Chastity

For Saint Ignatius, chastity is more than simply refraining from sex. The step of embracing chastity coincides with that of abandoning the world and giving oneself over completely to God. Therefore, those who are not committing their lives to religious vocations may still find a procedure to embrace chastity with the bounds of marriage or loving commitments.

Chastity can be practiced by all, regardless of state or religious life, or married life, or single life, or some other life by accepting that all our relationships are gifts from God, and in turn, giving those relationships back to God as our gift to Him.

Since love keeps the whole law, and since loving God with every fiber of our being, and loving our neighbors as ourselves are the two commandments that keep the entire law and live up to all of the teachings of the prophets, the spirit of chastity resides in the spirit of love.

Religious love expressed by those in religious vocations who adopt the discipline of chastity wherein they abandon marriage (celibacy) and abandon physical expressions of love through sexual intercourse, do so as an expression of love for all people. They do not let anyone but God lay claim to them, and they will claim no one but God. This opens them to the possibility of being open to love for all. That is the idea anyway. There is a sort of spiritual ownership in marriage. It is in the liturgy itself. In marriage, and husband and wife no longer belong to themselves, but to each other. They exclusively belong to each other. Chastity denies any such exclusivity. By belonging to no one, the religious belongs to everyone, and everyone to the religious.

Yet, for those many who will never take it upon themselves to adopt a religious vocation, what use is chastity for them? Remembering that the law of love IS the law itself, and that the two commands to love God and love neighbor fulfill the whole of Holy Scripture, and remembering that the spirit of chastity resides in the spirit of love, then everyone can practice the spirit of chastity in their every day lives by asking,

"How is this relationship serving God?"
"How can I serve God in this relationship?"
"How can I serve others through this relationship?"
"How is the one with whom I am in this relationship be served through it?"
"If this relationship were a gift I were giving to God, how would I feel giving it?"

In this way, we can begin to learn how to abandon our wants by serving God through our relationships.

So, let the spirit of chastity be defined as THE SPIRIT OF LOVE THAT IS EXPRESSED THROUGH THE HONESTY OF OUR RELATIONSHIPS. It is loving honestly and openly with those who are in our lives. So even those who are married and having sex and parenting children can follow the spirit of chastity in this manner.