April 21, 2003 

"Lust Part II: Everyone is Called to Be Chaste"

Everyone is called to be chaste.  Everyone isn't called to be celibate, but everyone is called to be chaste.  Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure of heart, they shall see God" (Mt 5:8).  What a motive He has given to us for wanting purity of heart!  First of all, He said we're blessed.  We're happy if we have pure hearts.  Children have pure hearts.  He wants us to be happy here in this life as well as in the next.  Even more so, He wants us to have that vision of seeing Him.  Pure hearts can see God.  The whole world becomes a cathedral to pure hearts.  They see God in people.  They see God in events.  They see God in animals.  They also see where God isn't. They have a tremendous gift of discernment.

What are some of the safeguards for purity?  Jesus has given it to us in His third Word of the Cross when He said, "Behold your Mother" (Jn 19:27).  What a safeguard for purity our Mother is!  We need to run to her because she is the immaculate one.  Her heart is an immaculate heart, it's a sinless heart, and she wants to share every grace that she has received from God with her children.  She will do this if we will allow her.  She's calling us to more and more to be reborn into sinlessness, to have sin uprooted.  It doesn't mean the temptations will cease; they won't.  It doesn't mean the harassment of the enemy will cease; they won't.  But they can't make us sin anymore than sin could touch Jesus.  In fact, Jesus Himself said, "Which of you can convict Me of sin?" (see Jn 8:46).  That's a powerful statement.  Wouldn't it be nice if we could turn to anybody and say, "Which of you can convict me of sin?" 

Our Lady is calling us into deeper purity and sinlessness.  The saints tell us the only real escape from the demands of the flesh is to find a higher good, to find something more than flesh to love.  Of course, we can always begin with God and His Mother.  St. Bernard said that if we want to wean someone from sugar, feed them honey.  And so if we want to wean someone from the pleasures of the flesh and from these false loves and enticements, then we should go higher.  God Himself says that, "Come higher, friends" (see Rv 4:1).  He wants us to come into a pure, true love, into a honest-to-God intimacy, into a Heart-to-heart relationship with Himself. 

The choice is always ours.  That's what is so dangerous and scary about our free will.  We have such a power in our free will, and God will not touch it.  Satan cannot touch it either, but he can tempt us to make choices his way.  God will put out His beautiful enticements, honey, you might say, as though we're the little honey bee, to have us sip from His pollen, from His little flower garden.  God and Satan are in total opposite directions, at total combat, total enemies, and one is trying to pull us this way and the other is trying to get us to go the other way.  But neither God nor Satan can force our wills.  In the Garden all our gifts were darkened and damaged, but our free will remained intact so that we could choose.