The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 306: Gift of Self (2024)

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

What are the different types of chastity? We learn chastity is "a school of the gift of the person." Mastering ourselves enables us to gift ourselves to another. Fr. Mike explains that chastity bears fruit in the form of true friendship. He explains that God calls everyone to this virtue, no matter his vocation. Today's readings are Catechism paragraphs 2346-2350. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 306. We are reading paragraphs 23, 46 to 23, 50 as always. I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the Foundations of Faith approach, but you can follow

along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own Catechism in your reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash C-I-Y. And you can click follow or subscribe to your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. Quick note on this. Um, you might've just hit the double tap, right? The, the 30 second fast, you know, skipped over all that. I like, I, I was just talking with some family members, some friends who they listened to the, they listened to the cataclysm and they're part of this community and they all had different ways they did it. Like, you know, when it's like, Oh, I just hit it once and that's enough, I get the end of the intro or like I double do that and maybe have to rewind sometimes.

I thought, I like that. I like that everyone has their own way of skipping over the intro. I don't skip the intro though. I record it every single time. Including today, day 306, here we are. You guys, this is amazing. We get to continue to talk.

Yesterday, I loved the fact that we get to talk about how chastity, what is it? Remember, chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person, thus the inner unity of man and his bodily and spiritual being. So there's that sense of coherence, right? Integrity becomes a massive part of chastity. And so again, and the encouragement, hopefully the encouraging word is that self mastery is a long and exacting work, right?

Remember it's an apprenticeship in self mastery. It's a training in human freedom. And I think I skipped this yesterday. Paragraph 2344 highlights the fact that it is an eminently personal task, and yet it also involves a cultural effort. I remember hearing this, I don't know who it was. Maybe it was someone like Jason Evert,

who's just a phenomenal speaker when it comes to a lot of issues. But when it comes to chastity, he has a website called chastity.com. So Mr. Chastity. But Jason Evert, I think it was him who said something along the lines, he was trying to encourage people

who found themselves struggling in the area of chastity. And he said, you have to realize that where you live right now, that meaning in the time period in which we're all living, it is more difficult than maybe literally than ever to have a mind and a heart that can remain pure, that heart and a mind that can have this kind of integrity. Why? Because the access to distortion is everywhere. Now, in all the other areas of the ten commandments as well the other areas of virtue Yes There are there can be this constant bombardment and yet we find ourselves in a unique

Place in a unique time in history And so my encouraging word in this was Jason's I think encouraging word is in that in that sense be patient with yourself Because again paragraph 23 44 says yes, this is an eminently personal task. This is something that every individual has to undergo this integration. And yet it also involves a cultural effort. And the culture in this, in this case right now does not make it easy to be chased. It doesn't make it also easy to be just or easy to be fair

when it comes to our business dealings necessarily, when it comes to what do we do about property stuff? And we're talking about that in the future. But when it comes to chastity, this is a time period in our humanity where this is difficult. Now, not that it's always been easy or ever been me been easy, but just so you know, if this is one of those areas of frustration for you, this one was those areas of discouragement for you to realize that, okay, you're not alone. And this is a difficult time. If you're having a difficult time realize that, okay, you're not alone and this is a difficult

time. If you're having a difficult time, that's okay. Because why? Because it is a difficult time. Now, as we're moving forward today, we're looking at, okay, integrity. We looked at yesterday, integrity of the person. Right now, today, we're looking at the integrality of the gift of self. We recognize that, oh man, this is so important for us.

Love is to be a gift, right? Love is to will the good of the other. And so to be a gift of oneself, to make a gift of oneself for the other is, and to have that be coherent, right? Not to be fractured and bifurcated, not to be like, I make a gift to myself to this person, to that person, to that person,

but the integrality of the gift of self. And so in this friendship, here I am as appropriate to friendship. Here is romance and appropriate to that romance. Here is even the highest form of this marriage in the appropriate form. And so we're looking at that, the integrality of the gift of self, but also the various forms of chastity. Because as I mentioned yesterday, chastity is not the same thing as celibacy and so we'll look at those issues today So as we launch into today, that was a long intro as you launch into today Let's take a moment and call upon our Heavenly Father who loves us and is near us right now Father in heaven

We give you praise and we give you glory. We thank you We praise your name. Thank you for making us in your image. Thank you for making us as human beings, body and soul. Thank you for giving us an intellect and passion and a will. We ask that you help us to order our passions right to order our days well. Lord God, we ask you to help us to order all the strengths you've given us and place them at your service and the service of our brothers and sisters.

Help us to have integrity in our being and to have integrality in the gift of our being. Help us to love you and our neighbor the way you call us to, with great joy, great generosity. Oh God, we ask this in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, your Son. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. It is day 306. We're reading paragraphs 2346 to 2350.

The Integrality of the Gift of Self Charity is the form of all the virtues. Under its influence, chastity appears as a school of the gift of the person. Self-mastery is ordered to the gift of self. Chastity leads him who practices it to become a witness to his neighbor of God's fidelity and loving-kindness. The virtue of chastity blossoms in friendship. It shows the disciple how to follow and imitate him who has chosen us as his friends, who has given himself totally to us and allows us to participate in his divine estate.

Chastity is a promise of immortality. Chastity is expressed notably in friendship with one's neighbor. Whether it develops between persons of the same or opposite sex, friendship represents a great good for all. It leads to spiritual communion. The various forms of chastity. All the baptized are called to chastity. The Christian has put on Christ the model for all chastity. All Christ's faithful are called to lead a chaste life in keeping with their particular states of life.

At the moment of His baptism, the Christian is pledged to lead his affective life in chastity. People should cultivate chastity in the way that is suited to their state of life. Some profess virginity or consecrated celibacy which enables them to give themselves to God alone with an undivided heart in a remarkable manner. Others live in the way prescribed for all by the moral law, whether they are married or single. Married people are called to live conjugal chastity. Others practice chastity in continence. As St. Ambrose said, there are three forms of the virtue

of chastity. The first is that of spouses, the second that of widows, and the third that of virgins. We do not praise any one of them to the exclusion of the others. This is what makes for the richness of the discipline of the Church. Those who are engaged to Mary are called to live chastity in continence. They should see in this time of testing a discovery of mutual respect, an apprenticeship in fidelity, and the hope of receiving one another from God. They should reserve for marriage the expressions of affection that belong to married love. They will help each other grow in chastity."

There we have it, paragraphs 2346 to 2350. Once again, the integrity of self is so important. This sense that one has one has, right? It's successfully integrated the sexuality within the person as well as the inner unity of man and his bodily and spiritual being. Remember we talked about this before, the ethos of a person. John Paul II talked about the ethos,

that part of us, that inner world of us that either attracts us to something or repels us from other things. And so again, our call is this apprenticeship and self mastery of this learning to have this new heart because what is supposed to happen is love is a gift of self. So paragraph 23, 46 charity member love and charity love is the form of all the virtues. So every single virtue is motivated is moved by love.

Now under its influence, right? Under the influence of love, chastity appears as a school of the gift of the person. This is so important for us to understand. Chastity is a school of the gift of the person to learn how to be a gift. And that's one of the reasons why, so often for so many years, if you have like a chastity talk, a chastity talk is all

about like, okay, you got to say no, just say no. All these kind of issues of just like, don't do it. Okay, fine. But ordered toward what? Well, order toward the reality, which is a bigger reality, that every person is ultimately meant to say yes. Like at some point, every person is meant to be a, make a gift of themselves to another or to the church or in some way we're meant to say yes. And so one of the reasons why this is, it's a message, but it's only a partial message. The reason why it's a message is because if I can't say no, then what does my yes mean? And so here's the church that says, okay, listen, learn how to say no. Because if you can't say no, then what does your yes mean? If I can't say no to being a quote unquote gift of myself or giving away my sexuality, whatever that thing is, if I can't say no, then

my yes is cheapened. It means nothing. That's the first part. And that's important to say. So it's important to say that actually a healthy part of chastity is the ability, the power, the freedom to say no. At the same time, that no is ordered, oriented towards being able to say yes at some point. Here is paragraph 2346. Chastity appears as a school of the gift of the person. Self-mastery is ordered to the gift of self. This isn't, this isn't, you know, if someone's called to celibacy, say a man is called to celibacy, he's not called to be a bachelor for life. And this is one of the things that we get wrong in our, in our culture these days is that, let's

take priests, for example, a priest is not meant to be a bachelor, right? In the, in the sense that, well, because he's not married, because he doesn't have a family, he can kind of do whatever he wants. Like that, that's not the same thing. A bachelor is someone that we would say, right, who's not married, doesn't have a family, doesn't have children. And so basically they get to have whatever kind of hobbies they want. They get to travel wherever they want. They get to do whatever they want because that life is then spent on themselves. I mean, again, this is the cliche, right, stereotypical bachelor. But for a priest who's called to celibacy for the sake of the kingdom, so he's unmarried and doesn't have a family, the idea behind this is that he's unmarried,

doesn't have a family, so that he can spend his life giving to the church, right, giving to his parish, giving to whatever ministry his bishop or whoever's in charge of him has assigned him to. So it's meant to be chastity and celibacy for the sake of being a gift in a different way. Same thing with the religious sisters or any consecrated single person. That even if you're consecrated single in the world, it's not, okay, I'm dedicating myself to being a bachelor or perpetual bachelor or perpetual bachelorette, where I just kind of hold myself to myself. Self-mastery, it says, is ordered to the gift of self. This is the key. And same thing is true when it comes to marriage.

We recognize that marriage is ordered towards what? It's ordered towards, okay, this is where I make a gift of myself. This is where I primarily pour myself out in love to my spouse and then to our children. So again, all of this, learn how to say no, is meant to be, is ordered towards, it's directed towards, now that you know how to say no, now you have the freedom to say yes.

Because if I do not make a gift of myself, then my life is senseless. In fact, you know, that's John Paul II's great quote. He says, man cannot live without love. Without love, his life remains senseless to himself. That if he does not make a gift of himself, his life is incomprehensible. If he does not receive love and make a gift of himself in love, I'm paraphrasing there, but this is the truth. That if we're made in God's image and likeness, then we have to love.

And love is what? Love is making a gift of oneself. Love is willing the good of the other. So all of this, it says last line in paragraph 2346, chastity leads him who practices it to become a witness to his neighbor of God's fidelity and loving kindness. And this happens in friendship. And this is beautiful. I love that paragraph 2347 highlights the fact that the virtue of chastity blossoms

in friendship. That it shows the disciple how to follow and imitate him, God Jesus, who has chosen us as His friends, who has given Himself totally to us and allows us to participate in His divine estate. Chastity is a promise of immortality. Friendship is what a great good friendship is. Christian friendship is even this unique and transformed and incredible possibility. Now, not to say that if you have friends who are Christians or friends who are Catholics, they're automatically going to be the best and you're automatically going to have the best kind of friendship. That doesn't mean that.

But we recognize that the gift of friendship and the gift of friends who are united in faith can be so transformative, so absolutely powerful. It is a great gift. In fact, you might know this already, but the Greeks had four words for love They had Storge, which is affection, eros, which is the love of desire, right? Romance kind of thing. They had philia, which is love of friendship and then agape is the last word that that that self sacrificial love Now for the Greeks many of those philosophers they would say that of course Storge, Storge is the affection that we have

That is just natural that is I remember C.S. Lewis writing in the book called the four loves He says it's kind of like the rice that you becomes the the base for for all the all the meals you're gonna eat And so yeah, I think it prescribes it like gin as well But I don't know that that I don't know the alcohol reference But but he's saying that everyone experiences Storge. Storge is love of your hometown. Storge is the love of the smell of your parents' home. Storge is love of pizza. Storge is love of your mom.

All those things are Storge, love of affection. Eros is, again, the romantic love, that love of desire. And then Philia, the love of friendship. Now Lewis and others have highlighted the fact that for the ancients, when they've really thought about this, they said, yes, Dorgay, what a great gift, affection. Eros, yeah, great gift. It's really powerful and it's really good.

It drives us out of ourselves so often, which is a good thing. But also Eros can be twisted and we can want to possess another or even use another. They said philia though, philia, that true friendship. They said that that kind of love is rare. That real friendship, not just kind of, you know, buddy ship or being pals with someone, but true virtuous friendship, real love like that, love of friends is incredibly rare.

In fact, I think C.S. Lewis says that it might happen one or two times in a person's life. They actually find a real friendship, and they find that kind of love. is incredibly rare. In fact, I think C.S. Lewis says that it might happen one or two times in a person's life. They actually find a real friend. And so I think that there's something powerful about this. Is it William Shakespeare? When he's writing some of these romance plays like Romeo and Juliet, you recognize if you take a deeper look at this, maybe I've talked about this in the Bible in the air or maybe here even in catechism in the air. Romeo and Juliet, if you really look at it with like adult eyes rather than, you know, when we,

many of us read it in middle school, you realize, oh my gosh, what William Shakespeare is writing is a critique of love. It's a critique of Eros in that sense that here is Romeo at the very beginning of the play. He's absolutely in love, but he's not in love with Juliet. He's in love with Rosalind. And Rosalind is everything to him. And then he sees this girl Juliet and now she's everything to him.

And Shakespeare is highlighting for us the fickleness of romantic love, the fickleness of Eros. I mean, by the end of the book, these kids, and they're just kids, they've known each other, I think for two and a half days, and can't go on living without the other person. Shakespeare is showing us, I think Shakespeare is showing us this, like that is,

we need a dose of reality, we need a dose of, well, actually chastity to be able to moderate our desires. Cause that's because, I mean, I'm not, I don't mean to just simply criticize Eros or criticize Romeo and Juliet or whatever. There's something good in that. There's something good in Eros that yes,

that this is the person, this is everything for me. That's wonderful, that's amazing. But it has to be tempered by this exercise of self mastery. That has to be tempered by temperance, right? Has to be tempered by this thing we're talking about today, which is the integrality of the gift of self. That unless I actually have the virtue of being able to recognize wisdom and the virtue of being able to say, okay, here's where I'm going to pour my life out for this other person in love. Unless I have that, then it's just like Romeo and Juliet where here's Romeo in

love with one girl one day and another girl the next hour. We don't wanna be people like that, right? We want to be people who can love like Jesus loves. Again, moved by Eros, amazing, but always with that sense of friendship as well, that philia. And so that's such a good, it's such a good, it's a good that we're all called to. Every one of us is called to friendship. And as it says, chastity is expressed notably in friendship with one's neighbor, whether between members of the same sex or opposite sex, friendship represents a great good for all and leads to spiritual communion, which is so good.

Now paragraph 2348 to 2350, just quick thing at the end here, highlights the fact we talked about, I think it was yesterday, where all the baptizer called to chastity and yet all in all Christ's faithful called to lead to chase life within their particular states in life. And there's a couple their particular states in life. And there's a couple different states in life. So for example, we can be chased in marriage, we can be chased as virgins, we can be chased as widows. There's these three levels, three forms, I guess we'd say that got three forms of the virtue of chastity that St Ambrose talks about. And this is important for us because sometimes people misunderstand this. In the middle of

this quote from St Ambrose, he says, we do not praise any one of them to the exclusion of the others. Keep that in mind that if we praise marriage, we're not excluding the praise that belongs to the chastity of widows or of virgins and vice versa to all those things. We recognize that all of them are great ways in which a person can live out the virtue of chastity and also make a gift of themselves. Now last thing, 2350, this little note, if you're engaged right now or if you know someone you love someone who is engaged right now, it says those who are engaged to be married are called to live chastity in continents, right?

They're called to be chaste and are called to have those expressions of affection that are appropriate to engagement, not affection that are appropriate to engagement, not those that are appropriate to marriage. And so it's just like that sense of like, okay, just because we're engaged doesn't mean that we now act as if we're married. And they should reserve for marriage the expressions of affection that belong to married love. And they will help each other grow in chastity because that's what it is. Marriage and family being a school of love to be able to learn how to, I mean, I talked to so many couples when I'm doing marriage prep

and I'm always asking, so how are things going since the engagement? And they, you know, have things changed at all. And there's a number of aspects in people's relationships that have changed. Sometimes it's like, oh, we feel so much more confident in our relationship right now. Or just like, yeah, it was always like, hey,

when we get engaged or if we get engaged, now here we are and it's so great. But there's also this aspect of, yeah, it's a little bit harder now to remain chaste. It's a little bit harder now to kind of like know where the boundaries are here in this moment, in that season, right? Of the season of engagement. It's beautiful because here the couple will help each other to grow in chastity as they continue to get closer to one another and prepare to make a gift of themselves to each other in marriage, but also recognizing that that's not yet.

And there's something beautiful about this as husbands and wives, or I guess, fiancees, are learning how to love each other. And they don't need to stop learning how to love each other once they get married. If you're married right now, you still get to learn how to love each other. If you're not married, like me, if you get to be single in this moment of your life,

maybe temporarily or permanently, you and I, we all get to learn how to love in whatever state of life we are because we are called every one of us to make a gift of ourselves. That is what it is to love. Tomorrow we'll look at some of the offenses against chastity, and so there's gonna be quite a few. And then we're gonna come back to like amazing goodness about like the love of husband and wife

and like what that meant to look like and how it possibly could look. But today, we're gonna conclude and I'm gonna let you know this. I'm gonna let you know a little secret. I am praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike and I wait to see you tomorrow.

God bless.