“Chastity makes us like the angels.”
There is so much beauty in this talk by Friar Anthony on Christian Purity (embedded below) that there is no way for me to sum it up. This is not a transcription of his talk, just my notes from it. All bold is mine, all words below are Friar Anthony’s.
(Overcoming the temptations) The gift is so much sweeter afterwards. The happiness of a man in Heaven because (he) fought through the temptations of the flesh and the concupiscence of the world, that means the desire for pleasure – its all around us, because we’ve had to fight through this, they say that it makes us greater than the angels. It’s in this where we become greater than the angels. It’s not because we’re smarter than them, because the dignity of a man, a man has to fight through all the barrage that he feels in his flesh, that he sees with his eyes, that he hears with his ears, that his flesh longs to touch, all these things he has to fight through so that he can actually arrive at that purity, so he can maintain that purity, so he never loses that purity. And if he loses it, to gain it back through greater violence like St. Mary Magdalene had to do. This is what makes us greater than the angels – it’s the struggle, to stay, remain and arrive in Heaven, in purity.
The angels take great delight being around men that are pure.
Chastity means violence to the flesh. Your flesh desires something and you say no to it, that’s a violence. You have to suffer something to say I’m not going to do that, I’m not going to have this, I’m not going to touch that, I’m not going to say this, I’m not going to listen to that, there’s a violence that happens in that.
If you have a friend that starts using bad language, there’s a violence in standing up for your faith and telling them I’m not going to listen to this.
St. Paul says we carry it (our purity) in earthen vessels. It is delicate. If you slip, its gone. It is the same thing with our purity, with our chastity. We have to very delicately take care of it with all zealousness so that we see it through to the end.
Someone that has a pure soul – they’re not speaking about foul things, they’re not thinking about foul things, they’re not doing foul things, they’re not desiring foul things. Someone like this lives like a little child in the presence of God and as they grow in that purity they grow upwards before God and they walk before the face of God.
In Easter time they put all the beautiful lilies in the church, and they smell so good after a long Lent.
The saints talk about the odor of the soul. St. Pio could smell the odor of the soul. And the soul doesn’t smell good because of impurity. Our Lady of Fatima said it is impurity that sends the most souls to hell.
But purity causes the greatest fragrance in the soul. St. Pio could smell the sin on people, and he smelled the putrid disgust in them.
One time a guy smelled St. Pio and he thought, this friar, he’s wearing perfume. St. Pio didn’t wear perfume and so St. Pio’s soul would emanate a beautiful aroma and that’s what they smelled.
Our Lord had a great love for those who were chaste. He made His mother the Immaculate Virgin. St. Joseph had an angelic type of purity. St. John the Baptist was preserved in his mother’s womb. His beloved disciple was St. John. All of these were lilies about Him, that He placed about Himself. Our Lord likes to be in the presence of the pure.
So chastity is a penance, a lily among thorns.
Self discipline – we have to be disciplined on our time because we know if we don’t take care of our time well, if we have lots of free time just sitting around we can become prone to vice.
Self denial – we may want to eat more than we should, or do things we shouldn’t do, or think about something we shouldn’t think about. We have to mortify this. We have to have self denial, tell yourself, I will not do that because those are the things that will make me slow and dumb like everybody else who is on the road to hell instead of the road to Heaven. We seek purity, the upright before God. So that we can have a mind that works clearly, a heart that loves purity.
Self restraint – no more pieces of pizza.
Mortification
Watchfullness – keeping a close eye. You have to be watchful because it only takes an instant to lose purity.
Segregation – just stay away from certain people. Stay away from certain people because they’re not going to lead us to Heaven.
Sacrifice – these are sacrifices, because sometimes we like to be around those types of people. But Heaven is worth it and so we make these choices.
Conformity to God’s will. We conform ourselves to the will of God.
We beg for fortitude and courage so we can do this kind of stuff.
So purity of heart gives us health of our soul, it gives us health of our mind. It makes things clear, it makes us long to be around other people who are pure.
We want to exist as a mountain that is untouched it’s what we want. And it’s sin that ruins it. Creates the avalanche in our life to start tending downward pulling us ever downward and then life becomes difficult because once we enter into these unchaste and impure things, once we allow this room to – to defile our beautiful little souls, once that starts to happen things get hard. It’s harder to make decisions, it’s harder to do what’s right, it’s harder to stay on the right course. Things get more difficult but as long as we fight and we do that penance and we stay pure and we do that struggling and that wrestling so that we’re equal to the Angels, when we do that we get stronger and we get clear in our mind and we’re able to come to things like, hopefully to understand the beauty of what St. John said and to penetrate in truth.
In the case that we find that maybe there has been an offense against our purity, there has been an offense against our chastity in some capacity, we know from St. Mary Magdalene we can always repent. We can repent and through the deepness of love and the penance that Mary Magdalene did she was reputed at the time of her death as having a virginal soul, which it was at a great cost.