Chastity. The path to Christian perfection.
C.S. Lewis provides us insight as to why chastity is the most unpopular of Christian virtues:
There is no getting away from it; the Christian rule is, “either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence.” Now this is so difficult and so contrary to our instincts that obviously either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct, as it now is, has gone wrong. One or the other. Of course, being a Christian, I think it is the instinct which is gone wrong… God knows our situation; he will not judge us as if we have no difficulties to overcome. What matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them. Before we can be cured, we must want to be cured, those who really wish for help will get it; but for many modern people even the wish is difficult… We may, indeed be sure that perfect chastity – like perfect charity – will not be attained by any nearly human efforts. You must ask for God’s help. Even when you have done so it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.
Mere Christianity, p. 95
Today, I pray to bear the good fruit of chastity, aspiring to Christian perfection.
Smitten With Goodness 