by James Martin
Chastity also frees you to serve people more readily. We’re not attached to one person or to a family, so it’s easier for us to move to another assignment. As the Jesuit Constitutions says, chastity is “essentially apostolic.” It is supposed to help us become better “apostles.” Like all the vows, chastity helps Jesuits to be “available,” as Ignatius would say.
So chastity is about both love and freedom.
Chastity (remember I’m talking about religious chastity) is not for everyone. Obviously, most people are called to romantic love, marriage, sexual intimacy, children, and family life. Their primary way of loving is through their spouses and children. It is a more focused, more exclusive, way of loving. That is not to say that married couples and parents do not love others outside their families. Rather, the main focus of their love is God and their families.
For the person in a religious order, the situation is the opposite. You vow chastity to offer yourself to love God and make yourself available to love as many others as possible. Once again, this is not to say that married and single men and women cannot do this. Rather, this is the way that works best for us.
Chastity is also a reminder that it is possible to love well without being in an exclusive relationship and without being sexually active. In this way, the chaste person can serve as a signpost in our hyper-sexualized culture, where loving someone may be confused with hopping into bed. Thus chastity can help us to refocus our priorities: the goal of life, whether single, married, or religious, is to love.
Who is more loving? The head-over-heels-in-love couple with an active sex life; the committed middle-aged couple who have sex less frequently due to the demands of family life; or the tender elderly couple who, because of illness, are not sexually active at all? Who is more loving—the married man who loves his wife or the single woman who loves her friends? Who is more loving—the celibate priest or the sexually active wife?
The answer is: they are all loving. In different ways.
By the way, chastity doesn’t lead to unhealthy behavior. The sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church was, as I see it, more about a small percentage of psychologically unhealthy men who should have never been admitted into seminaries or religious orders in the first place, and some bishops who should have never shuttled them from one parish to another, than it was about chastity per se.
Chastity also takes practice. You don’t become a perfect husband or wife on the day of your wedding. Nor do you understand your chastity completely on the day of your vows. It takes time to grow into your vows in an integrated way. That’s one reason for novitiates and seminaries—they function almost like an engagement, to see if this way of life is right for a person.
“What about lust?” a friend asked recently. Well, the chaste person still has his (or her) head turned by an attractive person and still longs for sex. We’re human, after all. But when that happens, you remind yourself of a few things. First, it’s natural. Second, the life you’ve chosen does not allow that. And third, if you’re completely overcome with a constant desire for sexual intimacy, then something may be missing in your affective life. What is it? An intimate relationship with God in prayer? Fulfilling friendships? Satisfying work? Where might you be not responding to God’s love in your chaste life? Because the chaste person not only makes a vow of chastity but also believes that God will help him in this.
Chastity also helps other people feel safe. People know that you’ve made a commitment to love them in a way that precludes using them, or manipulating them, or spending time with them simply as a means to an end. It gives people a space to relax. As a result, people can often feel freer with their own love.
A few years ago, as I mentioned, I worked with an acting troupe in New York City that was developing an Off-Broadway play on Jesus and Judas. Initially, I aided the playwright with his research for his play and met with the actor playing Judas. Eventually I was invited to work with the director and the cast.
For many hours we sat around a huge table in an Off-Broadway theater talking about the Gospels, about Jesus, and about sin, grace, despair, and hope. “Why did Judas betray Jesus?” “Why did the apostles run away after the crucifixion?” “Was Jesus in love with Mary Magdalene?” These spirited conversations were different from those I have with Catholics, who often feel (me included) that Catholics have all the answers already.
And here was a group of people inhabiting a world foreign to my own: the theater. When we began, they didn’t know me at all, so I wondered how they would react to a Jesuit priest. But since they knew I was celibate, they knew I wasn’t there for any other reason than to help them. Probably as a result, some felt comfortable sharing some intimate details of their lives with me—someone they barely knew—opening up during times of sorrow and celebrating during times of joy.
Their trust was a gift that helped me, in a sense, fall in love with all of them. Whenever I entered the dressing room, I was usually surrounded by smiling faces and plenty of hugs.
As in other situations, I realized I was there not just to give love but to receive it. When the show closed, I recognized that I was also called not to hold on to their love. While I hoped that some of us would remain friends afterward (and we have), I knew I couldn’t “possess” anyone’s love. It had to be freely given and freely received.
That’s another lesson of chastity: love cannot be owned.
My friend Chris, a Jesuit brother who works in New York City, said it’s similar for school teachers. “It’s just like when a school year ends,” he said at the time. “You have to love freely and be loved freely, but you have to remember that you can’t hold on to it.” As Jesus said after the Resurrection, “Do not hold on to me.”
This may be one of the greatest gifts that the chaste person can offer: showing not only that there are many ways to love, but that loving a personfeely, without clinging to him or her, is a gift to both the lover and the beloved. Often we are tempted to think that loving someone—a spouse, a boyfriend or girlfriend, or even just a friend— means clinging to them, which is a subtle form of ownership. But love means embracing the poverty of not owning the other.
So chastity might be able to teach the world about a free way to love and a loving way to be free.
IS IT POSSIBLE?
But is religious chastity really possible, with any degree of healthiness, integrity, or honesty?
With God’s help it is. So let me talk briefly about my own experience with chastity, which I hope might offer you some insights into your own life of loving and being loved.
A few months into my novitiate, David told me that at some point as a Jesuit I would fall in love and that others would fall in love with me. I was horrified!
His response was memorable. “If you don’t fall in love from time to time,” he said, “there’s something wrong with you.” He went on to explain: “It’s both human and natural. The question is: what do you do when you fall in love?”
Priests, and men and women in religious orders, have to accept the possibility that they will fall in love. If you hope to be a loving man or woman, you will run the “risk” of falling in love. Jesus, as a fully human person, also opened himself up to that possibility—when he offered his heart to others and opened himself to receiving their love.
Despite what you might read in popular novels, Jesus was not secretly married. It is pretty clear from the New Testament that Jesus of Nazareth remained unmarried throughout his life. (As I wrote earlier, the Gospel writers speak freely about Jesus’ brothers and sisters. Not mentioning a wife—if he had one—would be strange.) But Jesus, in his humanity, was as prone as anyone to falling in love and having others fall in love with him. His response was to love others both chastely and deeply.
What happens when a member of a religious order falls in love? He must choose. Either he finds that he cannot live his vows and must leave the order, or he must reaffirm his commitment to his vows. This is somewhat similar to the situation for a married person who
falls in love with someone other than his or her spouse, said David. In both cases, you remind yourself of your commitment and take the right steps to honor it.
David was right. Not long after the novitiate I fell in love. The depth of my love and the passion I felt was unexpected, overwhelming, and confusing. For a few months I believed that this was the person with whom I could spend the rest of my life. It was both wonderful and terrible. Wonderful because I was in love and being loved. Terrible because continuing with the relationship would mean leaving the Jesuits.
In the midst of the turmoil, I met with my spiritual director. He listened to my story and then said nearly the same thing as David had. “Falling in love is part of being human, perhaps the most human thing you could do. It shows that you are a loving person. That’s a wonderful thing for anyone.” He paused. “But you have to decide what you want to do now. You are free to leave the Jesuits and pursue this relationship, or you are free to honor your commitment and end the relationship.”
After prayer, spiritual direction, and conversations with friends, I saw that though I had fallen in love, my overpowering desire was to remain committed to my vows. Leaving seemed appealing at times, but when I looked back over the years I saw how happy I was as a Jesuit. Also, I knew that I had flourished when living a life of chastity—not having one exclusive relationship, but many.
Like Ignatius, who sat on his sick bed and “discerned” his feelings about two paths in life, when I thought of leaving the Jesuits, I felt despair, frustration, and disquiet. When I thought of staying, I felt peaceful, hopeful, and uplifted. “Well that sounds clear enough!“ said a close friend at the time. ”You do believe in all that Ignatian stuff, don’t you?”
Falling in love enabled me to grow in wisdom about the heart and the head. It also furnished me with some insights into the human condition that have helped when counseling others. It helped me to become more, in a word, human.
Moreover, it helped me see that we are often presented with competing desires in life. In Ignatian spirituality we are asked to discern which is the greater desire, or the “governing desire.” Competing desires do not negate the choice that you have made: they simply make it more real. What married person does not occasionally feel the same? Who doesn’t feel the occasional pang of regret over a life-changing decision? The key is understanding your governing desire, as well as honoring your original commitment.
Chastity is not easy. The more loving you are, the more likely it is that you will fall in love, and the more likely it is that others will fall in love with you.
The life of religious chastity can also be lonely. No matter how many friends you have, how close you are to your family, how supportive your religious community is, and how satisfying your ministry is, you still have to face an empty bed at night. There is no one person with whom you can share good news, on whose shoulder you can cry, or on whom you can always count for a hug after a hard day. Single, divorced, or widowed men and women know this feeling too.
Charles M. Shelton, S.J., a professor of psychology at Regis University in Denver, put it this way in a recent conversation: “Whenever I speak to young Jesuits about chastity, I begin by saying that chastity means you will never be the most important person in anyone’s life. First, their faces get quizzical and then a number start to evince concern. After a few moments, I ask them if it’s okay that they’ll never be the most important person in someone’s life. Finally, I say that even if it is okay now, for every Jesuit there comes a time when this realization is felt acutely. It’s a good springboard to discuss the reality of the vow.”
Ultimately, as Shelton says, the vow becomes not something that you do, but something deeper. “In the novitiate, if someone asked me why I don’t have sex, I might have said, ‘Because it violates the vow.’ Now I would say, ‘That’s not who I am.’ ” Married couples also may relate to that last statement. In the movie Moonstruck, when a married woman is propositioned by a friendly man her own age, she declines by saying, “I know who I am.” It’s about integrity and commitment.
Finally, says Shelton, there needs to be something “special” about chastity. Shelton, for example, is a chaplain for two sports teams at the university—soccer and baseball. That means spending time with the students, taking an interest in who they are and what they do, going to the games, and getting to know their families. These things take up time that he would rightfully want to give to his family, were he married.
“But there is something more,” he says. “I’ve come to realize that I wouldn’t trade those moments, and the enduring relationships that have been forged after the students graduate, or the times that I’ve been available to a student in crisis, for a life with a wife and kids. Chastity provides me with something I couldn’t have if I were married, and which means just as much. This is what I would call ‘special’ for me.” He describes it in the same way that married couples might speak of their love: a special gift.
HOW CAN I LOVE CHASTELY?
At this point you still might be saying to yourself, So what? So what if that’s how chastity works for a Jesuit? Or, more bluntly, Sex is an enjoyable part of my life, so what does chastity have to do with me?
Well, the insights of religious chastity can help you even if you’re not a Catholic priest or in a religious order—namely, as a reminder that there are ways other than sex by which you can give and receive love. My friends Maddy, Bob, and Tim, all of whom live chastely, showed me love through their actions at different points in my life. These ways can be as valuable, meaningful, and important as a sexual expression of love.
Religious chastity means that you love people outside the context of a romantic relationship. And, if you think about it, that covers most people in your own life. If you’re single, widowed, or divorced, it covers everyone; if you’re in a committed relationship (married, engaged, etc.), it covers all but one person. So the insights of chaste love are more relevant to your life than you might at first think.
So how can you love chastely in your own life?
Let me suggest five brief ways based on Ignatius’s dictum that love shows itself more in deeds.
First, listen compassionately. As I mentioned, my friend Bob (Holy Eagle with Gentle Voice) is a good listener. A few years ago, he helped me work through a difficult personal problem by listening first. But real listening is an art. Before Bob even said one word, he listened to my entire story, for almost an hour, with great concentration. Without true, compassionate, attentive listening the next steps—advice, counsel, comfort—will fail, because you haven’t taken the time to understand the other.
Compassionate listening is also an important way of making someone feel respected and loved. Often we are embarrassed by our problems, especially when we feel that we are in some way responsible for them. Having someone listen even to our most mortifying mistakes reminds us that we are loved in the midst of our struggles, which is always a welcome gift.
Listening in joyful times is important, too. Letting someone you love share good news with you—even if it relates to a part of her life that is unfamiliar to you—can magnify her own joy.
Second, be present. As Jesuit novices, when we were working as hospital chaplains we were taught that a “ministry of presence,” simply being with another person, is an important part of pastoral care. While there is often little that you can do for a sick person, you can be with him or her.
This is frequently the case when loved ones are going through a hard time: often, since we can’t solve their problems, the most loving thing we can do is just be with them. As Woody Allen said, “Ninety percent of life is just showing up.” Something similar may hold true for chaste love. When Tim visited me every day during my long recuperation in Chicago, his quiet presence helped me on the road to recovery and did something else, too: it made me feel his affection more than any phone call or card could.
Third, do something practical. Sometimes, on the other hand, you need to do something beyond listening
or being present. When Maddy went to Tanzania, she helped to build a school and teach young girls living in a remote area. When she came to our community in Nairobi, she cooked her famous Italian meals for us. She did something practical that helped people in a concrete way and in doing so expressed her love. Again: “Love ought to manifest itself more by deeds than by words.”
Here’s a good question to ask: What active ways of chaste loving can be part of my life? How about: Help your elderly mother clean her house. Drive a sick friend to the hospital. Babysit for a stressed young couple. Take a friend out to dinner even if it’s not her birthday or a special event. Write a letter to someone whom you know is lonely. Drop someone a note on his birthday and tell him why you value his friendship. These are all ways of loving.
Fourth, love freely. One of the hardest parts of love is this: allowing the other to love you as he or she can, not as you want to be loved. Have you ever caught yourself thinking that your beloved should do this or that? If she really loved me, you say, she would do this. We often expect the beloved to be completely focused on our needs. But your beloved may not be able to do precisely what you want. Now, in some marriages partners may have to ask each other to more closely attend to their needs. Still, demanding this (whether you say it aloud or just believe it) essentially takes away a person’s freedom. It can cheapen and even destroy loving relationships.
A few close friends of mine, for instance, aren’t very good at “keeping in touch.” They’ve always been that way—with me and others they love. It’s simply the way they are. Accepting them as they are means not only trusting in their love, but respecting how they choose to love.
Giving people the freedom to be who they are is a form of love. It says, “I love you for who you are, not for who I want you to be.” This reverences the person God created.
Fifth, forgive. Even those who love us most will occasionally hurt us. Perhaps they say something needlessly harsh, perhaps they disappoint us with a thoughtless action, perhaps they even betray us. Can you forgive them? Some of the unhappiest people I’ve ever met are those who refuse to forgive a spouse or a family member and find themselves trapped in a world of bitterness and recrimination.
