S
Shin
Guest
‘Heed me well. . . and thou shalt hear why the fiend has power to hurt some and not others. The fiend has power over such as go about their marrying with all thought of God shut out of their hearts and minds, wholly intent on their lust, as if they were horse or mule, brutes without reason. Not such be thee. . . For three days deny thyself her favours, and the time you spend together, spend all in prayer. Then, when the third night is past, take the maid to thyself with the fear of the Lord upon thee, moved rather by the hope of begetting children than by any lust of thine. . . thou shalt have joy of thy fatherhood.’
Tobias 6:16-22
It’s a good comparison to compare gluttony and over eating with problems of impurity in marriage. Everyone apparently needs to diet and has a problem with gluttony. Impurity is an even stronger temptation, and by the spiritual writers linked to gluttony. Moreover, the penance due for a sin, is the giving up of not only the sin, but the legitimate exercise of the thing abuse. I.e. one must correct in the opposite direction, to be successful in penance.
There’s far more to this, if you approach it properly instead of seeking to prove points before understanding the issue, especially since many modern statements have problems out of the context of tradition, at best. I am recalling the number of feast days requiring married couples give up their rights… and the priests married before ordination giving up theirs…
Study with an open heart. There’s writ within a person the natural law. . Don’t take this culture’s answers…
What is direct motivation? What is indirect object in the mind, focused on? What is spiritual? What is earthly?
It is said that more people go to Hell for sins of impurity than any other sins, and that at least if they go to Hell for some other sin, they do not do so without also impurity.
People who have exercised impurity for its own sake, take that habit with them into marriage, and have not learned what it takes to work against that habit and understood something… different, I tend to think.
‘Human bodies are like glasses, which cannot come into collision without risk of breaking; or to fruits, which, however fresh and ripe, are damaged by pressure. Never permit any one to take any manner of foolish liberty with you, since, although there may be no evil intention, the perfectness of purity is injured thereby. Purity has its source in the heart, but it is in the body that its material results take shape, and therefore it may be forfeited both by the exterior senses and by the thoughts and desires of the heart. All lack of modesty in seeing, hearing, speaking, smelling, or touching, is impurity, especially when the heart takes pleasure therein. St. Paul says without any hesitation that impurity and uncleanness, or foolish and unseemly talking, are not to be “so much as named” among Christians. Remember that there are things which blemish perfect purity, without being in themselves downright acts of impurity. Anything which tends to lessen its intense sensitiveness, or to cast the slightest shadow over it, is of this nature; and all evil thoughts or foolish acts of levity or heedlessness are as steps towards the most direct breaches of the law of chastity. Avoid the society of persons who are wanting in purity, especially if they are bold, as indeed impure people always are.’
‘O Ye virgins, I have but a word to say to you. If you look to married life in this life, guard your first love jealously for your husband. It seems to me a miserable fraud to give a husband a worn-out heart, whose love has been frittered away and despoiled of its first bloom instead of a true, whole-hearted love. But if you are happily called to be the chaste and holy bride of spiritual nuptials, and purpose to live a life of virginity, then in Christ’s Name I bid you keep all your purest, most sensitive love for your Heavenly Bridegroom, Who, being Very Purity Himself, has a special love for purity; Him to Whom the first-fruits of all good things are due, above all those of love.’
St. Francis de Sales
'Self-love is so subtle a robber that it commits its thefts, even upon God himself, without fear or shame, employing his goods as if they were its own, and assigning as a reason that it cannot live without them. And this robbery is hidden under so many veils of apparent good that it can hardly be detected except by the penetrating light of true love, which always desires to remain uncovered and bare, both in heaven and earth, because it has nothing shameful to conceal.
And, therefore, self-love never understands the nature of pure love; for pure love sees not how the things which it knows as they are in truth could possibly be possessed or appropriated; nothing would displease it so much as to find anything which it could call its own; the reason of this is that pure love sees not, nor can it ever see, anything but truth itself, which, being by its nature communicable to all, can never be monopolized by any. Self-love, on the other hand, is in itself an obstacle to truth, and neither believes it nor beholds it, but rather, confiding in itself, holds truth as an enemy and an alien.’
‘Purity of conscience can endure nothing but God only; for He alone is spotless, simple, pure: of all things else, that is, of what is evil, it cannot endure even the smallest spark; this can neither be understood nor appreciated, if it be not felt.’
‘I see clearly with the interior eye, that the sweet God loves with a pure love the creature that He has created, and has a hatred for nothing but sin, which is more opposed to Him than can be thought or imagined.’
St. Catherine of Genoa
Tobias 6:16-22
It’s a good comparison to compare gluttony and over eating with problems of impurity in marriage. Everyone apparently needs to diet and has a problem with gluttony. Impurity is an even stronger temptation, and by the spiritual writers linked to gluttony. Moreover, the penance due for a sin, is the giving up of not only the sin, but the legitimate exercise of the thing abuse. I.e. one must correct in the opposite direction, to be successful in penance.
There’s far more to this, if you approach it properly instead of seeking to prove points before understanding the issue, especially since many modern statements have problems out of the context of tradition, at best. I am recalling the number of feast days requiring married couples give up their rights… and the priests married before ordination giving up theirs…
Study with an open heart. There’s writ within a person the natural law. . Don’t take this culture’s answers…
What is direct motivation? What is indirect object in the mind, focused on? What is spiritual? What is earthly?
It is said that more people go to Hell for sins of impurity than any other sins, and that at least if they go to Hell for some other sin, they do not do so without also impurity.
People who have exercised impurity for its own sake, take that habit with them into marriage, and have not learned what it takes to work against that habit and understood something… different, I tend to think.
‘Human bodies are like glasses, which cannot come into collision without risk of breaking; or to fruits, which, however fresh and ripe, are damaged by pressure. Never permit any one to take any manner of foolish liberty with you, since, although there may be no evil intention, the perfectness of purity is injured thereby. Purity has its source in the heart, but it is in the body that its material results take shape, and therefore it may be forfeited both by the exterior senses and by the thoughts and desires of the heart. All lack of modesty in seeing, hearing, speaking, smelling, or touching, is impurity, especially when the heart takes pleasure therein. St. Paul says without any hesitation that impurity and uncleanness, or foolish and unseemly talking, are not to be “so much as named” among Christians. Remember that there are things which blemish perfect purity, without being in themselves downright acts of impurity. Anything which tends to lessen its intense sensitiveness, or to cast the slightest shadow over it, is of this nature; and all evil thoughts or foolish acts of levity or heedlessness are as steps towards the most direct breaches of the law of chastity. Avoid the society of persons who are wanting in purity, especially if they are bold, as indeed impure people always are.’
‘O Ye virgins, I have but a word to say to you. If you look to married life in this life, guard your first love jealously for your husband. It seems to me a miserable fraud to give a husband a worn-out heart, whose love has been frittered away and despoiled of its first bloom instead of a true, whole-hearted love. But if you are happily called to be the chaste and holy bride of spiritual nuptials, and purpose to live a life of virginity, then in Christ’s Name I bid you keep all your purest, most sensitive love for your Heavenly Bridegroom, Who, being Very Purity Himself, has a special love for purity; Him to Whom the first-fruits of all good things are due, above all those of love.’
St. Francis de Sales
'Self-love is so subtle a robber that it commits its thefts, even upon God himself, without fear or shame, employing his goods as if they were its own, and assigning as a reason that it cannot live without them. And this robbery is hidden under so many veils of apparent good that it can hardly be detected except by the penetrating light of true love, which always desires to remain uncovered and bare, both in heaven and earth, because it has nothing shameful to conceal.
And, therefore, self-love never understands the nature of pure love; for pure love sees not how the things which it knows as they are in truth could possibly be possessed or appropriated; nothing would displease it so much as to find anything which it could call its own; the reason of this is that pure love sees not, nor can it ever see, anything but truth itself, which, being by its nature communicable to all, can never be monopolized by any. Self-love, on the other hand, is in itself an obstacle to truth, and neither believes it nor beholds it, but rather, confiding in itself, holds truth as an enemy and an alien.’
‘Purity of conscience can endure nothing but God only; for He alone is spotless, simple, pure: of all things else, that is, of what is evil, it cannot endure even the smallest spark; this can neither be understood nor appreciated, if it be not felt.’
‘I see clearly with the interior eye, that the sweet God loves with a pure love the creature that He has created, and has a hatred for nothing but sin, which is more opposed to Him than can be thought or imagined.’
St. Catherine of Genoa