Valuing My Body. Temperance with love leads to chastity.
A clean heart allows us to fall in love. We fall in love with beauty, goodness, and truth. Valuing myself, I learn the gift that I am and I’m shown my belovedness. God draws me to the One that loved me first. Chastity is a virtue, along with right-ordered passions, that helps me see God.
Valuing My Body. Temperance with love leads to chastity.
Chastity is important because sexuality affects our ability to form healthy bonds with other people. It affects the unity of our body and soul, including our capacity to love and to procreate. Chastity is important because this is how we live with our bodies ordered to God. Before the Fall, all the physical senses were in complete harmony and controlled by reason. Temperance is loving my body, keeping it clean and pure, moderating taste, exercising continence in touch, and remaining chaste in all the senses. Infused with the theological virtue of love, we see the fruit of chastity.
Valuing My Body. Temperance with love leads to chastity.
When I seek and find God’s goodness day by day in my life, I live with a new attitude and mindset. I choose faith as a habit that keeps my heart drawn to what is important. Reforming my life is moving beyond the ego’s narrow concerns and making God and love the center of my life.
Valuing My Body. Temperance with love leads to chastity.
What comes to mind when you hear the word Chastity or the act of being Chaste? I’ve often struggled with this somewhat archaic language but the deeper I dive into learning its meaning, God grants me the understanding of its beauty and goodness.
Valuing My Body. Temperance with love leads to chastity.
What is Spiritual Integrity? Author Jac O’Keeffe, author of How to Be a Spiritual Rebel, gives us some words to ponder this week as we look for God’s goodness, day by day.
Spiritual integrity is the combination of a state and a quality. Spiritual integrity is the state of being undivided together with the quality of brutal self-honesty. It demands a considerable depth of self-awareness and an uncompromising willingness to be authentic.
Valuing My Body. Temperance with love leads to chastity.
Are you drawn towards the light and the goodness of God? As we surrender to a higher state of being, God fills our soul with clear knowledge of what is necessary to live a good life. A life of integrity with ourselves and others, in body, mind, and spirit.
Valuing My Body. Temperance with love leads to chastity.
If integrity is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles and uprightness, we are called to look at ourselves with the same eye as we do others. Many of us find it easier to see the fault in others and are adept at ignoring it in ourselves. This judgmental behavior breeds a separateness and superiority between us rather than fostering an understanding of our common humanity and humanness.
Valuing My Body. Temperance with love leads to chastity.
We are given divine warning signs when we get off track but do we pay attention? The Beatitudes give us the playbook on how we are called to a life of integrity, to be Christ-like and blessed.