitful love can fully be expressed is within the sacrament of marriage. For this reason, chastity demands that a person abstains from sexual union unless they have committed themselves to one person in the sacrament of marriage. This is not to say that the sexual urge should be dismissed or demonized unless a person is married. The urge is a reminder that we were all created for love and communion, but chastity is the virtue that makes us free to refrain from communicating a lie with our bodies by engaging in sexual activity outside the marriage bond.
- Chastity Honors the Person: Chastity, above all, orders our sexual passions for the good of others. It demands that a person be loved and never used as a means to a selfish end. Masturbation, pornography, meaningless hookups, fornication and rape are all sins against chastity, not just because they fail to honor the goodness of the sexual urge, the objective meaning of sex and the proper context for sex, but primarily because they fail to honor and love the person.
- Chastity demands Sacrifice: Love and lust both demand a sacrifice, yet love sacrifices oneself in order to love another, and lust sacrifices the other for the sake of one’s own sexual gratification. The Catechism states that chastity and “self-mastery are a long and exacting work” (CCC 2342). Chastity is difficult and demands death for ourselves, but only so that we may be free to love as Christ loves.
- Chastity Makes Us Sexually Free: Jesus did not come to give us coping mechanisms for our lust. He came to give us a new heart. One that is no longer in bondage to lust but has been unbound, delivered, and set free to love as Jesus loves! Jesus has come to redeem our brokenness so that we would no longer be constantly resisting disordered desires to lust, but are free to love in sexual freedom.
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