The freedom to love: the gift of chastity

Certainly a document on the family, such as the one recently published by the Pontifical Dicastery on the family, arouses attention and gratitude. But the proposal, contained in the document, of chastity for engaged couples and of the same virtue as a service of truth to love has aroused a certain amazement especially on the part of those who saw in this proposal as a return to a negative vision of sexuality and a judgment of sinfulness regarding its exercise. Pope Francis is aware that proposing the precious virtue of chastity is now in direct contrast with the common mentality. The thought goes to the widespread experience of coexistence lived in full sexual intimacy and to the thought that the attraction between two people is normally thought and lived also sexually from the first moments of their meeting.

If we then think of the gloomy gaze that surrounds many of those who see and search for pornographic images, talking about chastity is also exposing oneself to possible derision, for that purely playful vision of the body and sexuality that accompanies so many speeches and unfortunately so many relationships.

Chastity, on the other hand, indicates a horizon that goes beyond sexual activity, or at least its reduction to a simple proof of love, to place itself on the level of culture and above all of a moral spirituality that affirms and promotes the good of sexuality and love. as a gift. But this takes time, including the time of waiting and above all that of getting to know each other. In fact, to be understood and lived, chastity requires a more attentive look and a broader horizon, to live a love that accepts the time necessary to learn to love, where the deprivation of a pleasure that is easy to satisfy can lead lovers to know each other. truth and beauty, therefore a time in which to live the qualities of love that a vision of love flattened on emotions, and often only on pleasure, easily leads to neglect. Chastity is a way of affirming, as regards love and the ability to love, that time is superior to space. “Chastity must be presented as an authentic ‘ally of love’, not as its negation. Indeed, it is the privileged way to learn to respect the individuality and dignity of the other, without subordinating him to one’s own desires ”, as number 57 of the document on the family that we are commenting reminds us of.

Chastity is freedom from possession in all areas of life. Only when a love is chaste is it true love. The logic of love is always a logic of freedom. The vocation to conjugal love is a vocation to the gift of oneself. To be able to do this it is necessary to come to possess oneself. Chastity is not a rejection of sexuality and pleasure, and it certainly does not arise from the consideration that in the sexual sphere everything is sin, but it allows the emotional relationship to mature gradually and in depth.

The virtue of chastity teaches respect for the other, the concern to never submit to one’s desires, patience and gentleness towards the loved one in moments of physical and spiritual difficulty, strength and self-control. The fundamental question is to decide if we want experiences that lead to lasting love or if we are satisfied with experiences that are structured in the consummation of moments of emotion, where relationships resist until the elements of pleasure are the most convincing ones. Chastity is a love that before being an exercise of sexuality is contemplation, a look of goodness, respect and wonder in seeing the beauty of God in the loved one and in all creatures. Chastity allows the body to enter the freedom of spiritual and fully human love, a path also towards the experience of pleasure, the intensity of which is always welcomed as a gift and escapes when pleasure is sought as an end in itself.
Certainly such growth in love is aided by that discipline of feelings and passions which is required by the virtue of chastity. When there is only the shared physical space and not the personal one, there is the risk of falling into a possessive delusion that risks becoming fixated on the “physical exploitation of the other” (n. 57). Chastity has “a very important positive dimension of freedom from possessing the other” (n. 57). Nobody can give what he doesn’t have; if the person is not in control of himself, he lacks the ability to give himself. Chastity is the spiritual energy that frees love from selfishness and aggression. Eros certainly does not forget the dynamics of desire, but is called to accept the challenge of difference and distance. Erotic intelligence can find in the practice of temporal distance the way to a more authentic love and a deeper desire.

We are not afraid, therefore, to speak of interior struggle and asceticism, in order to have a contemplative gaze on love. The eager and fascinating eros will have more and more to seek the happiness of the other, otherwise he will die over time. Sexuality cannot be reduced to genitality alone, a misunderstanding that can lead to its consummation without obligation. The capacity to give and to welcome is wider than that exercised in genitality, because it affects the whole person and his relationships. Sexuality pushes us into a relationship with the other, but it depends on us to seek exchange and sharing or the narcissistic possession of oneself and of the other in this relationship.

Chastity thus becomes the joyful affirmation of those who know how to live in the gift of self. Chastity matures the person and fills him with inner peace. For all this, chastity appears also today a virtue, and a choice of life, not only possible, but “a precious condition for the genuine growth of interpersonal love” (Amoris laetitiae, 206). His proposal allows discernment on the love that is being lived and also on the times in which this is fulfilled. Invite a decision. The long periods of engagement, which often become those of coexistence, are provoked by the virtue of chastity to become a real time of discernment, to see if what one is experiencing is true, if it has the strength of the future and the fullness of the present, whether it is a project or a simple being together, perhaps to overcome loneliness. If then the positively charged discernment did not immediately lead to the celebration of marriage, while the need for reciprocal gift grows in the certainty that love already has the form of chastity and has within it a promise of love and fidelity, chastity will help to remove all malice and to live in the gift of oneself, which does not necessarily identify the exercise of sexuality as a sin against love, but perhaps as a form, albeit still imperfect, of chastity of the heart, which is always a participation in grace of God when one becomes a participant in his gaze of love.

Massimo Regini