I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God,
to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice,
holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.
Brothers and sisters in Christ! These words of St. Paul were meant to appeal to the hearts of his readers, and they can, and must, also appeal to our own: offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; offer to him your spiritual worship!
St. Paul reminds us that we are gathered here today, in church, to offer worship and sacrifice to God. The Sunday Mass, we must remember, is not a weekend social gathering of the faithful. It is most certainly not an opportunity to listen to a good homily! We gather on Sunday, the day indicated to us by God, to worship Him, and in thanksgiving, for the week past, and the week to come offer the sacrifice that is most pleasing to Him, His Son. In other words, we come to Mass not for an inspirational fix, but to offer living sacrifice!
Following ancient custom, we consume this sacrifice, which through the mercy of God is not a symbol of the Son, but His very Body and Blood, which conforms us to Him! We leave the Mass, therefore, armed with the grace of Our Lord so that through the rest of the week we may become, like the Son, a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God!
The ancient Christian thinker Origen observed: “We always carry in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. He calls it holy because the Holy Spirit dwells in it.”
The Christian is, or ought to be, adept at holding things in tension, and Origen points to one such binary: life and death. We must be dead to the world and alive to, and in, the Spirit! This tension is best played out in the virtue of chastity. Through the control of our biological urges, responding to the spiritual laws that have been revealed to us, we are able to hold the world and the spirit together, in this way, the chaste body becomes a living sacrifice!
Too often, chastity is understood as a regime of sexuality. The single person does not have sex until marriage; the married person has sex only within the bounds of marriage, and the religious live celibate lives.
To understand chastity in this manner, however, is to miss the point! Chastity is not about sex, but about love! It is when we understand the practice of chastity as love that we then become more equipped to offer our bodies as living sacrifice!
That chastity is invariably seen as an absence – an abstention from sex – may be a good place to start from. As an abstention, it involves self-control. But self-control rather than a negative is, in fact, a positive – it allows us to master our instincts and passions so that may be exercised for our good. In other words, self-mastery enables us to act in total freedom, not in slavery to our senses. It is when abstain, or sacrifice, our disordered that we can give ourselves, or love, more wholly to those around us. A love that is not chaste, is no love at all! Understood this way, the classical allegory for chastity, a virgin taming the unicorn – horses are often the sign of the unbridled will – makes sense.
It is when we understand chastity in this way that we can appreciate that chastity is not merely about abstention from sex. It is a guarding of the heart, and our senses, from those things that might derail us and those we love.
St. Philipe Neri, a saint dear to my heart, offered sage advice which is pertinent to our growth in chastity: practice custody of the eyes. This caution is derived from the advice of Our Lord:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’
But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent
has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Mt 5: 27-28)
Framed this way we realise that chastity is, as Bishop Erik Varden points out, not about a mortification, but “a reconciliation of the senses”: bringing our senses into harmony so that we can live freely and without distraction. Since chastity is about life, it is about bringing true beauty in the world. Bishop Varden believes that “To do something beautiful for its own sake, for the intrinsic delight of it, without thought of gain: this, is a way of beginning to live chastely in this world.”
To drive in conformity with traffic rules, to greet a stranger politely, to aim for excellence in our work, these, it turns out, are also features of the chaste life.
And so, dearly beloved:
Do not conform yourselves to this
age
but be transformed by the renewal of your mind,
that you may discern what is the will of God,
what is good and pleasing and perfect.
Santa Maria, Mater Castissima, ora pro nobis.
(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the chapel of Our Lady of the Cape, Cabo Raj Nivas, Dona Paula on 30 August 2026.)
(Image reference: Annunciation in a ‘Hortus Conclusus,’ Martin Schongauer & workshop, c1480 Unterlinden Museum, Colmar, France.)
No comments:
Post a Comment