In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Since Monday, I have tried to present a number of talks all bearing on the virtue of chastity. Well, there you have two words, virtue and chastity. I wanna try to sum up my remarks.
You understand that what I tackled was a pretty big deal, but it has to be done. We've got to be good solid Christians, we've got to understand what we're doing. We can't act like a bunch of little kids. The first thing that's of the utmost, absolutely utmost importance is this, that the God exists and we are destined for immortality. Absolute they are the absolute fundamental truths we begin with.
That there's a God and that there's a an immortality for every human being. We are born into it. We're living we're living in eternity right now. So, yet he says, if there's no God and if there's no immortality, then anything and everything is right. And of course, that's true, then anything and everything is also wrong because there's no right or wrong.
And he wrote his great books crime and punishment, the brothers Karamazov to prove that point empirically from experience. So, begin there that there's a God, there's immortality, that God created me to go back to himself. Actions which lead me back to God are good, that's virtue. Actions which deflate me from God are evil or sin. And I I, in the present state of affairs, cannot go back to God by myself.
I needed a redeemer. That's Jesus Christ, the son of God, whose incarnation we celebrated yesterday at the feast of the annunciation. Now, next little sub point was this. What these things that we call sin? Remember, sin never looks like sin when we wanna do it because we're not attracted to evil.
We never choose evil. We always choose something under the appearance of the good. Because if it's a thing, then it had to come from God and it certainly evil can come from God almighty. That's a so that this business of choosing evil, that's ridiculous. And yet, you hear Catholics galore saying it.
We any any judgment we make we make under the appearance, we may be mistaken. We make we make under the appearance that it's good. The guy who steals the thousand dollars from the bank, he steals it because a thousand dollars are a good thing and they are a good thing. There's nothing wrong with a thousand dollars. Only thing is he's violating a right.
It's not the money that's wrong. It's not his having the money that's wrong. It's not his spending the money for good causes that's wrong. What is evil is he made a choice for a good which he couldn't make the choice about. Follow that.
But that's the now, so the main thing here is that virtue is what we have to be committed to because our whole immortality, our whole destiny rests upon our practicing. One of the virtues is chastity. Now, as I insisted and almost in one talk, the object of virtue can't be a negative. It can't be a no thing. Virtue is very positive.
It's gotta be a thing. It's gotta be reality. Remember, the Latin word for thing is res for which we get our word reality. Therefore, virtue can't be native and therefore in our educational systems to to to say abstain from sex, abstain from drugs, abstain from this, don't do that, don't do that. That is all wrong.
If that's where you stop and if that's where you begin, you've got to give these negatives have meaning only and so far as they are the primitive absence of a good. And it's the good that we should be pursuing. Saint Thomas makes a big deal out of this about religious taking vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Now, as those three vows are phrased, they're usually negative. They renounce this, they renounce that, they renounce another thing.
But you see, if you stop there, you can be a maniac because there's no merit in mere negativeness. There's no merit in merely not doing something. The merit has to come because of why you're not doing it. In other words, I abstain from stealing the money because it's against my obligation to be just. Stating is negative.
This pulpit never stole any money. Is this pulpit virtuous? See the you see the inanity, the absurdity of negations. And that's what we're doing. We're not talking about chastity.
We're talking and you're hearing more about this that noticed I'll say, in preference to condoms and in preference to all kinds of other birth control systems, main thing is abstinence. You think that's going to convince any young person today? That's no good reason because I can I can argue against and say your reasons are all a bunch of baloney? And that above all, they're negative. Can't act on a negative, you shouldn't.
So, we come back to this little point that we should be talking out about the virtue of chast just as we should be talking about the about the virtue of charity, not love, but charity. Because these words chastity, the word charity, they all involve God almighty. And that's the heart of the thing. I came from God. I must go back to God.
That's why he created me. I need the grace and merits of Jesus Christ to do it. And the actions that promote my career back to God, they are good actions and are obligatory. And other choices of God's given creatures who are good, When I choose the wrong ones and they deflect me from my career back to God, then it's not that the things are wrong, it's that my choice is wrong. I made a wrong choice.
I'm the sinner, not the things. Intercourse is a good thing. Sex is a good thing. God gave it to us. Therefore, it should be used.
There's nothing dirty or wrong or evil or unspeakable about it except this. It's a precious thing. It has to be used as God wants me to use. And when I don't use it as God wants me to use it, then I am what? I am using his creation to defeat himself.
I'm making God's own creatures traitors to their creator. That's what I'm doing. The nature that God has given me, what nature means that it has a goal or a destiny or purpose, that nature I am flirting it. I'm separating God's creature from its creator. That's what I'm doing.
Now, the point I want to make is don't you see how all this hangs together as a unit, consistent unit? I know this has a lot of roots in Greek philosophy, Plato and Aristotle, but let me tell you there's nothing in Plato or Aristotle or any Greek philosopher that tells me about God, the father, and my immortality. Nothing. All of the Plato can tell me is here's the virtues and here's what here's the way you should act. But they never tell me why I should do it.
Neither Plato nor Abraham's God. Our Lord tells us, God tells us in the old testament. The second question of the Baltimore catechism coming, why did God make you? Why did he make you? To know him, to love him, to serve him, so to be happy with him forever.
There's not a negation in there. Not a negation. It's all part it has to be positive. You can't live for it. Oh, you can, but just crazy.
It's absurd. You can't live for a negation. You can't live for nothing and yet many of us do it. But we're making the wrong decisions and that's my responsibility, my contribution. So, let's go back and think of God.
Don't separate our Lord, the son and redeemer. We can't be anthropomorphic about Jesus Christ. He was born of a virgin woman and is absolutely completely man. You can't make more of a man than when he's a total man and that's Jesus Christ. Yet, there's just one person in him.
That person came to show us the way, truth, and the life. Notice, they're all objective things. And there's where we stand with Jesus, trying to work our way back. So let's not exclude him. Let's talk about charity.
Let's talk about chastity. These are meaningful terms. They involve a whole world of creation, redemption, and my warfare. My warfare, my battle to get back to God from whom I came through the my daily living. With the grace of Jesus Christ, we all can do it.
In the name of the father, the son, and the spirit. Amen.