Chastity virtue Diana García

Chastity is a virtue. A virtue is a stable quality or characteristic. Therefore, virtues are not actions or feelings, because they are temporary and often, momentary. Virtues are permanent and like other qualities that are not easily acquired they come with time and are not easily lost.

Chastity virtue is part of the cardinal virtue of restraint that tends to impregnate rationality, passions and appetites of human sensitivity. Restraint is a virtue that affects pleasures such as food, drinking and sexuality. Chastity is the part of restraint that refers to sexual pleasures.

Chastity has as primary objective to ordain every sexual aspect according to the moral rule, that is, it is sought that sexuality is lived according to moral and natural laws. Within the main functions of chastity we can find: control of sexual pleasure and adjust sexual acts to its own natural objective, that is, to ordain our sexual instinct to our reason.

This does not mean to suppress or repress our sexuality, but to set the limits marked by the moral law. It is not, at all, synonym of abstinence, since this can appear in immature people, without apparent problems in this field, but whose peripheral tranquility was obtained through a strong repression. Consequences appear in other aspects, apparently not directly related with sex matters, but psychologists know their true meaning.

It can be thought that chastity opposes to love, it is quite the contrary, it is favor of love, because it opposes to selfish pleasure that prevents love from reaching its human and spiritual fullness. Thanks to this virtue, the person integrates his/her sexuality according to his/her vocation, it means, we ordain our sexuality regarding love and self-control.

Chastity, as any other virtue, is a personal task and job. This means that every person must carry out a personal effort.