Guide to Ongoing Formation for Priests

CHAPTER 3: HUMAN FORMATION | 45

which tempers and channels the powerful sexual drive in a wholesome way. Chastity is not the most important virtue, although it is an indispens able condition for holiness. We cannot make progress in the spiritual life without it. 93 Chastity is a training in freedom: both freedom to have authentic communion with others and freedom from the shackles of sin. The “alter native is clear: either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy.” 94 Chastity is like the ribcage that protects the heart. The ribs are sturdy and unbending, like the demands of chastity—but they are there to guard something precious. Chastity, then, is a way of glorifying God and showing gratitude for his love, as St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “Avoid immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the immoral person sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been purchased at a price. Therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Cor 6:18-20). Chastity is particularly important for a man called to live apostolic celibacy. Such a life means more than simply renouncing sexual relations; it has a supernatural purpose. 95 Jesus called men to live celibacy “for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 19:12). It is a way of loving that opens a man’s heart to all and is a privileged way of living spiritual fatherhood. Celibacy has a unique capacity to foster an undivided heart for the affairs of the Lord and the good of his people (see 1 Cor 7:32-33). 96 It is an imita tion of Jesus’ own celibate love for the Church, as Pope St. John Paul II observed. “The Church, as the spouse of Jesus Christ,” he wrote, “wishes to be loved by the priest in the total and exclusive manner in which Jesus Christ her head and spouse loved her.” 97 117. 118. 93 “Whoever wants to remain faithful to his baptismal promises and resist temptations will want to adopt the means for doing so: self-knowledge, practice of an ascesis adapted to the situations that confront him, obedience to God’s commandments, exercise of the moral virtues, and fidelity to prayer. ‘Indeed it is through chastity that we are gathered together and led back to the unity from which we were fragmented into multiplicity’ (St. Augustine, Conf . 10, 29, 40: PL 32, 796).” CCC, no. 2340. 94 CCC, no. 2339. 95 “Celibacy is a gift received from divine mercy as the choice freely and gratefully accepting a particular vocation of love for God and others. It must not be understood and lived as if it were no more than a collateral effect of the priesthood.” DMLP, no. 81. 96 See CIC, c. 277 §1. 97 PDV, no. 29.