Day 306: Gift of Self (2346-2350)

• It’s Day 306!!

• Fr. Mike skipped Paragraph 2344 yesterday so feel free to read it because I ain’t typing it out hehehehe

• Now let us listen to Fr. Mike talk about Jason Evert…

• It is more difficult in this day and age to have a mind and heart that can remain pure

• Why?

• Because the access to distortion is everywhere

• Be patient with yourself

• The culture does not make it easy to be chaste or fair or just

• If this is an area of discouragement for you, you are not alone

• THE INTEGRALITY OF THE GIFT OF SELF

• Love is to will the good of the other

• To make a gift of oneself for the other…

• SQUIRREL!! 😉

• We have friendship

• We have romance

• We have marriage

• THE VARIOUS FORMS OF CHASTITY

• Chastity is not the same thing as celibacy

• Let’s pray!!

Prayer by Fr. Mike: “Father in Heaven, we give you praise and we give you glory. We thank you and we praise your name. Thank you for making us in your image. Thank you for making us as human beings, body, and soul. Thank you for giving us an intellect and passion and a will. We ask that you help us to order our passions aright, to order our days well. Lord God, we ask you to help us to order all the strengths you have given us and place them at your service and the service of our brothers and sisters. Help us to have integrity in the gift of our being. Help us to love you and our neighbor the way you call us to, with great, great joy, great generosity. Lord God, we ask this in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, your Son. Amen”

• So there we have it!!

• The integrity of self is so important

• One has successfully integrated the sexuality within the person, as well as the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being

• St. Pope John Paul II talked about the ETHOS

• That inner world of us that either attracts us to something or repels us from something

• Our call is this apprenticeship in self-mastery of learning to have this new heart

• Because what is supposed to happen is that love is a gift of self

• Paragraph 2346 says, “Charity is the form of all the virtues. Under its influence, chastity appears as a school of the gift of the person. Self-mastery is ordered to the gift of self. Chastity leads him who practices it to become a witness to his neighbor of God’s fidelity and loving kindness.”

• What is chastity ordered towards?

• Chastity is ordered to the bigger reality that every person is ultimately meant to say yes

• At some point, every person is meant to make a gift of themself to another or to the Church

• The reason why it is a message is because if I can’t say NO, then what does my YES mean?

• If I cannot say NO then my YES is cheapened and it means nothing

• A healthy part of chastity is the ability and power to say NO

• That NO is ordered towards being able to say YES at some point

• If someone is called to celibacy, he is not called to be a bachelor for life

• We get this wrong in our culture these days

• A priest is not meant to be a bachelor in the sense because he is not married and without a family he can do what he wants

• That is not the same thing

• A bachelor is someone who is not married and has no family of his own, no children

• They get to have whatever kind of hobbies they want

• They get to travel wherever they want

• THey get to do whatever they want because that life is then spent on themselves

• For a priest who is called to celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom, the idea is that he can spend his life giving to the Church

• It is meant to be chastity and celibacy for the sake of being a gift in a different way

• Same thing with religious sisters or any consecrated single person

• Same thing is true when it comes to marriage

• Marriage is ordered toward pouring myself out in love to my spouse and then my children

• Learning how to say NO is meant to be ordered towards so that you have the freedom to say YES

• If I do not make a gift of myself, then my life is senseless

• St. Pope John Paul II said, “Man cannot live without love. Without love, his life remains senseless to himself. If He does not make a gift of himself, his life is incomprehensible. If he does not receive love and make a gift of himself in love…”

• SQUIRREL!! 😉

• Fr. Mike is paraphrasing at this point

• Love is making a gift of one’s self

• Love is willing the good of the other

• Paragraph 2347 says, “The virtue of chastity blossoms in friendship. It shows the disciple how to follow and imitate him who has chosen us as his friends, who has given himself totally to us and allows us to participate in his divine estate. Chastity is a promise of immortality. Chastity is expressed notably in friendship with one’s neighbor. Whether it develops between persons of the same or opposite sex, friendship represents a great good for all. It leads to spiritual communion.”

• Friendship is a great good

• Christian friendship is this unique and transformed incredible possibility

• Not to say that if you have Christian or Catholic friends that they are automatically going to be the best kind of friends

• The gift of friendship and the gift of friends who are united in faith can be so transformative and so absolutely powerful

• The Greeks had 4 words for love

• STORGE which means affection

• EROS which means romantic love

• PHILIA which means the love of friendship

• AGAPE which means self-sacrificial love

• C.S. Lewis said in The Four Loves, “It’s kind of like the rice that becomes the base for all the meals you are going to eat.” (this sounds like Fr. Mike is paraphrasing here…I could be wrong)

• Gin also…

• Let’s listen to Fr. Mike expand on this because it’s late and I’m tired…

• Philia is rare 

• True virtuous friendship is incredibly rare

• Fr. Mike quotes C.S. Lewis again here…

• Ok now Fr. Mike is going to talk about Shakespeare and Romeo & Juliet…

• The fickleness of romantic love, eros

• We need a dose of chastity so we can moderate our desires

• It has to be tempered by self-mastery and temperance

• It has to be tempered by the integrality of the gift of self

• Unless I actually have the virtue of being able to recognize wisdom and the virtue of recognizing where I am pouring out my life for this other person in love, then it is just like Romeo and Juliet 

• Don’t be like Romeo and Juliet

• We want to be people that love like Jesus loves

• We can be moved by eros and it can be amazing

• But always with that sense of friendship as well, philia

• Every one of us is called to friendship

• All of Christ’s faithful are called to lead a chaste life within their particular states in life

• Ok Fr. Mike is talking about Paragraphs 2348 to 2350 here so I’m not going to write them all down, feel free to read along in your Catechism…PLEASE!!!! 😉

• The gist is we can be chaste in marriage

• We can be chaste as virgins

• We can be chaste as widows

• St. Ambrose said, “We do not praise any one of them to the exclusion of the others.”

• Paragraph 2350 says, “Those who are engaged to marry are called to live chastity in continence. They should see in this time of testing a discovery of mutual respect, an apprenticeship in fidelity, and the hope of receiving one another from God. They should reserve for marriage the expressions of affection that belong to married love. They will help each other grow in chastity.”

• Just because we are engaged doesn’t mean we act as if we are married

• Let’s listen to Fr. Mike talk about marriage prep…

• In the season of engagement, the couple should should help each other to grow in chastity as they continue to get closer to one another and prepare to make a gift of themselves to each other in marriage

• They learn how to truly love one another

• They don’t need to stop learning how to love each other once they get married

• If you are married right now, you still get to learn how to love each other

• We all get to learn how to love in whatever state of life we are in

• Every single one of us is called to make a gift of ourselves

• That is what it is to love

• Fr. MIke is praying FOR YOU!!

• Please pray for Fr. Mike and for each other!!

• I cannot WAIT…