The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [100]
So chastity is about both love and freedom.
Chastity (remember I’m talking about religious chastity) is not for everyone. Obviously, most people are called to romantic love, marriage, sexual intimacy, children, and family life. Their primary way of loving is through their spouses and children. It is a more focused, more exclusive, way of loving. That is not to say that married couples and parents do not love others outside their families. Rather, the main focus of their love is God and their families.
For the person in a religious order, the situation is the opposite. You vow chastity to offer yourself to love God and make yourself available to love as many others as possible. Once again, this is not to say that married and single men and women cannot do this. Rather, this is the way that works best for us.
Chastity is also a reminder that it is possible to love well without being in an exclusive relationship and without being sexually active. In this way, the chaste person can serve as a signpost in our hyper-sexualized culture, where loving someone may be confused with hopping into bed. Thus chastity can help us to refocus our priorities: the goal of life, whether single, married, or religious, is to love.
Who is more loving? The head-over-heels-in-love couple with an active sex life; the committed middle-aged couple who have sex less frequently due to the demands of family life; or the tender elderly couple who, because of illness, are not sexually active at all? Who is more loving—the married man who loves his wife or the single woman who loves her friends? Who is more loving—the celibate priest or the sexually active wife?
The answer is: they are all loving. In different ways.
By the way, chastity doesn’t lead to unhealthy behavior. The sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church was, as I see it, more about a small percentage of psychologically unhealthy men who should have never been admitted into seminaries or religious orders in the first place, and some bishops who should have never shuttled them from one parish to another, than it was about chastity per se.
Chastity also takes practice. You don’t become a perfect husband or wife on the day of your wedding. Nor do you understand your chastity completely on the day of your vows. It takes time to grow into your vows in an integrated way. That’s one reason for novitiates and seminaries—they function almost like an engagement, to see if this way of life is right for a person.
“What about lust?” a friend asked recently. Well, the chaste person still has his (or her) head turned by an attractive person and still longs for sex. We’re human, after all. But when that happens, you remind yourself of a few things. First, it’s natural. Second, the life you’ve chosen does not allow that. And third, if you’re completely overcome with a constant desire for sexual intimacy, then something may be missing in your affective life. What is it? An intimate relationship with God in prayer? Fulfilling friendships? Satisfying work? Where might you be not responding to God’s love in your chaste life? Because the chaste person not only makes a vow of chastity but also believes that God will help him in this.
Chastity also helps other people feel safe. People know that you’ve made a commitment to love them in a way that precludes using them, or manipulating them, or spending time with them simply as a means to an end. It gives people a space to relax. As a result, people can often feel freer with their own love.
A few years ago, as I mentioned, I worked with an acting troupe in New York City that was developing an Off-Broadway play on Jesus and Judas. Initially, I aided the playwright with his research for his play and met with the actor playing Judas. Eventually I was