Pints With Aquinas - If St. Thomas Aquinas Gave a Chastity Talk w/ Fr. Pine

Episode Date: June 3, 2023

Fr. Pine Breaks down Aquinas on Chastity. 🟣 Join Us on Locals (before we get banned on YT): https://mattfradd.locals.com/ 📖 Fr. Pine's Book: https://bit.ly/3lEsP8F ✝️ Show Sponsor: https://hallow.com/mattfradd 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🚫 FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd We get a small kick back from affiliate links.

Hello, my name is Father Gregory Pine and I'm a Dominican friar of the province of St. Joseph and this is Pines of the Quinas. In this video I'd like to talk about chastity. Why? Well, why would I like to talk about chastity? I need to answer that question seriously. Okay, because this is why. Because I think a lot of people think that chastity kind of ends when you get married or when you make religious profession or when you ordain a priest. It's the type of thing that you hear described at Steubenville conferences or at Sikh. You might have, you know, like a little pump up exhortation up until the time where you turn like 21, 22, 23 tops. But then you just don't talk about it anymore in polite company because it's all just to be understood that we've entered into our vocations, we've all just kind of solved the chastity problem and here we are. I just don't think that's true and obviously Matt talks about this a lot, apropos of like pornography, but I just don't think it's true because I think the chastity is a virtue and if it's a virtue then it's something that we're going to have to kind of

like heal by and grow with over the course of our whole life. And if we just leave chastity for discussions proper to adolescents, teenage years, you know college and a little bit beyond, then we don't mature an understanding of the virtue and an desire for it. I'm speaking so quickly that I am mumbling, which happens sometimes, but regardless I have an excuse. I'm turning in my dissertation tomorrow. Father Gregor, you're still in the introduction of this video. Get to the goods. Okay, we're going to talk about chastity. Here we go. Okay, so if St. Thomas Aquinas were to give a chastity talk, you're like, sweet Christmas, I thought this was going to be cool and now you think it's going to be

a little bit boring. It's not going to be boring, trust me on this one. Okay, so if St. Thomas were to give a chastity talk, I think he would supply you with good principles and good arguments so that way you as a human being made to the image and likeness of God could see to it that that image were restored and perfected because chastity plays a role in doing just that. So I'm gonna start with the question. The question is this, do you Christian, do you desire too much or too little? Now in the setting of a chastity talk you're're thinking to yourself, probably too much, because it's like, too much sexual desire, which is unruly, which I probably need to rein

in, or at the very least, kind of educate. Okay, so I can see that answer, I respect that answer, but I would submit to you this, that we do not desire too much, rather we desire too little, or that we don't desire in the way which is appropriate to our flourishing which is to say to our growth in the life of sanctity okay so chastity is really seeking to respond to that question how to desire well how to desire beautifully and nobly etc so holiness is in fact the fruit of good desire I love this this book about Saint Thomas Aquinas called The Quiet Light. It's actually that book that made me want to be a Dominican by Louis DeWall. I recommend it. Just heads up, you might become Dominican afterwards. And there's the scene

where Saint Thomas is in house arrest, more on that later, in his family's castle and his sisters will come up to his room and ask him questions about the spiritual life because even at a young age he was regarded as wise and holy. And so like his one sister asks him, you know, St. Thomas at that point, she says, Thomas, how do I become a saint? To which he responds, desire it, which is awesome. Also, St. Catherine of Siena famously says, God does not ask of you a perfect work, he asks of you infinite desire. So desire is huge for our growth and sanctification. Why? Well, because God made us as like big open wounds of desire. So he gave us a human nature, we said made to the image and likeness of God, which means we have a mind with

which to know and a heart with which to love, which are kind of thrown open to the infinite possibility of encountering the truth and the good, and we will not rest until such time as we encounter that for which we are made. And so we're just going to be like, rudeling around like little badgers until such time as we happen upon what is in fact the truest and the best. I felt like saying bestest because of parallel structure, but I can't keep doing this. I gotta, I gotta rein it in. Okay? So we will pursue what we love. That is to say that our lives will be in a certain sense dictated by desire. You can think about it, you know, like when students go off to college, there's a kind of question there. Okay, how do I appropriate what I have learned or not learned from the first 18-ish years of my

life? Okay? And those students have questions like, am I going to consume large amounts of substances that I didn't previously or at least didn't do previously without some shame or sneakitude? Or am I going to keep going to church on Sunday? Or am I going to make sorted sexual decisions on the basis of who gives a rip? Okay, or like am I going to still practice hobbies? am I going to make sorted sexual decisions on the basis of who gives a rip? Okay, or like am I going to still practice hobbies? Am I going to still play sports? You kind of come to discover who you are as you sort out which desires abide and which do not. Once the discipline of life at home and the encouragement of parents is gone, a lot of things change and then we discover in fact who we are. there might be a little bit like hangover when it comes to

guilt or You know societal or political expectation or blah blah blah But at a certain point you become who you are and what dictates the terms of that transformation is in fact your desire So unchastity represents a kind of love or attachment or desire one that is typically selfish and disordered now There are a lot of different components to this biological components, which is it like physical, emotional, psychological, even spiritual components. So a lot of what I will say will probably not adequately reflect your situation. So I don't say it with a lack of sensitivity to your situation.

I'm just painting in broad brushstrokes. So as to be somewhat helpful. So that way you can appropriate what applies to your case at the level of principles at the level of arguments okay so unchastity typically is a kind of love which is you know self-regarding or which is disordered which can't find a way towards breaking one's heart open to what lies beyond in which lies you know like our true dignity and the true grandeur of desire. So in order to work against the gravity of impurity, this collapsing in on oneself, which impurity begets,

we seek to cultivate a more perfect love for something more beautiful, more noble, more delightful in fact. T.S. Eliot in his Four Quartets says, we only live, only suspire, consumed by either fire or fire. Alright, so you will burn and you will burn brightly. The question is on which altar or as he says on which pyre. So it's very difficult to root up sin or to root out sin from one's life. I think it's easier in fact to discover something better because when you discover something better than that takes hold of you, it kind of puts roots down in your heart and then it makes demands on the soil of your heart such that there is no longer room, real estate, nutrients, water, something, whatever, for those weeds of impure or

disorderly desire. So the idea here is that we're trying to cultivate loves, cultivate desires, train them, you see where this is going, discipline them such that they tend to the true horizon of our homing, which is to say to those goods in which we are genuinely fulfilled, not because we're like spiritual hedonists and we're like I just want fulfillment, but in the sense that we want to be engaged with what is, we want to be deeply invested in reality rather than living in a shadow land of death and dismay. Okay, so desire is just the attraction or movement towards something that we find fitting, something that we reckon will make us happy, something that represents a perfection, something that

builds us up, fills us out, whatever. Okay, so the typical process is see, desire, assimilate, and that causes in us a certain joy. So like you're at whatever friend's house, they are cooking chocolate chip cookies. Why do I pause at weird places? Sweet Christmas. They're cooking chocolate chip cookies. You smell them, you see them, you desire them, you grab them, you eat them, you assimilate them. There you have it. That's the typical process. Okay? But as we know, we can err in our desires for whatever it is that's at stake. So you might look at chocolate chip cookies and you might think to yourself, yeah, those look awesome. I want to eat 18 of them. But then like seven minutes later, you're like, ah, I ruined my dinner. Or you might see those chocolate chip

cookies and think, awesome, this is going to be delicious. And take one bite and realize that it's an oatmeal raisin cookie, rue the day and just regret everything about it top to bottom. Okay, so like different kinds of errors can enter in. Usually we talk about it in terms of ignorance, malice, weakness can keep a sense. You've heard me say these words before, or maybe you haven't. Regardless, I'm going to move on. Alright, so one of the big obstacles in our life is that material goods are typically more attractive, more seductive than immaterial goods, at least initially.

But what we come to discover is that material goods, they cheapen or they kind of worsen more precipitously. So you eat the chocolate chip cookies and then your desire for them or your enjoyment of them tends to decline pretty steadily throughout the course of your life. Some people are like, Nah, bro, I enjoy them more today than I did 15 years ago. Okay, but like our hope that those types of goods are going to afford us ultimate satisfaction, at the very least that diminishes. So what we come to discover is that these goods are ultimately less satisfying than immaterial goods. Okay, so we're comparing like bodily goods to spiritual goods, kind of in broad brush strokes, but you see where I'm tending. The thing is those spiritual goods, those higher goods, those immaterial goods, tend to be pretty forbidding at the outset. All right, so they

require an investment, they require work, they require discipline, they require time and effort, they require you get it, okay? But what we come to discover is that when we do make that investment, when we do put in that time, that our enjoyment of those goods tends to increase, all right, unboundedly, and it continues to increase all the way to heaven, such that our engagement with those goods can be described as the kind of beginning of heaven here on earth. St. Catherine of Siena also says, all the way to heaven is heaven. So, how then are we going to train our desires, deepen our desires, even grow our desires? Okay, the answer is virtue. And the thing about this is it's not just

like something that you can do in 90 days. It's something that's going to require of you a kind of constant engagement throughout the course of your life. And that doesn't mean that it's just going to be toil, emptiness, sadness, pain, death and destruction. But it does mean that it's going to draw on you as a human person in such a way that you can't just like check out or you can't zone out. Okay? It's just gonna engage you. It's gonna lay hold of you and it's gonna require of you. So yeah, virtue is the way by which to shape your desires so that they're more reliable, steady, and strong. They're gonna kind of bridle or curb or reign in however you want to describe it. Those inordinate desires

which tend to be unruly. But they're also going to spur on those desires which tend to be weak, yeah, kind of underdeveloped or under trained. So that way we gradually grow into the person whom we are destined to be. So there's a kind of spectrum of desire. You can talk about the vicious person or the wicked person who desires what is bad and delights in it. You can talk about like the incontinent person is the word that Aristotle used. We can just talk about the real weak person who knows what's good, desires it, but just doesn't see it through. And then the word that Aristotle uses, same time as uses as well as continent. So this is the kind of

stronger person. So by comparison to the weaker person, the stronger person so desires the thing, finds it difficult to the weaker person, the stronger person, so desires the thing, finds it difficult to choose but eventually does, which is where I think a lot of us find ourselves. And then the truly virtuous person, or the fully virtuous person, who knows what is good and delights in choosing it. So this person has become a kind of virtuoso. This person knows that he or she is not destined for a life of unenduring sorrow, or of perpetual drudgery, but that things can go from strength to strength and you can mount on wings of eagles such that you walk and not faint, such that you run and not grow weary. So that's the promise, mind you. Gird your loins, prepare yourself for warfare. So the promise of virtue is that it actually makes life easy, prompt, and joyful. So that you have a stable and firm disposition, whereby you engage with the good and choose it, like I said, in a way that's easy, prompt, and joyful. Okay? So then, how do I grow in virtue?

And this is just what we mean by the ordinary Christian life. So I think that oftentimes the best response to questions of chastity is to zoom out. And there are five things that I typically list. Sometimes I add more, regardless, prayer. Starts with prayer. Most important thing that you can do is prayer. All right, you can install content blockers or filters or do covenant eyes.

And I'm sure like all those things are helpful. I don't really know them, but I'm sure they're helpful because people testify to the fact that they are helpful. But there's no replacement for an interior life, right? This is what I want to stress. It's not so much about rooting out as it is about crowding out, and if you're gonna crowd it out you need to fill your heart with something that's more substantial, which places more demands on the soil of your heart, right? Which is to say, a life of intimacy, a life of prayer, a life of

genuine friendship with God. Start with five minutes a day if you haven't yet. Work your way to 20 minutes a day. You can have a genuine interior life with 20 minutes of prayer in the day. It should be in the morning. We tell ourselves lies and say, I pray better at whatever o'clock, but then we forget or we fall asleep or whatever else happens. Pray in the morning. Alright, boom. Next, sacraments. Stay close to the Eucharist in adoration and reception thereof, not just on Sundays but in times when you find yourself nearby, and make good use of the sacrament of confession. I recommend once a month. You can adapt that according to circumstances, but I

recommend once a month. Friendships. What are you searching for in unchastity? You're searching for love in some way, shape, or form, or at the very least for delight. Where do you find that? In real engagement with human people. Not necessarily of a sexual sort, but what we're looking for is intimacy. We're looking for a way in which to share our hearts, to share our lives with somebody else, and to have that reciprocated. And the friendships that we experience in this life and in the next are instruments, instrumental causes of our friendship with God. God loves us as a friend in and through our friends. So, boom. But also too, like, and simply, I mean, I typically add, you know,

penance, adopting penance in your life, studying the faith, service of the material for other things besides. But I'm just going to say at this stage, you know, pursue your passions. Because if the flourishing of genuine human love is the fruit of our desire, then we should train our desire across the board. Our lives of faith aren't just like this one particular section that we work on and then we let everything else go to seed. No, like I said, we are made to be big open wounds of desire until such times God sees fit to heal. And that means pursuing our desires to their term because in some way our desires are an indication of our destiny. Yes, they need to be healed. Yes, they need to be elevated. But they are meaningful. They reveal something of who we are and they mediate a kind of grace.

I'm kind of mixing nature and grace, but provided that the grace is already present, then further grace comes besides. Last thing I'll recommend is the angelic warfare confraternity, which is a confraternity of the Dominican order. You can find out information about it, like the US provinces. They each have their own way of going about it, but you can just search it, Google it, and find the website which pertains to it. Like the US provinces, they each have their own way of going about it, but you can just search it, Google it, and find the website which pertains to it, and then find a way by which to be installed in the Angelic Warfare Confraternity or incorporated, I forget exactly the language that we use. But it's a confraternity associated with St. Thomas Aquinas. I said that I was going to

get back to St. Thomas Aquinas and his house arrest. Well here we are. Saint Thomas was born in 1225 and from the age of five to 16 he lived as a boyoblate in the monastery of Monte Cassino which is a Benedictine abbey. I actually just visited the place where he was born, Roque Seca, the place where he was anoblate Monte Cassino, and then the place where he died, Fossa Nova, on a recent trip to Rome which was awesome. So his family's ambition was that he become the abbot of Monte Casino, and they were kind of working their way towards that. He went to the University of Naples for a time to complete his studies or to kind of like work

on his studies in liberal arts. And while he was there, he met the Dominicans. He decided to take the habit to enter their ranks, but his family wasn't happy about it because the Dominicans just like brag tag bums, or at least in their estimation they were. So the family sent an envoy and had him basically arrested on the way from Naples to Paris where he was to make his novitiate and then they put him on house arrest so as to discourage him in his choice.

And the height of their discouragement came in the form of introducing a prostitute into the room where he slept because they thought if they could get him to fall in chastity they would discourage him from his very ambitious spiritual plan. And so St. Thomas was awakened by this visitor. He placidly, serenely went to the fire, took out a burning brand, escorted the woman to the door, shut the door, locked the door, and then scorched a cross on the door, returned the burning brand to the fire, and then knelt at his bedside. And it said that in that moment he was visited by two angels who girded him with effectively like a belt of chastity, a cord of chastity, which cooled his desires and made it such that he enjoyed perfect chastity throughout the course of his life.

So, it's awesome, and it's something that we continue, a devotion that we continue to cultivate in the life of the church through the present day so this is something that featured in his canonization process or the check you know his perpetual chastity featured in his canonization process this gosh the 700th anniversary of which we celebrate this year and it became common for people to wear blessed cords in his honor praying through his intercession specifically through excuse me for perfection in chastity and purity. In the 1500s, the nuns of St. Margaret and Vercelli, to whom Aquinas's cord had been entrusted, that with which he had been girded, began to distribute cords to the faithful, which had been touched to the miraculous cord. The practice became especially

popular among college students seeking help and resisting the temptations of the university life. And then in 1649, Father Derverders made a pilgrimage to Vercelli, gathered all the information on the devotion around the cord that he could, and proceeded to enroll the University of Leuvene into the angelic warfare confraternity on the feast of Pentecost. The devotion was given pontifical recognition in 1727. Some sweet saints who pertained to the confraternity include St. Aloysius Gonzaga and Blessed Pier Giorgio Fersati. And effectively, it's a communion of persons united in prayer for chastity who share in the merits of the Dominican order and of the other

members of the confraternity in their pursuit of the virtue. So in order to be a member, you need to be enrolled. And then there's two prayers that you say each day, one to Jesus, one to St. Thomas Aquinas, and then 15 Hail Marys for your growth and chastity and the growth and chastity of the other members of the confraternity. And yeah, then there's either a cord that you wear or a blessed medal which are meant to be worn against your skin. So you can find out those details and more if you just search angelic warfare confraternity and maybe that is something for you.

Okay, that is what I plan to share. So boom, this is Pines with Aquinas. If you haven't yet, please do subscribe to the channel, push the bell and get sweet updates when other things come out. Also, I contribute to a podcast called God's Plaining with four of the Dominican friars. And we have talked about chastity before. You might find that episode helpful. Also, we have retreats. So there's a men's retreat coming up in the middle of August and then a young adults retreat, which we'll announce probably later in the summer. So you can find out details about those things on our website. Check it out. And then the last thing is the Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage, which is another

devotion entrusted to the Dominican order, a confraternity as well, is to be held in Washington, DC at the National, excuse me, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on September 30th. So Google Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage. It's going to be a Jamboree. I'm giving two talks or preaching two conferences, and I look forward to meeting you there. So boom, know my prayers for you. please pray for me and I look forward to chatting

with you next time on Pines with Aquinas.