READING 1
John 15:12-15
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
READING 2
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church
2338 The chaste person maintains the integrity of the powers of life and love placed in him. This integrity ensures the unity of the person; it is opposed to any behavior that would impair it. It tolerates neither a double life nor duplicity in speech.
2339 Chastity includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training in human freedom. The alternative is clear: either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy. “Man’s dignity therefore requires him to act out of conscious and free choice, as moved and drawn in a personal way from within, and not by blind impulses in himself or by mere external constraint. Man gains such dignity when, ridding himself of all slavery to the passions, he presses forward to his goal by freely choosing what is good and, by his diligence and skill, effectively secures for himself the means suited to this end.”1
2340 Whoever wants to remain faithful to his baptismal promises and resist temptations will want to adopt the means for doing so: self-knowledge, practice of an ascesis adapted to the situations that confront him, obedience to God’s commandments, exercise of the moral virtues, and fidelity to prayer. “Indeed it is through chastity that we are gathered together and led back to the unity from which we were fragmented into multiplicity.”2
2341 The virtue of chastity comes under the cardinal virtue of temperance, which seeks to permeate the passions and appetites of the senses with reason.
2342 Self-mastery is a long and exacting work. One can never consider it acquired once and for all. It presupposes renewed effort at all stages of life. The effort required can be more intense in certain periods, such as when the personality is being formed during childhood and adolescence.
2343 Chastity has laws of growth which progress through stages marked by imperfection and too often by sin. “Man… day by day builds himself up through his many free decisions; and so he knows, loves, and accomplishes moral good by stages of growth.”3
2344 Chastity represents an eminently personal task; it also involves a cultural effort, for there is “an interdependence between personal betterment and the improvement of society.” Chastity presupposes respect for the rights of the person, in particular the right to receive information and an education that respect the moral and spiritual dimensions of human life.
2345 Chastity is a moral virtue. It is also a gift from God, a grace, a fruit of spiritual effort. The Holy Spirit enables one whom the water of Baptism has regenerated to imitate the purity of Christ.
2346 Charity is the form of all the virtues. Under its influence, chastity appears as a school of the gift of the person. Self-mastery is ordered to the gift of self. Chastity leads him who practices it to become a witness to his neighbor of God’s fidelity and loving kindness.
2347 The virtue of chastity blossoms in friendship. It shows the disciple how to follow and imitate him who has chosen us as his friends, who has given himself totally to us and allows us to participate in his divine estate. Chastity is a promise of immortality.
Chastity is expressed notably in friendship with one’s neighbor. Whether it develops between persons of the same or opposite sex, friendship represents a great good for all. It leads to spiritual communion.
REFLECTION
At the Last Supper, Jesus taught His disciples what true friendship means: totality of self-gift even to the degree of laying down my life for my friend; totality of trust, even to the point that I do whatever my friend tells me; totality of self-revelation, even to the point that I entrust my whole heart to my friend.
The Program for Priestly Formation 6th edition sets out friendship with Jesus as one of the goals of seminary formation. How do we develop such great heights of friendship? The Catechism teaches us that it goes along with the virtue of chastity, which “blossoms in friendship.” Chastity is the virtue that governs our personal relationships, particularly in the dimensions of intimacy. Intimacy is based on the sharing of our interior lives. We have intimacy when heart speaks to heart, when the inside of me is inside of you and the inside of you is inside of me. Our capacity to take another into our heart is a uniquely human quality, made in the image of God (cf. John 17).
This requires a path of self-knowledge. We have to grow in awareness of what is in our hearts and how we are affected by our relationships as well as by the culture. It also requires self-mastery, in our ability to freely choose to receive or not, to share or not, to trust or not. It requires self-gift, in our ability to discern and then actually to give ourselves to another and open ourselves to the gift of another. All this we can learn from St. Joseph’s Most Chaste Heart.
How well do you know yourself? How free are you interiorly? How far along the path of self-mastery and self-gift have you come? How are your relationships? How developed is the virtue of chastity in your life? How is your friendship with Jesus? How is your friendship with others?
Litany of St. Joseph or
Ancient Prayer of St. Joseph or
Ad te beate Ioseph
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