Chastity is always possible and doable

Yes, of course. It’s God’s will in the first place for
chastity to be always possible and doable. And He will always give us
the means necessary. He does not want us to practice it and just leave
us alone to do whatever we can. He gives us all the means in
abundance.

            And if we correspond, if we put our mind and heart into
it, if we are determined to fight—for tremendous, formidable enemies
we have in this area—then chastity need not be an elusive dream or a
false hope or a wishful thinking, but rather a joyful affirmation of
love, a way to assert our identity with God and with others.

            God created us in his image and likeness, and with his
grace, elevated us to be children of his, meant to participate in his
own life, not only in our spirit, but also in our body. We are image
and likeness of God, children of his, both in body and soul, and not
only in one without the other.

            That means that though there is a distinction between our
bodily and spiritual dimensions, we should not forget that there is a
fundamental unity between them, meant to be unbreakable. Absent that
unity, we would fatally compromise our humanity.

            The body then has to be fully infused with the spirit. And
the spirit, which is our soul, should fully animate the body. The body
has to materialize our spiritual life. The soul has to spiritualize
our material world.

            All this dynamism of the mutual relationship between the
body and the soul that is initiated and governed by the love of God
should be sustained by us with God’s grace and our effort.

            This is where the virtue of chastity comes in, a virtue
that becomes more challenging given the wounded and weakened condition
of our body-and-soul relationship.

            Without chastity, we would be doing violence to our
nature. We would open the floodgates to all sorts of immoralities and
perversions. We would be spiritually blind and morally handicapped,
since only the pure of heart can see God, as our Lord said. In this
regard, we don’t have to look far to verify this truth.

            Yet the enormity and complexity of the problem provoked by
the non-living of chastity is also a great opportunity for us to have
a deep conversion and return to God and to a straight and clean moral
life. There is always hope, as long as we react.

            Chastity starts when we fill our mind and heart with good
things—love for God and for others, expressed always in deeds and not
just in intention and words. We need to be driven by love. When we
find ourselves idle, empty, or just languishing and drifting without
clear directions, we have a problem that should be solved immediately.

            Chastity gathers strength when we always pray, when we
have the basic attitude of looking for God in everything and in
everyone, able to refer everything to God. It grows to the extent that
we give ourselves to the others, helping them in whatever way we can,
avoiding self-centeredness and self-absorption.

            Chastity is protected when we keep ourselves busy, when we
make ourselves truly contrite in our confession and transparent in our
spiritual direction, not afraid to be known as we really are and
docile to follow the indications.

            Chastity is defended when we wage a continuing battle
against our weaknesses and the temptations around. We should never
forget that our life is a warfare. We cannot afford to sit pretty and
be complacent.

            We should not allow our weaknesses and the temptations to
chill us into discouragement. Rather they have to spur us to get
closer to our Lord, and to use all the supernatural and human means
available.

            Sometimes the battles are no mere skirmishes but fierce
hand-to-hand combats that can leave us deeply wounded. But it would be
all worthwhile. With God’s grace and our effort, we are assured of
victory always. Even our falls and mistakes can be victories if we
know how to handle them and make use of them to get closer to God.

            From the personal plane, we should try to bring the fight
for chastity to the higher level of cleaning our environment morally.
There’s a lot of pollution and corruption around—pornography easily
accessible, public displays of indecencies, bad example from prominent
persons, accepted social practices that are immoral, etc.

            We should try to get our act together to wage this
struggle with families, church, schools, government, etc., cooperating
synergistically.