A Life of Love

I grew up in a culture of divorce. My classmates witnessed the pain of divorce and some of them lived through the experience of their parents’ divorce. I often heard the expression thrown around, “we fell out of love.” This gave me the impression that love was fragile, fickle and fleeting. As a result, I got the impression there were limits to love. After many years of living a chaste lifestyle, I believe there are appropriate boundaries to love, but I no longer believe love has limits.

As a Catholic, I practice the appropriate boundaries of love to respect other people. In practicing chastity, I find that the more I practice real love for others in chaste living, the more people I am capable of loving and the deeper I find I am able to cherish others.

Chaste living is what we are all called to in life if we are married or not. Chastity is loving others the way we are called to love them. In marriage this love is expressed is faithful love and sexual expression. Outside of marriage, this calls for abstaining from sex.

Society seems to teach that love is sex. Everywhere, you hear that you show someone you love them by having sex with them. Sexual expression is portrayed as the only way of demonstrating your love if you believe what you see in the media. Over and over I see young people are attracted to each other, so they have sex. A breakup typically ensues and this is repeated ad nauseum.

As humans, it is natural to be drawn to the good. Being attracted to others is a natural response to the goodness we see in them. What I see portrayed on television is young people living out the values society teaches them. If you have to have sex to show someone you love them, of course we are seeing what we do everywhere.

As a Catholic, I am given a different picture of love. Every time I enter a church, I see an image of a person who chose to be a victim of Roman brutality because He loved me and picked the most extreme form of suffering to prove this. As a Catholic, I am called to respond to this great love by saying yes with my life in loving sacrificially as well. Chaste living is sacrificial. It isn’t easy. Choosing to love others by giving them the respect they need is a sacrificial way of life. I have to decline the pull of taking pleasure selfishly for myself at others’ expense by saying no to lustful inclinations. True love is giving others the respect they are due because of their dignity and value as human beings. By living a chaste life I can give a great YES to an abundant and joy filled life infused with friendships with others around me and intimacy with God. Love brings joy and a joyful life is worth the sacrifice required to love others.

Love requires boundaries but love does not have limits. By living out chastity, I find I am able to love more people and deeper appreciation for them the more I practice a sacrificial life of giving to others. I hope to keep growing in love throughout my life. My wish is that when I do finally die, my heart is so expansive from a life of loving others that hell would find me disgusting and they would scream to not let near them. I hope to grow to love God so much that I am a bright flame on fire for Him at the end of my life. I hope people will have been drawn to the light in my life like moths to such an extent, I will lead a crowd with me when I face my Creator. I think it’s possible. As a Catholic, I have learned that chaste living is the key for a life of love. You can do it too: join me in showing people what real love looks like. We should be molded to be so like Christ, people are attracted to our light in spite of themselves and they long to know our God too.