Chastity in Marriage
/“All the baptized are called to chastity.” Yes, even you, married friends.
PHOTOGRAPHY: MADI MYERS-COOK
How many of us see Chastity as a virtue necessary only until the wedding night (or if the couple needs to postpone a pregnancy?)
However, practicing this virtue in marriage can continue to strengthen the couples’ relationship for the whole of their lives.
Humans are sexual creatures. We are body and soul, a cohesive whole, unable to be divided. Our bodies have a unique way of expressing our immortal soul, particularly within the sacrament of marriage and seen most spectacularly in the marital union.
The marital union is the enfleshment of our marriage vows in which promise to make ourselves a complete and total gift to our spouse. Chastity allows you to make this gift of self and prevents you from seeing your spouse as a means to an end.
While pleasure is a good of the sexual union, it is not the greatest good.
More than provide pleasure, sex is meant to unify husband and wife and to bear fruit (both physically and spiritually). Anything that prevents these greater goods, or places pleasure at the center, goes against the virtue of Chastity.
Chastity requires you to look on your spouse with love and appreciation. It calls you to avoid fantasizing about a more “perfect spouse” whether it be physically, emotionally, spiritually, etc.
Chastity calls you to guard your mind and heart against pornography or other media (even some romance movies or novels) that can titillate the imagination and make it difficult for spouses to fully partake in God’s plan for conjugal love.
Chastity is radically counter cultural and demands self-mastery and sacrifice. It requires us to have an ordered love of God and in turn, an authentic love for others.
The obvious way of practicing chastity in marriage is remaining faithful to your spouse, or to avoid looking at another without lust, but chastity goes far beyond that.
You should avoid over-fantasizing about your spouse to prevent them from becoming a way to merely satiate your sexual desires.
You cannot isolate sexual pleasure from its procreative and unitive purposes, which means you must avoid contraception and sexual acts (such as oral sex or other forms for foreplay) without the intention of consummating.
It might not be easy at first, but this virtue is worth cultivating.
The grace of the sacrament of matrimony can help couples live out this call to chastity in their marriages and to more clearly reflect the life-giving love of the Trinity.
