If You Don’t Use It, You Lose It.

There are some common phrases that I’ve heard in regards to pursuing a life of chastity. Some of them being:

 “What if I’ve already had a past and made mistakes can I even pursue a life of chastity?” 

“What if I mess up does that mean I have to start all over?”

Let me start by saying, be kind to yourself. Chastity is a virtue, and virtue by definition means habitually choosing to do the good. This means like any habit we work on, we WILL slip up. There will be moments when we’d rather do something easier than working on a good habit. All these comments stem from a fear of either having already lived an unchaste life or pre-worrying about doing something unchaste in our strive for chastity. 

Those fears, doubts, and future worries of things that have yet to happen are not what God wants. The evil one wants to remind us of our past(the ways we have fallen) and also wants us to worry for the future that has yet to arrive. However, our Lord wants us in the current present of what we can do, and what we are. We are sons and daughters of a God who believes in our capacity to live up to greatness. After all, like Pope Benedict said, “the world offers you comfort but you were not meant for a life of comfort, you were meant for greatness”. 

Let’s unpack this first question. The idea of someone having a “record” is not uncommon. Unfortunately, many of us haven’t been taught what chastity is, or even when we have been we don’t know the full extent that it is more than saving sex and all sexually intimate acts for marriage. Most of us who chose to commit to striving for purity in our thoughts, words, and actions didn’t come out the womb doing so. We’ve been wounded by this culture, and left hurting by believing that we can be okay with using others and letting others use us. This mindset of having a “record” can bleed into so many things in our lives. It can cause us to believe that if we’ve messed up in some way, that we cannot get up and start anew. Again, this is what the evil one(damn I hate that guy) wants from us. So even if we have a record, even if just yesterday we were unchaste, we are still capable of pursuing chastity. It doesn’t make us any more capable than the nuns we see at mass. 

Since chastity is a virtue meaning habitually choosing the good, that means it takes hard work. Like any virtue, we have to put in the work to get the results. Just as we don’t learn a language overnight, we don’t acquire virtue overnight either. 

Get this. When we learn a language we start with words, then phrases, then sentences, then conversational language which eventually will hopefully lead to fluency. I’m sure you’ve heard it said before, “if you don’t use it, you lose it”, meaning we need to continue using the language to retain it. Guess what? Same thing goes for virtue! We must continue to strive for it, and it starts in the little ways with boundaries, with lifestyle changes, and a change of disposition. 

Yes, we will come across times when we slip up. Whether it be a big slip up or a minor one that doesn’t mean we are unable to receive God’s mercy. The evil one knows your name and calls you by your sin, but our God knows your sin and calls you by your name. Even in those moments when we go to confession and have a hard time forgiving ourselves for what we’ve done, our God doesn’t. 

A story that comes to mind is of a nun who had an apparition from Jesus and when she went to tell her pastor he had a hard time believing her. He asked her to ask Jesus what was the last mortal sin he confessed to prove it was an authentic apparition. When she returned the pastor asked her the same question, she said the response from Jesus was, “I don’t remember”. THAT my friends is the amazing reality of the God we have. He doesn’t see our sins, he doesn’t remember them, he only sees what is set before him. His son or daughter with who he sees is GOOD!