Monday, September 21, 2020

We Have to Go Back to the Saints

 The saints are the ones that know and been able to live the science of holiness.

Yes, we do have modern psychological findings we do use today like lessening our sugar intake to maintain better brain health. But that doesn't mean the science of the saints are now outmoded. The saints know better than we sinners do the perennial truths about how to be holy. Caritas in Veritate, art. 76, where Pope Benedict XVI reminds us that

   One aspect of the contemporary technological mindset is the tendency to consider the problems and emotions of the interior life from a purely psychological point of view, even to the point of neurological reductionism. In this way man's interiority is emptied of its meaning and gradually our awareness of the human soul's ontological depths, as probed by the saints, is lost. The question of development is closely bound up with our understanding of the human soul, insofar as we often reduce the self to the psyche and confuse the soul's health with emotional well-being. These over-simplifications stem from a profound failure to understand the spiritual life, and they obscure the fact that the development of individuals and peoples depends partly on the resolution of problems of a spiritual nature. Development must include not just material growth but also spiritual growth, since the human person is a “unity of body and soul”[156], born of God's creative love and destined for eternal life...

I've tackled spiritual readings before and there are lots of good sources of classical spiritual readings nowadays online one can download for free, aside from buying new writings.

Sin have been won against by these saint writers. They surely know something we sinners don't. Such a science of praxis gives us certainty against mere theories, knowledge, even unproven facts, and wrong scientific findings of scientists not specializing on the field of chaste living.

 

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Why Struggle For Chastity Despite The Failure?

Even I have not achieved a 100% freedom from impure thoughts and masturbation, for example, as my specific favorite sexual addiction behaviour, why should I still continue to find ways and means to master chastity in myself? It seems there is no reason left after decades of struggle already.

Despite the failure, I find my Catholic faith my primary reason for continuing to struggle until death, hoping that someday somewhere if not here on earth I will find myself completely capable of controlling my sexual capacity for good.

Even my struggle is imperfect, that's fair enough. Am I just rationalizing again my sin? No, that's why I need to do my chastity works and continue to examine my conscience and receive forgiveness in the sacrament of confession. Stopping the work would mean the start of complete defeat. Raise your prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary to help you at least to achieve once a month relapse only if you are presently committing twice a week sin of masturbation. But if it fails to come by, learn to submit thyself to God's bidding.

Again, does it matter that you continue your chastity work? Yes, and it is your pledge of allegiance to God to do so, proving that despite your imperfect struggle, you still wait for that glorious days of complete holiness of life.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners!