Surrendering to the Healing Power of Christ's Own Chastity | Deacon James Keating, Ph.D., Institute for Priestly Formation | Ignatius Insight
Surrendering to the Healing Power of Christ's Own Chastity | Deacon James Keating, Ph.D., Institute for Priestly Formation | Ignatius Insight
http://ignatiusinsight.com/features2009/jkeating_chastity1_aug09.asp
The appropriation of chastity as a
stable character trait is won through struggle for most men. Chastity comes at
a price. There are, however, some men who appear to be protected in this area
by grace, reporting little temptation to choose against chaste living. This
grace can and must be prayed for by every man, but each man must accept his
real relationship with the virtue of chastity here and now, and for most men
that means struggle. This struggle will not mark one's entire life; because
over time, as the beauty of one's sexual identity is related to the mystery
of Christ, His own irenic strength
assists a man to resist the temptation to choose unchaste acts. In the light of
this grace a man will no longer see unchaste acts as occasions for artificial
consolation. Continuous struggle is not God's will for men. Neither is resting
in artificial consolation. If a man orders his affections to the mystery of
Christ's love, his desires will be purified and authentic consolation will
characterize his interior life.
In this essay I wish to address the
chastity formation needs of seminarians. Sound chastity formation is always
approached in the context of the nuptial truths of the body. It is useful, on occasion, to raise particular questions about chastity to assist seminarians in
gaining self-mastery. As a further concentration in this essay, then, I will
approach the question of masturbation and how the spiritual/moral life, in the
context of the sacraments, can heal a man of this behavioral habit.
Purified Eros
Unchaste acts are to be rejected. [1]
This rejection is not a violent act of self-will but a surrender in faith-filled
prayer to the healing power of Christ's own chastity. A man is to cry out and let the mystery of Christ's
own obedience to truth, His own
love of the Father, and His own
spousal love of the Church enter and
console the desolate heart. Such consolation yields freedom and peace. By way
of faith, Christ's spousal identity enters a man empowering him to live his
sexual identity as gift rather than using the power of sexuality for genital
self-pleasure.
In Benedict XVI's encyclical Deus Caritas Est we read this:
Eros, reduced to pure "sex," has become a commodity; a mere "thing" to be bought and
sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man's great
"yes" to the body. On the contrary, he now considers his body . . . as the
purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will. Nor does he
see it as an arena for the exercise of his freedom, but as a mere object that
he attempts, as he pleases, to make both enjoyable and harmless. Christian
faith . . . has always considered man a unity in duality, a reality in which
spirit and matter compenetrate, and in which each is brought to a new nobility.
True, eros tends to rise "in
ecstasy" towards the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves; yet for this very
reason it calls for a path of ascent, renunciation, purification and healing.
[2]
Purified eros leads us beyond ourselves. Masturbation is a
counterfeit act, stemming from wounded affections yet to be healed or untutored
minds yet to be instructed. We can arrive at an awareness of what heals such
wounds and enlightens untutored or mal-tutored minds "by contemplating the
pierced side of Christ" (DCE, no.
12). It is there that God's healing love can affect us and make us vulnerable
to the salve our wounds need. It is in contemplating the pierced side of Christ
that our definition of love is given to us. "In this contemplation [of the
pierced side of Christ] the Christian discovers the path along which his life
and love must move." (DCE, no.
12).
Unpurified sexual desires are ignoble
and need to be related to this great mystery of the sacrifice of Christ, the
Bridegroom (Christ) loving His Bride (the Church). When this divine spousal
love is participated in by way of prayer, it has the power to purify a man's
sexual desires and order them correctly.
In this prayer for healing, Christ, the icon of true love, tutors the
affections and conscience of the seminarian, leading him to behold the pierced
side and what it encompasses: the call to choose self-forgetfulness out of love
for another. Initially this
prescription for healing may seem remote to the seminarian who is lamenting his
weak will before temptations to chastity, but it is in fact the reservoir of
all healing for the wounded eros.
Christ, the Bridegroom, sacrifices Himself for the good of the Bride unto His
own death. Here, in Christ, there is no taking, no fear of missing out on
pleasure, no lack of trust that what one has given to God will ever be lost
(Luke 17:33). In other words, the man is being formed to trust that God is providential,
that He cares for legitimate needs.
Unhealed erotic movements of the will
become enslaved to immediate and artificial consolation. It is a consolation
that looks to relieve, through physical pleasure, a host of painful emotions
(self-hate, loneliness, anger, fear, grief, boredom) that remain unrelated to
the Paschal Mystery. The relief sought in masturbation only returns compounded
sadness, and a horrifying habit of choosing more and more of what satisfies
less and less. If this habit of entering
misguided pleasure is not healed, then the man enters a cycle of shame that
increases in force. Thus the seminarian becomes vulnerable to a deadening
despair born in self-made aloneness. This despair increases cynicism toward
life, goodness, and "the woman" (Gen 3:12, 20; Jn 19:26; Jn 2:3-5). The
"healing" occurs as the wound is acknowledged, the lies are unveiled, and the
light of Jesus's love reveals the Truth. This Divine love has to be received into
a man's wounds so that it can alter
the external behavior from within. Defining the struggle for chastity is often
a deep pain that is at the root of
inappropriate behavior, a pain that needs healing, not numbing.
In the man who masturbates lies a
distressing contradiction: he is attempting to reach the other by being closed in upon the self. In the authentic sexual act a husband beholds his
wife in love, faces her in self-giving, and is received by her in love. The man who masturbates faces no one.
He gazes upon emptiness, or if the act is stimulated by pornography, he enters
fantasy and thus conjures up a false "bride" who leads him only to depression.
Such a man never faces the one whom he is called to give his life to in love.
Since he faces no one, he has no opportunity to receive the joy of being beheld
by another in love. The reception of
the beloved's gaze ("This is my
Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," Luke 3:22) begins to heal the desire
to masturbate. This desire most likely began in youthful innocence but soon
became entangled in satanic lies. In accepting these lies the affections of the
man were twisted and he began to choose the act for itself, an act that can give only false consolation.
Concurrent with seeking false
consolation, all young men still encounter a desire in the heart "to be known"
and "to know" a woman in sexual communion. This desire is his experience of the
"nuptial meaning of the body" and is, of itself, holy and to be reverenced. The
seminarian, however, may not know what to do with this desire and may fear
acknowledging it since his vocation calls him to celibacy. He may feel shame
for having this desire at all, thinking it is a sign of vocational conflict.
Seminary formators hasten to assist a man to attend to this desire in prayer
and in prayerful conversation with his spiritual director. The presence of
affective desolation can be the result of a man choosing to attend to the
unreal in his fantasy life rather
than the truth of the nuptial meaning of his body. By attending to the nuptial meaning of the body, the
affectively mature man experiences a strengthening of his spiritual life and
the cessation of the dominance of passing emotions. [3] The spiritual life and
the knowledge of reality that is its core assigns emotions their proper and helpful place. The mature seminarian
is led by the nuptial meaning of his body and the spiritual truths that reside
in his heart.
Many men report a pattern of life that
leads them to being vulnerable to masturbation. In this pattern a man may find
that a certain time of day and the emotion that accompanies this time tempts
him to unchaste acts (e.g., viewing pornography). Certain ordinary activities
may tempt him, such as completing a work day or project, or reaching a
deadline, after which he finds his affect is low ("Now what do I do?"). It is
not always the obvious erotic seductions that enter the consciousness and lead
a man to seek consolation in sexual experiences. Vigilance is crucial. As
Ignatius of Loyola taught, the time to let grace heal temptation is at the very
beginning of its emergence into consciousness, not after a man has entertained
the thought for awhile. If one waits, the will is weakened.
To heal the habit of masturbation a man
needs to be awake to his own interior thoughts and feelings so that he can follow the advice of Ignatius and stave
off sin before its interior promptings overwhelm the will. It is good to take
the counsel of Christ here, as He struggled against the temptation in the
Garden of Gethsemane to avoid the cross. He said to his disciples, who were
prone to sleep, "Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into
temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Matt 26:41). [4] All
too often men will mistake a calm period of emotions within them as a sign of
mastery over sexual sins, only to be caught off guard when their defenses are
down, no longer awake and watching. They have become "sleepers" (Eph 5:14).
Prayer, as difficult as it is to maintain as a commitment, is crucial for the
healing of unchaste habits. Prayer is a life's commitment and not an ad hoc reality to be entered only in the face of temptation.
Temptation dissipates in a man of prayer; it can heighten in a man who confuses
periodic emotional quietude for anything other than that.
Nuptial Truth
Since Christ only chooses truth, He can
be a bearer of "perfect joy" in his spousal love of the Church, while a man who
acts out of unhealed eros can
never reach this joy of the husband. Such a man is destined to a prison of
habitual and fleeting pleasure, a pleasure that can never satisfy or give peace
since it is disconnected from the truth of sex. In such a case the man
continually returns to masturbation in a vain attempt to console himself of
wounds that have come to define him. These defining wounds remain if such are
not related to the Bridegroom's mysterious self-giving upon the cross. To
become liberated from this prison the seminarian contemplates in the Bridegroom
the opposite image of such stark loneliness. Christ, in perfect chastity, faces
his bride from the cross and offers all to her as symbolized by the pierced
side. "Stoic thought regards the heart as . . . that which holds things
together, aims at self preservation. . . . The pierced heart of Jesus has . . .
overturned this definition. This heart is not concerned with self-preservation
but with self-surrender. It saves the world by opening itself. . . . The heart
saves . . . by giving itself away." [5]
Here the heart of Christ speaks to the
heart of the wounded seminarian. The seminarian's wounds are addressed, attended
to, and healed by the Heart of Christ. It is this Christ who leads the
seminarian with bands of love, whose heart grows warm and tender (Hosea 11:4,
8). This is the God who calls the man out of slavery to lust (Hosea 11:1). This
call from Christ is deeper than prohibiting acts of sin, however. [6] This call
from the heart of Christ endeavors to reach the depth of pain and aimless
wandering that besets the seminarian. An unchaste man may be enslaved to lust,
but often it is not lust that owns him.More often than not unchaste
behavior originates in the wounds mentioned above: felt isolation and the
paralysis of a fear that prevents a man from surrendering in prayer to a new
level of spiritual vulnerability. This fear of surrender to God is often fueled
by lies nesting in his heart that portray God as One who wants to take and not
share. [7]
In truth God wants to call to the
seminarian from within His own sinfulness, his own hiding from love, so that He can minister to the needs of the
seminarian from within. It is a seminarian's darkness within his heart that
cries to God, invites God, summons God to be who He is for such a man:
compassion. "Far from diminishing God's yearning for us, our brokenness
unleashes in him yet deeper wellsprings of tenderness and mercy." [8] One is not determined to remain on a conveyor
belt of sin. There is in Christ the end of sin, its healing. Here we can begin
to see the power of spiritual direction and its necessary role in
healing.If a man can relate his thoughts, feelings, and images to his
spiritual director, he can learn to abide with these in prayer as well. After a
while the prayer and the spiritual direction interpenetrate so that in a very
real way spiritual direction becomes prayer, and prayer readies a man to name
the intimacy he has with God to his own spiritual director. In fact the man
becomes eager for direction because he knows that He will find God's love for
him there.
Spiritual direction, while separate in
its own right, goes hand in hand with the Sacrament of Reconciliation, so it's
important to encourage seminarians to confess not only sinful acts but also sinfulness, the specific lies that he has believed, the (false)
attitudes he has lived. It's important to confess his resistance to relating
certain affections that he experiences to the love of Christ upon the cross
("I'd rather hold on to anger than give it up"). [9] It's vital for a man to
confess his choice to avoid affectively-deep prayer, instead choosing to manage
his pain through escapist behaviors or compensate for the pain by masturbation.
The Sacrament of Reconciliation is the promised place of forgiveness for all mortal and venial sin. Along with this
sacrament, the Eucharist is the promised place of healing for our sinfulness, for the roots of our particular
sins.
Eucharistic Power
Primarily, healing takes place at the
Eucharist where the great mystery of divine mercy offers us freedom in a
regular and substantial colloquy of love. [10] Here, as we place our sinful
desires into the wounds and heart of Christ, we receive one of His greatest
moral gifts to us: a growing disinterest in sin.
Unless a man is relating his pain to
Christ's love for him in deep prayer, however, and inviting Jesus into his
wounds outside of Mass, healing is not very likely to happen in the celebration
of the Eucharist. To pray for healing a man has to stare at the truth of his
interior life—his fantasies, images, feelings, unhealed erotic
desires—and name them before the love that Christ is offering. In this
naming and acknowledging of disordered desires, Christ comes with healing and
mercy not condemnation. This work is complex and needs to be accomplished both
within contemplative prayer outside of the Eucharist and also in personal
prayer at the Eucharist. One or the other is usually not sufficient.
The power of the resurrection is always
at work in the Eucharist, inviting us to relate our sins to the spousal
self-donation of Christ even as this obedient self-donation breaks Him free
from suffering and death. It is into this obedience that the seminarian is
invited. If he trails after Christ to the cross, then the fruit of such love
will wash over him and heal him, leading the seminarian to no longer hide from
the light (John 3:14-21), for his desires now will be Christ's, and he will
receive from Christ what he had been looking for and trying to behold in
unchaste acts: a gaze from a face of love.
This gaze, however, is not Christ's
alone. It is also Mary's and the Church's. Christ wants the seminarian to take
seriously the bestowal of relationships that happened under the cross. John,
the priest, is to receive Mary into everything that is his own (John 19:27),
especially his identity as chaste spouse, spiritual father, beloved son, and
good shepherd. Mary is the particular face of the Church. [11] This church is the priest's "Bride" to whom he
dedicates himself while prostrate on the cathedral floor. In this spousal
self-giving, a man does not give himself to an indeterminate Bride but to an
"other," served now in a moral mystical way through the real needs of
parishioners. Mary, the one who received the gift of chastity with eager
availability, tutors the seminarian to know that his own chastity for the sake
of self-giving is the ongoing identification of his priesthood with the
priesthood of Christ. What awaits the man who seeks liberation from unchaste
acts is the strength of all of Nazareth, as Mary and Joseph intercede for his
priesthood and instruct him in the ways of healing that serve the mystery of a
chaste union with the Bride.
"There are struggles that we cannot
sustain alone, without the help of divine grace. When speech can no longer find
the right words, the need arises for a loving presence: We seek closeness not only with those who share the
same blood or are linked to us by friendship, but also the closeness of those
who are intimately bound to us by faith." [12] The Holy Family is a presence that is real to those who
believe. In their own love for one another they influence our capacity to love
and be loved. Here Joseph, especially, leads the seminarian to the threshold of
true surrender. Joseph—man, sinner, true husband of the Immaculate
Conception—longs to show the seminarian the way of joy found in an
embodied freedom after the Spirit of Christ. [13] The seminarian ought to grow
close to this mystery of Nazareth as the living inhabitants of its family love
his priesthood more than the seminarian does. As then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote, "The New Covenant began . .
. in the simple dwelling of the Virgin. . . . The Church can always begin anew
from that place and recover her health from that place." [14]
Finally, the Eucharist is a source of
healing for disordered sexual desire because it is in fact the wedding of the
Lamb (Rev 21). It is a marriage between heaven and earth, God and humanity, and
so any sexual disorders are taken up into the truth of what a seminarian's
masculinity is for. If the seminarian is vulnerable, if he enters the bridal
chamber of the cross with a willingness to expose the truth of his own heart,
then the Bridegroom will heal him to such a point that he will be able to love
the Bride like Christ, unto death. Here the desolate one, the orphan seminarian
(Hosea 14:3), the one bereft and alone, is taken up into the Paschal Mystery
and the community of love, the Church, where all his ills are
set right.
Here at the Eucharist we are at the
birth of the new Eve, the Church, the body of Christ (Ephesians 5:28: "Husbands
love your wife as you do your own body"). Participating in the Eucharistic mystery of Christ's resurrected
body, the seminarian is enabled by the Spirit to offer his own body as a living
sacrifice (Rom 12:1). No longer is he interested in the selfish pleasure of
disordered desire, for he no longer hides from the nuptial mystery; he is,
rather, defined by it. Even in
singleness, in celibacy all men are defined, marked by the nuptial mystery of
Christ. One cannot escape the demands of being husband, the demand of
contemplating the Bride and her needs over the temptations to wallow in the
fleeting abnormal consolation of unchaste acts. In the Eucharist the new
creation is being worked out; there is no stronger, more immediate contact with
salvation than in the Eucharistic Liturgy. "While Christ lies in total passivity
and availability [the contemplative sleep of Adam (Gen 2:21)], . . . the
Heavenly Father together with the Creator Spirit who rejoices over [the dying
Christ] works out the new creation, making flow from His open side, and His
body drained of all its blood, the body of the Bride of Christ." [15] In this
ultimate sacrament, Christ is continually rendering Himself available to the
Bride under sacramental signs. He is giving everything out of the power of His
resurrection and through the ministry of the priest. In so giving, the Bride
receives the depths of His love. In this plentiful assembly of mystery (Eph
5:32), surely the roots of unchastity are to be healed. Christ wills that it is
so (Matt 8:5ff). The Eucharist is the fountain of mercy—a mercy that raises
one to new living. "See I make all things new" (Rev 21:5).
The Mercy of God in the Face of Human Weakness
"God, who is rich in mercy, out of the
great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead through our sins made us alive together with Christ"
(Eph 4:2-5a). "Mercy does not
pertain only to the notion of God, but it is something that characterizes the
life of the whole people of Israel and each of its sons and daughters: mercy
is the content of one's intimacy with their Lord, the content of their dialogue with Him." [16] The
content of intimacy between the seminarian and the Lord is the acceptance of
divine mercy. This reception of mercy, of relating all our sins to God's
compassion, is the way into a sustained life of grace. Here, too, is the
beginning of contemplation as a man relates the truth of his own weaknesses to
the strength of divine love. The call to holiness bids us to live in this
mystery—to hold nothing back from the heart of Christ and to resist
turning from Him no matter how shameful or embarrassing our actions are.
When we see ourselves to be so weak, always falling
into the same sins, we are tempted to say to ourselves, "Can it be possible
that Jesus does not grow weary of this?" We have all had this temptation at one
time or another. "I have promised Him so much, I have made so many resolutions,
and I always fall again; it is impossible that He does not get tired of it." It
is a kind of blasphemy to say that, because it is to limit a mercy which has no
limit. It is to doubt the patience, the indulgence, the untiring clemency of
Jesus. It is not He who grows weary of us; it is we who grow weary of
looking at our ugliness. [17]
To become weary of sin is good, but to
become weary of choosing to relate our sin to the mercy of God is to be adrift
in the moral/spiritual life. It is not in forgetting our sins, or ignoring them
or calling them by other names, such as liberation or adulthood, that gifts us
with happiness. Only the regular reception of the truth about our affective and
spiritual wounds in relationship to the mercy of God
can keep us happy. The goal of
being aware of one's own sinfulness in relation to God's own mercy is not
simply a life of "more of the same" until we die, but the reality of a healed imagination, will, and affect. Our faith bids us to invite
Jesus into our wounds, asking Jesus for his own affections. Healing comes from receiving truth: "Tell me who I am, Jesus."
There is a need to renounce the lies
that the seminarian believes about himself so that Jesus can come into the wounds and heal them. There's no
"room" for Him if the lies continue to "live" in the man's heart. "Watch and
pray" (Mt.26:41). This virtue of chastity is won in struggle and vigilance: Watch for the enemy to come, and stay in prayer to battle against his arrival. The
seminarian endeavors to entrust himself to the teachers of chastity: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
Practical Points for Healing
1. Unchaste acts are to be rejected in
faith. This rejection is not a violent act of self-will but a surrender in
prayer to the healing power of Christ's own chastity. When temptation arrives, begin the process of
surrender by strongly renouncing the whispers of Satan ("Here in this sin is
where you find consolation; here in this sin is where you will be loved."). No,
we find true consolation and receive love from the absolute truth that Christ
will never abandon us.
2. It is in contemplating the pierced
side of Christ that our definition of love is given to us. "In this
contemplation [of the pierce side of Christ] the Christian discovers the path
along which his life and love must move." [18] Place your sexual desires into
the wounds of Christ; whatever these images are, however embarrassing or
explicit, place them in the wounds. In His wounds, in His self-offering love,
is your healing. Press the images in your mind into the wounds. If you need to,
if the temptation is very strong, hold a crucifix and place it against your
heart until the tenacious emotions pass and you stand in peace with Christ's love.
Christ's love is received by sharing your truthful emotions, ideas, and images
with Him. If you retain the temptations to yourself and do not share them with
Christ in prayer, satanic lies can continue to hide within them, to visit you
again at a later time of vulnerability.
3. Unhealed erotic movements [19] of the
will become enslaved to immediate and artificial consolation. It is a false
consolation that looks to physical pleasure to relieve a multitude of emotions
that remain unrelated to the Paschal Mystery. As we become aware of our
interior life, we also become aware of common habits of thought that are
accompanied by affections and emotions. Find the root emotions ("I feel
rejected") for the thoughts that lead you to seek relief in unchaste acts, and
instead relate these emotions to Christ in prayer. This is an ongoing movement,
not an isolated act simply to be used at the time of temptation. This ongoing
relating of sexual desire and temptation is crucial, because the healing of the
roots of unchaste behavior is a developmental reality. Be patient with
yourself, gentle. Violent self-hate or disappointment will only fuel stress and
lead you to seek relief in artificial consolation again.
4. The man who masturbates faces no one.
He gazes upon emptiness, or if the act is stimulated by pornography, he enters
fantasy and thus conjures up a false "bride" who leads him only to depression. The
reception of the beloved's gaze
("This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," Luke 3:22) begins the
healing process of the sin of masturbation. To build the virtue of chastity,
regularly enter a prayer that focuses upon the image of the Beloved Son. You
are that son. Receive the love. Face your Father and let Him love you. You can
do this by lectio divina, gazing
upon an icon, imagining a conversation between you and the Father wherein He
displays His love for you in words or an embrace, a kind look, a smile. [20]
Preeminently Eucharistic Adoration is a way to let the face of God's love
behold and heal the seminarian, while he beholds such love in return. The goal
is to receive the truth that you are beheld in love by God. Mary, the woman,
should also be received as one who looks upon you in love and smiles upon you.
Let the Father have all of your explicit memories of loneliness and sexual desire. Relate them to Him, hold nothing back.
Let Him heal your wounds of isolation upon the cross of Christ.
5. The presence of affective desolation
can be the result of a man choosing to attend to what is unreal by way of his
fantasy life rather than attending to
what is real by way of the truth of the nuptial meaning of his body. By attending to the nuptial meaning of the body, the
affectively mature man experiences a strengthening of his spiritual life and
the cessation of the dominance of passing emotions. Meditate and prayerfully
read about the vocation of being a priest. This reading, however, should be
focused upon the nuptial identity of the priest, his deep sharing in Christ's
way of being embodied: available for self-giving but also available to receive
the love of the Bride and the intimate and surpassing love of the Father. Give
the literature that reduces priesthood to acquired competencies or professional
skills the low level of attention that it is owed and no more. [21]
6. Christ said to his disciples, who
were prone to sleep, "Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into
temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Matt 26:41). All too
often men will mistake a calm period of emotions within them as a sign of
mastery over sexual sins, only to be caught off guard when their defenses are
down, no longer awake and watching. They have become "sleepers" (Eph 5:14).
Prayer keeps us awake. Commit yourself to daily contemplative prayer. In this prayer,
offer your bodies as a living sacrifice to God. Surrender to God your entire
sexual identity. Ask Mary to assist you in receiving women as equal in dignity
and as superior intercessors for your own commitment to chaste celibacy. Share
your erotic affections and needs with the Trinity ("I am lonely, I wish I could
enjoy a life with a wife, I wish I could hold a woman") and also with Mary and
Joseph. Joseph knows just how you feel. He wants to heal you and comfort you. Mary
knows, too, because she understands the legitimate desire of a husband to
embrace his wife, and yet she knows too the call from God for some men to
refrain from that embrace for the sake of the gospel. These saints are there
for you. Receiving their love in prayer changes your affections, your desires,
your mind. Let them love you in prayer.
7. Our faith bids us to invite Jesus
into our wounds, asking Jesus for his own affections. Healing comes from receiving truth: "Tell me who I am, Jesus." "You are the Beloved One.
Allow Me to infuse this identity into you through the healing power of My
Spirit."
ENDNOTES:
[1] In this essay I am concerned with healing habitual or periodic masturbation. Moral
theology has the guidance we need to determine the level of sin involved in
these actions. I will not be directly analyzing this. My focus is more on the
healing of the habit than assisting persons to understand its gravity as a sin.
Of course the major reason to heal this habit is to become free from its sinful
elements when full knowledge and consent have come into play. For a good source
on the sinful aspects of masturbation see Ronald Lawler et al., Catholic
Sexual Ethics: A Summary, Explanation, & Defense (Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor, 1998).
[2] Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est (DCE) (2005), no. 5.
[3] The nuptial meaning of the body places the
man before the truth of his identity as husband. All men, even
celibates, are called in Christ to surrender to the good of the Bride, and not
to follow passion for pleasure alone. Relating his need for pleasure to his
nuptial call directs the man to satisfy this desire within other appropriate
venues (i.e. not masturbation) where temperance directs his will.
[4] David Fleming, SJ, Draw Me Into Your Friendship: The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius,(St. Louis: Institute for Jesuit
Sources, 1996) nos. 333-335.
[5] Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Behold the Pierced One (San Francisco:
Ignatius, 1986), 69.
[6] I would distinguish between sinful acts—freely chosen
acts that destroy or undermine a man's relationship to truth and to
God—and sinfulness—the roots of sin that flow from wrong attitudes and
beliefs (intellect) that one consciously or unconsciously holds. These feelings
and thoughts work together, making it easier for someone to be bound to the
lies that wrongfully define his consciousness.Some of the lies that might
be at the roots of a man's sin include: "I am ugly"; "I am not lovable"; "I
will never get over the hurt of rejection by my old girlfriend"; "I am not
manly enough"; "I am incompetent"; "I must change this habit in order to
experience God's love"; "I am all alone."
[7] "If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we
open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something
away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant . . .?
Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom? . . . No!
If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing
of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are
the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential
of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience
beauty and liberation. And so, today, with great strength and great conviction,
on the basis of long personal experience of life, I say to you, dear young
people: Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you
everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return."
(Pope Benedict XVI Homily, Inauguration of Pope
Benedict XVI, April 24, 2005). See also: Benedict XVI, "Lectio Divina on
Galatians: Address to Roman Seminarians," February 20, 2009.
[8] Joseph Langford, Mother Teresa's Secret Fire (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2008), 99.
[9] For more on healing the roots of sin see
James Keating, "Mystical Metanoia:The Sacrament of Reconciliation," Assembly, Notre Dame Center for
Liturgy 35, no. 2 (March 2009): 21-28.
[10] See James Keating, "The Eucharist and the
Healing of Affection for Sin," Emmanuel (March/April 2007):107-115.
[11] Hans Urs Von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, A Theological Aesthetics: 1. Seeing the Lord (San Francisco:
Ignatius, 198) 342, 364, 422, 538, 565
[12] Benedict XVI, Homily, Lourdes, France, September 15, 2008.
[13] Joseph, through a combination of
infused virtue, a graced love of God and his knowledge and love of Mary, freely
embraced a life of loving her without the intimacy of sexual intercourse. Here,
of course, is a great mystery. In some manner both God (traces of Joseph's
mystical life are seen in Mt.1:20ff) and Mary tutored him in how to be a spouse
without such physical intimacy. Such a vocation still lives in the celibate
priesthood. Joseph, as living and interceding for priests in heaven, now
"awaits" their devotion to him. Specifically in prayer the seminarian wants to
tap into Joseph's freedom as man. This freedom is the result of his
knowledge and love, a knowledge and love that defined his choics. The
seminarian should ask
Joseph for the grace to have his own affections shape his way of thinking
about the bodily self-gift he wishes to present to the Church. These affections have
to be purified, of course. The need for that grace, too, can be placed before
Joseph. Joseph was simply a man with all the temptations and unpurified desires
known to any seminarian. Joseph, like all men, grew in his reception of his
deepest identity:
spouse of Mary, the New Eve, the Church. Friendship with him, in deep
contemplative prayer, will result in similar growth in the seminarian. Joseph
consented to a life lived in virtuous continence but he "had to do so in
dependence upon Mary." [(Marc Ouellet, Divine Likeness (Eerdmans, 2006,
pg118]. In contemplative prayer the seminarian will learn from Joseph to depend upon "the
woman" to teach him how to embrace her (Mary, the Church) in loving service rather than physical
intercourse. This is analogous to a husband learning from his wife how best to love her
within the patterns of a marriage defined by natural family planning.
[14] Joseph Ratzinger, The God of Jesus Christ: Meditations on the
Triune God (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008).
[15] Marc Cardinal Ouellet, Divine
Likeness: Toward a Trinitarian Anthropology of the Family (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 159.
[16] John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia, (1980), no. 4.
[17] Father Jean C. J. d'Elbee, I Believe in Love (Manchester: Sophia, 2001), 62.
[18] Benedict XVI, DCE, no. 12.
[19] Benedict XVI, DCE no. 4 "An
intoxicated and undisciplined eros, then, is not an ascent in "ecstasy" towards the
Divine, but a fall, a degradation of man. Evidently, eros needs to be disciplined
and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain
foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our
whole being yearns."
[20] The psalmist,
seeing from afar this maternal bond which unites the Mother of Christ with the
people of faith, prophesies regarding the Virgin Mary that 'the richest of the
people will seek your smile' (Ps 45:13). This smile of Mary is for all; but it
is directed quite particularly to those who suffer, so that they can find
comfort and solace therein. To seek Mary's smile is not an act of devotional or
outmoded sentimentality, but rather the proper expression of the living and
profoundly human relationship which binds us to her whom Christ gave us as our
Mother. . . . Mary's smile is a spring of living water." Homily, Benedict XVI,
Eucharistic Celebration of the Sick, Esplanade of the Basilica of Notre-Dame du
Rosaire, Lourdes, Monday, 15 September, 2008.
[21] For an excellent source on the essence and character of the priesthood see, Father David Toups, Reclaiming our Priestly
Character (Omaha: IPF Publications, 2008).
[22] "In
the words of the "annunciation" by night, Joseph not only heard the divine
truth concerning his wife's indescribable vocation; he also heard once again
the truth about his own vocation. This "just" man, who, in the spirit of the
noblest traditions of the Chosen People, loved the Virgin of Nazareth and was
bound to her by a husband's love.... Joseph did as the angel of the Lord
commanded him; he took his "wife" into his home (Matt 1:24); what was conceived
in Mary was "of the Holy Spirit." From expressions such as these, are we not to
suppose that his love as a man was also given new birth by the Holy Spirit?
"Joseph . . . took his wife; but he knew her not, until she had borne a son"
(Matt 1:24-25). These words indicate another kind of closeness in marriage. The
deep spiritual closeness arising from marital union and the interpersonal
contact between man and woman have their definitive origin in the Spirit, the
Giver of Life (cf. John 6:63). Joseph, in obedience to the Spirit, found in
the Spirit the source of love, the conjugal love that he experienced as a man.
And this love proved to be greater than this "just man" could ever have
expected within the limits of his human heart." John Paul II, Redemptoris Custos (1989) no. 19 (emphasis added).
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of the Priest
Rev. Mr. James Keating, Ph.D., is Director of Theological Formation at the Institute
of Priestly Formation at Creighton University, Omaha. Before joining the staff of the IPF Deacon Keating taught
moral and spiritual theology for 13 years in the School of Theology at the
Pontifical College Josephinum in Ohio. He has given over 400 workshops,
retreats and days of reflection on the Catholic spiritual/moral life. In the
field of his professional research, the interpenetration of the spiritual and
moral life, Deacon Keating has authored or edited ten books and dozens of
essays for theological journals.
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