Section — Vermeersch, On Chastity
Conclusion of the First Part
Evaluation of venereal appetite. Whither our efforts and our hope ought to carry us.
221. - The same venereal appetite can prepare triumphs and defeats for us. It has a noble use, a nobler abstinence, and a shameful abuse. It gives place to the virtue of chastity, which especially ennobles private and social life.
There is no uncertainty about the direction in which one must strive: toward higher things. These are not only to be chosen by us, but must also be faithfully inculcated in others.
Let us not hesitate to preach to our contemporaries the same perfection which the apostles proposed to the Christians of their own age.
The author of the Epistle to Diognetus described that image of the genuine character of Christians: "They take wives as all do; they beget children, but they do not cast away their offspring. They have a common table, but not a bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live according to the flesh. They dwell on earth, but they have their citizenship in heaven" 1.
1 Funk, Patres Apostolici, vol. 1, p. 399.
"It is not," thus Pomerius in the fifth century, "that the soul ever ceases in this flesh to have conflict with the vices, but that the very multitude of triumphs nourishes and advances it and, insofar as it can be done in the present life, perfects it: provided only that, captivated by the delight of sensible things, it does not cast itself down into the body, but, sublimely strengthened by detestation of delights, raises itself above the body as victor over bodily things, and adheres to its God, under whom, while it lives, the desires it has repudiated do not conquer it, in order to be glorified forever" 2.
2 De vita contemplativa, chapter 7. (M. 59, 484).
The world is to be won or restored to Christ through true Christians. It is of supreme importance that we procure such persons. Among the Protestants themselves, a league of young men has been formed for professing and promoting genuine Christianity 3.
3 Deutscher Verband von Jugendbund für entschiedenes Christentum.
In France, what were young Catholic laymen not able to accomplish, so as to inspire several thousands, of every class, with unsullied morals by arousing a consciousness of dignity?
What can we not accomplish if we intend this end, if we carry this fixed in our soul: it is necessary that Christians be the salt of the earth?