Integrity and Integrality

April 15, 2025

Hello!  How is each and every one? We are on the second day of Holy Week and looking forward to the Renewal of Commitment to Priestly service (Sacrament of Holy Orders), Last Supper of the Lord (Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist), The Passion, Death and Resurrection of the Lord in three parts: Liturgy of the Word, Veneration of the Cross and Holy Communion.

I thought it helpful for us to go over what we may already know about this Week, what we are celebrating together in these three days of the Holy Week.  On Thursday of the Holy Week the Church celebrates the Chrism Mass in the morning; the Mass of the Lord’s Supper in the evening; On Good Friday, the Church celebrates the Lord’s Passion; On Holy Saturday the Church waits at the Lord’s tomb in prayer meditating on his Passion and Death and on his Descent into Hell and awaiting his Resurrection. The Church abstains from the Sacrifice of the Mass, with the sacred table (altar) left bare until after the solemn Vigil, that is, the anticipation by night of the Resurrection, when the time comes for paschal joys, the abundance of which overflows to occupy fifty days.  Holy Communion may only be given on this day as Viaticum.  Then the church celebrates Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord.

Christ is alive.  This is the great truth which fills our faith with meaning.  Jesus, who died on the Cross, has risen.  He has triumphed over death.  He has overcome sorrow, anguish and the power of darkness.  Do not be terrified, was how the angels greeted the women who came to the tomb.  Do not be terrified.  You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.  He has risen; he is not here.  This is the day which the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.

From here onwards for fifty days, we share our joy with our Lady as we pray the Regina coeli, laetare, alleluia:  O Queen of heaven, rejoice, alleluia! in place of the Angelus at 12:00 noon.

Let us keep Jesus in close company during these coming days of the Holy Week in prayer, mortification, penance and sorrow of love at the same time we thank Him for his love and mercy.

Following now is the continuation of our divine longing for communion (From Broken Gods, Hope, Healing, and the Seven Longings of the Human Heart, Gregory K. Popcak, Ph. D. Ch 10).

People Matters 

Unity of life is the raising up of what is human to the supernatural order, so that what is divine is incarnated in what is human. Hence “if we accept the responsibility of being children of God, we will realize that God wants us to be very human. The price of living as Christians is not that of ceasing to be human or of abandoning the effort to acquire those virtues which some have, even without knowing Christ. The price paid for each Christian is the redeeming Blood of Our Lord, and he, I insist, wants us to be both very human and very divine, struggling each day to imitate him who is perfectus Deus, perfectus homo – perfect God and perfect Man” (St Josemaria, Friends of God, no. 75). 

Integral Christian Formation

Doctrine, liturgical life, spiritual life and moral life are inseparable. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is a good reference point for this unified vision. “The four parts are related one to another: the Christian mystery is the object of faith (first part); it is celebrated and communicated in liturgical actions (second part); it is present to enlighten and sustain the children of God in their actions (third part); it is the basis for our prayer, the privileged expression of which is the Our Father, and it represents the object of our supplication, our praise and our intercession (fourth part).” (St John Paul II, Apostolic Constitution Fidei Depositum, promulgating the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 11 December 1992).

Jesus Christ is via et veritas et vita – the way, truth and life (Jn 14:6). Hence the truth not only gives us light, but also spurs and guides us: it is nourishment (cf. Ps 23) and the doctrine of salvation.

Hence our formation is imparted within this unified framework: Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition (the Fathers of the Church), the Church’s Magisterium (especially the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the teachings of the Holy Father), liturgy (the Sacraments), prayer, and the lives of the saints. Also, by getting to know and meditating on St Josemaría’s life and teachings, the formation that we receive helps us to connect together the various aspects of our faith and our vocation, and to understand and explain the spirit of the Work in light of Sacred Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium. 

Our formation is open, because it arises from our prayer and our daily life made up of struggles, accompanied by God’s grace, in a great variety of incidents and situations. “The Decalogue brings man’s religious and social life into unity.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2069). For example, “The chaste person maintains the integrity of the powers of life and love placed in him. This integrity ensures the unity of the person; it is opposed to any behavior that would impair it. It tolerates neither a double life nor duplicity in speech.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2338). The same applies to the other virtues that make up Christian life. The whole of our Lady’s existence was marked by this unity of life; at the foot of the Cross Mary repeated the same fiat, “let it be done,” as at the Annunciation.

The Work was born and is spreading to serve the Church and to help build it up. We want to make Christ present among men and women. Everything leads towards Jesus: in our work of evangelization “it is Christ we must talk about, not ourselves.” (Christ is Passing By, no. 163). Thus we will bring people to Christ, sustained by our plan of life, the loving presence of our triune God. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me, you can do nothing (Jn 15:5) (Guillaume Derville). 

The Heavenly Virtue of Chastity:  The Antidote to Lust

“Chastity.”  What a horrible word.  Or at least it’s a word with a horrible reputation.  Most people equate it with repression, but that is not the Catholic view at all.  For the church, chastity represents the integration, not the denigration, of the person.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church says:  Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being.  Sexuality, in which man’s belonging to the bodily and biological world is expressed, becomes personal and truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of one person to another, in the complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman.

Pinterest 

The virtue of chastity therefore involves the integrity of the person and the integrality of the gift (CCC, no. 2337).

That’s a mouthful.  The short version is that the divine longing for communion prompts me to give as much of my whole self as is appropriate for a particular relationship so that I might be truly known by another person (and vice versa).  Chastity is the virtue, the skill, that allows me to be fully loving at the right time and in the right way with the right person, and it orders all my relationships.

“But,” you might ask, “how can chastity order all my relationships? All my relationships aren’t sexual.” Of course they are.  While not every relationship is genital in the sense that not every relationship involves sexual intercourse, every relationship is sexual—in the broadest sense of the word—because every relationship involves both the sharing of oneself with another and generativity, that is, the creation of something that is bigger than oneself and potentially outlives the self (for example, friendship or, in marriage, a baby).

Anytime I share myself with another person, even in a platonic way, I am being sexual because the sharing of myself creates unity and generativity.  If I perform some act of service for you, you feel more warmly toward me.  That warmth generates a stronger friendship that will be bigger than the both of us and may even outlive us in the stories people tell about what great buddies we were. 

Christians are called to be fully loving at all times.  Chastity is the virtue that helps us determine what that means in a given situation. It helps us to order all our relationships.  Chastity tells us how much or how little to share with our co-workers so that they can be our friends but not become our so-called “work spouse” (the person at work who is closer to us than our real spouse).  Chastity is the virtue that prevents us from lying to others by saying “I am one with you forever!” with our bodies while saying “I enjoy hanging out with you once in a while” with our lives.  Chastity actually challenges us to be more expressive in our sexuality when we are being physically intimate in the bedroom with our mate, but it also stops us from ravishing our mate in the grocery store, where the most fully loving thing to do is to get the milk while he or she gets the lettuce.  Chastity is the virtue that helps us make sure we have both good and appropriate boundaries and, at the same time, are as generous with ourselves as we ought to be in more intimate relationships.

Ultimately chastity enables us to be as fully known by another person—and to know the other in return—as is appropriate for the kind of relationship we have with that person and the context in which we find ourselves.

Happy Easter to each and every one!!! Let each one of us rejoice and be glad with our Lady’s company from here onwards in our ordinary life day in day out.

See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us together again.”

Affectionately,                    

Guadalupinky