145. Fourth Saturday of Easter
Meditations no. 191 (unofficial computer-aided translation)
Chastity is necessary for apostolate.
Beloved, writes St Peter to the Christians of his time, and indeed to Christians of all times, I beseech you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh that war against your soul. Maintain good conduct among the gentiles, so that in case they speak against you as wrongdoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
Todayâs world also needs the witness of souls dedicated entirely to the service of Jesus Christ. A reddish-blue wave of filth and corruption has set out to overcome the world, throwing its vile spittle over the Cross of the Redeemer.
Now he wants another wave to issue forth from our souls - a wave thatâs white and powerful, like the Lordâs right hand - to overcome with its purity all the rottenness of materialism and undo the corruption that has flooded the world. It is for this, and more, that the children of God have come.
This is the meaning of the virtue of chastity in our life: dedicating ourselves to Godâs service with all our faculties and senses. And we do it for an apostolic reason: in order to bring souls to him. The spirit of the Work, being crystal-clear and pure, can only survive in a clean heart. And it is seeing a clean life that attracts others to Godâs love. Purity, which is very pleasing in the sight of God and his immaculate Mother, gives us a supernatural strength which attracts people, and enables us to live in total and exclusive dedication to the service of God in the apostolate.
By practising the virtue of purity with loving care, we become the sweet fragrance of Christ, which attracts other souls towards our Lord. The bonus odor Christi, the fragrance of Christ, is also that of our clean life, of our chastity - the chastity of each one in their own state, I repeat - of our holy purity, which is a joyful affirmation. It is something solid and at the same time gentle; it is refined, avoiding even the use of unfitting words, since they cannot be pleasing to God.
On the other hand, without holy purity - purity filled with love - you canât persevere in the apostolate. Doing apostolate means becoming a channel through which the grace of God can flow, and the channel must be kept clean, if the water which it carries is to stay pure. If we are a clean channel, we will be effective instruments to draw souls closer to God. They will approach him as their Father, and they will also be children of our spirit.
Who does not hunger to perpetuate his apostolate? Who has not felt, when doing proselytism, a deep human and supernatural joy on witnessing a new birth to the life of grace, holiness and apostolate? Who has not experienced joy on witnessing the birth of a child of their spirit? Isnât it true that we would not exchange the happiness of such moments for anything, and that everything else seems to us to be worthless? Let us never forget this, especially when our chastity becomes more difficult, and when it is more of an uphill struggle.
We pray to God, in the words of todayâs liturgy: Merciful Lord, make holy these gifts and let our spiritual sacrifice make us an everlasting gift to you, so that we whom you renew in baptism may bear witness to our faith by the way we live. By the suffering, death, and resurrection of your Son may we come to eternal joy.
Guarding our heart shows our love for God.
Love holy purity, my children. Our chastity is a joyful âyesâ, a natural consequence of our self-giving in the service of God, our Love. We could have given our heart to a human being, but in response to Godâs call, we placed it entire, young, vibrant and clean at the feet of Jesus Christ: because we want to - which is a very supernatural reason - because we want to correspond to our Lordâs grace.
Practising the virtue of holy purity is a matter of love. Our chastity is a joyful âyesâ: a triumph, which gives us a marvellous parenthood, far superior to that of the flesh. Therefore, our first concern should be to keep our hearts full of love: love for God, and love for all souls for love of God. The heart is made to love. Therefore, if we donât give our heart to God, to our Blessed Lady, our Mother, and to all souls⌠, then it will take revenge by becoming something filthy. I have had to dry away many tears of people who went astray because they failed to talk in time. In just two weeks they become sickened, and they come back amid tears of repentance. I donât know a single one of them who is happy.
Therefore I tell you: love one another, with sincere, noble affection; without doing anything silly, but without fear. And open your heart. Donât keep any secrets; always bring up first whatever you find most difficult to say; and if you are tempted to keep silent about something, go straight to the chat If you act like that I guarantee that you will be faithful, and that you will be happy on earth and in heaven.
We must guard our heart and purity it constantly, not allowing it any affections which have not passed through the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the most Sweet Heart of Mary. It is a task that will never end, because it is always possible to have more sensitivity, and to grow in love.
We can make our own our Fatherâs prayer: Jesus, may my poor heart be an enclosed garden; may my poor heart be a paradise wherein you dwell; may my Guardian Angel watch over it with a sword of fire and use it to purify every affection before it comes into me. Jesus, seal my poor heart with the divine seal of your Cross.
Ways to live holy purity.
Take very special care of chastity and also of the other virtues which accompany it: modesty and refinement. They are as it were the safeguard of chastity. Donât take lightly those norms of conduct which help so much to keep us worthy in the sight of God: keeping a watchful guard over our senses and our heart; ⌠the courage to be a âcowardâ - to flee from the occasions of sin; going to the sacraments frequently, particularly the sacrament of Confession; complete sincerity in our own spiritual direction; sorrow, contrition and reparation after our falls. And all this imbued with a tender devotion to our Lady so that she may obtain for us from God the gift of a clean and holy life.
If, alas, one falls, one must get up at once. With Godâs help, which will never be lacking if the proper means are used, one must seek to arrive at repentance as quickly as possible, to be humbly sincere and to make amends so that the momentary failure is transformed into a great victory for Jesus Christ.
You should also get into the habit of taking the battle to areas that are far removed from the main walls of the fortress. We cannot go about doing balancing acts on the very frontiers of evil. We must be firm in avoiding the indirect voluntary. We must reject even the tiniest failure to love God, and we must strive to develop a regular and fruitful Christian apostolate, which will have holy purity both as a necessary foundation and also as one of its most characteristic fruits. We ought as well to fill all our time with intense and responsible work, in which we seek Godâs presence, because we must never forget that we have been bought at a great price and that we are temples of the Holy Spirit.
What other advice do I have for you? Well, simply to do what the Christians who have really tried to follow Christ have always done, and to use the same means employed by the first ones who felt prompted to follow Jesus: developing a close relationship with our Lord in the Eucharist, a childlike recourse to the Blessed Virgin, humility, temperance, mortification of the senses (âit is not good to look at what it is not licit to desireâ, was St Gregory the Greatâs warning) and penance.
Mother of Fair Love, Virgin most faithful, our Mother: through you come all the graces that move hearts. Make us clean. Give us a pure heart that will attract many others to love your Son.