CLE Q4

• Our Sexuality refers to everything about our being human that makes us either male or female. It is a fundamental part of our being human and one of God’s many gifts to us.
• Our sexuality is a good and beautiful gift from God. Through this gift, we can share in God’s love—love that creates, sustains, and builds who we are as persons.
• Our sexuality reminds us that alone, we are incomplete. By creating us as either male or female, God calls us from our aloneness and invites us to grow in a life of loving service for other.
• The Good News about human sexuality, however, is often lost amidst the many forces within and outside us that portray human sexuality as being completely unrelated to God.
• Challenges about the Good News of Sexuality:

  • Self-centeredness

  • Used as mere object for pleasure
• Our sexuality as beautiful and it is part of God’s gift to us. Unfortunately, sex is seldom discussed openly between parents and children in a way that can help the children grow up into mature individuals.
• Another saddening reality is that many of the things we hear about sexuality come from friends or media which only provide “half-truths” about sexuality—it is often viewed as a mere way on individual’s private pleasure.
• With the growing misconception about sexuality, there is one virtue that can help us appreciate our Sexuality… THE VIRTUE OF CHASTITY
• The virtue of Chastity can be likened to the virtue of truthfulness or honesty. Just as honestly puts order to what we say, chastity puts order to our sexual drives and energies, directing our thoughts and actions towards attitudes and behaviors appropriate to our state in life. (CFC 1096)
• For both youth and single adults, being chaste means abstaining from sexual union which only finds meaning in the context of a loving marriage.
• Because if sexual union is done in the context of loving marriage, the couple is not only doing it out of personal pleasure but through their marriage vows, they are ready to be responsible to the very goal of a sexual union— Procreation.
• Scriptural Significance of the Virtue of Chastity

  OLD TESTAMENT

  • You shall not commit adultery (Ex 20:12; Dt 5:18)

  • You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife (Ex 20:17)

  NEW TESTAMENT

  • Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God (Mt. 5:8)
• Chastity is for all—the way for a married person to be chaste is to be faithful to his/her spouse and the way for ordained and consecrated persons to be chaste is to be faithful to their vow of abstaining sexual relations for the Church through their promise if celibacy
• Celibacy on the other hand is the promise made by the ordained and consecrated persons not to engage in sexual relations as they offer themselves for God and the Church.
• Obstacles to Growing in Chastity

  • Lust

  • Fornication

  • Prostitution

  • Rape

  • Incest

  • Homosexual
• A Chaste person, in essence, is someone who is master of his or her sexual appetite, not its slaves. He or she understands the true value of sexuality, disciplines his or her feelings and sexual drives, and expresses his or her sexuality in accordance with God’s plan.