Few virtues have been as constantly celebrated by the saints as chastity. From the Desert Fathers to contemporary popes, by way of doctors, mystics, and martyrs, one conviction runs through twenty centuries: purity of body and heart is not a humiliating constraint, but a beauty, a freedom, and the condition of true love. This article gathers their strongest words — their own voice — on chastity.
This is not the place to explain once again what chastity is or how to practise it: those questions are treated in How to grow in chastity (the positive virtue), How to grow in the fight against lust (the fight against the vice), and How to grow in purity of heart (interior limpidness). This florilegium concentrates on what the saints said about it, because their formulations — often brief, struck like maxims — enlighten and draw us on better than a long treatise.
Three registers can be heard in them: wonder at the beauty of the pure soul, severe warning at the ravages of the sin of the flesh, and the promise that purity opens our eyes to God. Far from contradicting one another, these three tones compose the great symphony of the saints on chastity.
Why did the saints celebrate chastity so much?
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God"
All the spirituality of chastity flows from one word of Christ, the sixth of the Beatitudes:
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." — Jesus, Gospel according to Saint Matthew 5:8[1]
The saints never ceased meditating on this bond between purity and the vision of God. For them, the heart is like a mirror: covered with the mud of disordered passions, it reflects nothing; made limpid, it receives the light of God. Chastity is therefore not only a question of morals, but a question of gaze: it decides what the soul will be able to see. That is why the Catechism counts chastity among the conditions of the "purity of heart" which, "even now, enables us to see according to God"[2].
A virtue that makes us "like the angels"
The other great intuition of the Fathers is that chastity raises man, making him able to love after the manner of the blessed spirits, without the slavery of the senses. This image — purity that "angelicizes" man — runs from Christian antiquity to Saint Francis de Sales:
"Chastity is the lily of the virtues and, even in this life, it makes us almost like the angels." — Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction à la vie dévote, Part III, ch. 12[3]
This comparison must be understood aright. The saints do not despise the body or marriage: they teach that chastity frees love from its selfish heaviness, as the angel loves without seeking himself. Purity does not abolish the flesh; it makes it transparent to the spirit.
Chastity, guardian of love
Far from opposing chastity and love, the saints unite them: for them, chastity is precisely what makes love possible, by preventing it from decaying into covetousness. Saint Paul had laid it down as a principle from the first communities:
"For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from immorality; that each one of you know how to take a wife for himself in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like heathen who do not know God." — Saint Paul, First Letter to the Thessalonians 4:3-5[4]
This word founds all the rest: chastity is "the will of God," not an invention of monks. And its stake is not negative — "not doing" — but positive: to love "in holiness and honor," that is, to recognize in the other a person, never an object.
The voice of the Fathers of the Church
Saint Augustine: "Give me chastity… but not yet"
No saint spoke of chastity more truthfully than Saint Augustine (354-430), because none knew better the interior tearing of one who desires it without yet willing it entirely. In his Confessions, he delivered the most famous — and most honest — prayer on this fight:
"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet. For I was afraid you would hear me too soon, and heal me too quickly of this disease of concupiscence, which I preferred to satisfy rather than extinguish." — Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book VIII, ch. 7[5]
This sentence lays bare the heart of the problem: the difficulty is not first being able, but willing. Augustine thereby teaches that chastity is never a mere performance of the will: it is a healing that God works in a freedom which learns, little by little, to desire its own purification.
Chastity, a gift to be asked for, not a conquest to be seized
From this experience Augustine draws a decisive doctrine: continence is a gift of God, to be implored. It is the famous formula which would later trigger the Pelagian controversy, so strongly does it stress the primacy of grace:
"You command continence: give what you command, and command what you will." — Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book X, ch. 29[6]
All the saints took up this lesson: we do not become chaste by gritting our teeth, but by asking for chastity as a grace. Effort remains necessary, but it comes second; the first word is a prayer.
Saint Jerome: "I praise marriage, but because it gives me virgins"
Saint Jerome (347-420), translator of the Vulgate, is the great patristic cantor of consecrated virginity. His Letter 22 to Eustochium (384) is the classic manifesto of the virginal ideal. In it he answers in advance the objection accusing him of despising marriage, with a formulation of balance that has remained famous:
"I praise marriage, I praise wedlock: but because they give me virgins." — Saint Jerome, Letter 22 to Eustochium, § 20[7]
Jerome does not devalue Christian marriage: he places it in a hierarchy of gifts in which consecrated virginity holds the highest rank — a teaching the Council of Trent would confirm as doctrine of the faith[8]. But his letter is also of a stark realism about the fight: in it he recounts his own temptations in the desert and hammers home that no austerity exempts us from vigilance.
Cyprian, Ambrose, Chrysostom: virginity, "flower of the Church"
The same celebration runs through the other Fathers. Saint Cyprian of Carthage (c. 200-258), in his treatise De habitu virginum, calls consecrated virgins the most radiant part of the flock of Christ:
"They are the flower of the Church's seed, the honor and ornament of spiritual grace, the most illustrious portion of the flock of Christ." — Saint Cyprian of Carthage, De habitu virginum, 3[9]
Saint Ambrose of Milan (c. 340-397) devotes several treatises to virginity (De virginibus); Saint John Chrysostom (349-407) writes a De virginitate; Saint Gregory of Nyssa (335-395) makes it, in his own De virginitate, the path that renders the soul capable of union with God. Saint Athanasius (c. 296-373) sums up the common mind: purity is "the way of life that imitates the angels"[10]. None of them speaks only to monks: they teach that continence according to one's state of life — virginity for some, conjugal fidelity for others — is the universal form of Christian chastity.
Chastity according to the doctors: Saint Thomas Aquinas
A part of temperance, not a repression
The common doctor, Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), gives chastity its precise theological foundation. In the Summa Theologiae, he defines it as a part of the virtue of temperance: it moderates the desire for sexual pleasures according to right reason, as sobriety moderates drink and food. The very word chastity, he notes, comes from the verb castigare — "to correct," "to set right" — because it sets concupiscence straight to place it at reason's service[11]. Far from a repression, it is an order restored to love: not killing desire, but governing it.
"Lust blinds the mind": the daughters of lust
Thomas is also the great analyst of the ravages of the contrary vice. Lust, he shows, attacks not only the body: it darkens the intelligence. Taking up Saint Gregory the Great, he teaches that "blindness of mind" proceeds from lust as "dullness of sense" proceeds from gluttony[12].
"Since the appetite for carnal pleasure carries us away most strongly, it is in lust that reason is most completely absorbed, so that man can no longer consider anything rightly." — after Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, IIa-IIae, q. 153[13]
From this disorder Thomas derives the list of the "daughters of lust" (filiae luxuriae): blindness of mind, thoughtlessness, inconstancy, rashness, self-love, hatred of God, attachment to the present world, and horror or despair of the world to come[14]. This analysis explains why the saints insisted so much on chastity: they saw in it the guardian of discernment. We see clearly — God as ourselves — only with a pure heart.
The masters of the interior life
Saint Francis de Sales: gentleness and firmness
At the threshold of the modern age, Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622), doctor of the Church, gives chastity a gentle face, accessible to lay people living in the world. In his Introduction à la vie dévote, he devotes two chapters to chastity — "the lily of the virtues" — and adds a counsel of great psychological finesse: in this fight, we must not linger arguing with temptation, but turn away from it toward God, as a child throws himself into his father's arms.
"Turn the eyes of your heart toward Jesus Christ crucified, and with a great surge of love refuse consent to this temptation. […] Never dispute with it; answer it only with contempt." — after Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction à la vie dévote, Part III, ch. 13[15]
His pedagogy holds in two words: turn away and entrust, rather than fight head-on. It is the opposite of scrupulous anguish; Salesian chastity is tranquil, because it leans on love more than on fear.
Saint Alphonsus Liguori: "he who flees, conquers"
Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787), doctor of the Church and great master of the moral life, reduces the whole practice of chastity to a small number of sure means, which he repeats tirelessly: prayer, flight from occasions, and recourse to Mary. On the first point, his formula is famous:
"He who prays is saved; he who does not pray is damned." — Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Del gran mezzo della preghiera[16]
On the second, he teaches that, in temptations against purity, "courage consists in fleeing": unlike other combats, this one is won by moving away from danger, not by facing it[17]. This is not cowardice, but lucidity about human weakness. Saint Philip Neri (1515-1595) said it in the same terms: in matters of purity, "cowards win the victory" — that is, those who take care not to presume on their strength[18].
Saint John Bosco and the education of the young in purity
In the 19th century, Saint John Bosco (1815-1888) makes purity the heart of his education of youth. Convinced that this virtue is the most exposed treasure of the young, he entrusts its keeping to frequenting the sacraments and to Marian devotion, and forms adolescents capable of heroic sanctity — foremost among them his pupil Dominic Savio. His pedagogical conviction: purity is protected not by defense alone, but by the fullness of a joyful life, busy and turned toward God.
"Rather die than sin": the heroes and martyrs of purity
The Church venerates a lineage of saints who preferred death to the sin of impurity. Their witness is not a morbid exaltation of sacrifice: it says, in its radicality, that purity of soul is worth more than the life of the body.
Saint Agnes, virgin and martyr
At the summit of this lineage stands Saint Agnes of Rome (c. 291-304), martyred at about thirteen for refusing marriage in order to remain faithful to Christ, her only Spouse. Saint Ambrose, who fixed her legend, sees in her the proof that the strength of purity does not depend on age: a child new in martyrdom, yet already mature in virtue[19]. Agnes becomes the model of Christian virgins for all centuries.
Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, "the saint of angelic purity"
Saint Aloysius Gonzaga (1568-1591), the young Jesuit who died at twenty-three while nursing the plague-stricken of Rome, is traditionally called the "saint of angelic purity." Tradition reports that he carried the custody of the eyes to a heroic degree, keeping a gaze of such limpidness that he was nicknamed "the angel." Proclaimed by the popes patron of Christian youth, he embodies the idea that purity is not sadness but luminous mastery of self, at the service of total gift.
Saint Dominic Savio: "Death, but not sin"
A pupil of Don Bosco, Saint Dominic Savio (1842-1857), who died at fourteen, summed up his whole spiritual life in a resolution taken on the day of his First Communion, which he engraved in his memory as a motto:
"Death, but not sin." — Saint Dominic Savio (motto taken at his First Communion)[20]
This child's word says, better than any treatise, what the martyrs of purity lived: there is a good — friendship with God, of which chastity is guardian — that comes before life itself.
Saint Maria Goretti, martyr of purity
The most famous case of modern times is that of Saint Maria Goretti (1890-1902), an eleven-year-old Italian peasant girl, stabbed on 5 July 1902 by a young neighbor, Alessandro Serenelli, because she resisted his assault. According to the testimonies gathered at the beatification trial, she cried out to him:
"No, no! It is a sin! God does not want it! You will go to hell!" — Saint Maria Goretti to her aggressor, 5 July 1902[21]
But her martyrdom does not stop at the defense of her purity: before dying the next day, she forgave her murderer and declared she wanted to meet him again in Paradise[22]. Alessandro, after years in prison and a conversion, would attend her canonization in 1950. Maria Goretti thus unites the two summits of the Gospel: purity kept even unto blood, and forgiveness offered to the very end. Pope Pius XII proposed her as a model to youth threatened by "the seductions of vice"[23].
Purity and the vision of God: warnings and promises
The holy Curé of Ars: "Nothing so beautiful as a pure soul"
Saint John Mary Vianney (1786-1859), the Curé of Ars, patron of priests, spoke of purity with a poet's wonder and a confessor's severity. His catechism to his parishioners kept formulations of striking freshness:
"There is nothing so beautiful as a pure soul; if we understood it, we could not lose it." — Saint John Mary Vianney, catechism on the prerogatives of the pure soul[24]
Conversely, he described the soul dishonored by impurity with a deliberately stark realism, to wake sleeping consciences: "There is nothing so ugly as an impure soul"[25]. His whole pastoral approach holds in this contrast: showing the beauty of purity to make its price loved, telling the ugliness of sin to make its danger fled.
Fatima: the warning about "the sins of the flesh"
The 20th century received, at Fatima (1917), a startling warning about the gravity of sins against chastity. Sister Lucy, one of the three seers, reports that little Jacinta Marto (1910-1920), shattered by the vision of hell, kept repeating a word received at Lisbon:
"The sins that lead the most souls to hell are the sins of the flesh." — word attributed to Our Lady, reported by Saint Jacinta Marto, in the Memoirs of Sister Lucy[26]
This word, which belongs to a reported private revelation and not to dogma, does not teach that these sins would be the gravest in themselves — pride and hatred of God are graver — but that they lose the greatest number of souls, because they are the most widespread, the most trivialized, and the least fought. It prolongs, in a modern prophetic form, the saints' constant warning about the danger of impurity.
Marthe Robin: every imperfection "darkens the purity of the soul"
The mystics finally widen the notion of purity far beyond the flesh alone, to the total limpidness of the heart. The venerable Marthe Robin (1902-1981) notes in her journal:
"It must be concluded that every imperfection, even the slightest, darkens the purity of the soul and delays, if it does not prevent, its perfect union with God." — Venerable Marthe Robin, Journal (December 1929 – November 1932)[27]
We rejoin here purity of heart in the widest sense, treated for its own sake in How to grow in purity of heart: chastity of the body is only the first step of a transparency that must win over the whole soul.
The contemporary view: chastity as the capacity to love
Saint John Paul II: "purity is the glory of the body"
In the 20th century, Saint John Paul II (1920-2005) profoundly renewed the Church's discourse on chastity through his "theology of the body" — one hundred and twenty-nine catecheses given between 1979 and 1984. Far from any morality of prohibition, he presents purity in them as the condition of true love, in which the body becomes the language of self-gift:
"Purity is the glory of the human body before God. It is the glory of God in the human body." — Saint John Paul II, catechesis on the theology of the body (18 March 1981)[28]
Already in his book Love and Responsibility (1960), when he was a bishop, he had laid down the principle: chastity is not the enemy of love but its condition, for only a pure heart can see and love the person of the other, instead of reducing the other to an object of enjoyment[29]. Chastity, so understood, is not a "no" to sexuality, but a "yes" to the dignity of the person.
Benedict XVI: purifying eros, not destroying it
His successor, Benedict XVI, prolonged this vision in his first encyclical Deus caritas est (2005). In it he rejects the idea that Christianity would have "destroyed eros": faith, he writes, does not fight amorous desire, it heals it and leads it to its greatness by tearing it away from the mere pursuit of pleasure to open it to gift[30]. Chastity is this work of purification: not the extinction of human love, but its education toward its full truth.
What the Catechism sums up
The teaching of the Catholic Church gathers this whole tradition in a few dense formulas. Chastity, says the Catechism, "means the successful integration of sexuality within the person"[31]; it is "a moral virtue" but also "a gift of God, a grace"[32]; it represents "a long and exacting work" which involves "an apprenticeship in self-mastery"[33]. We find again, in magisterial form, exactly what the saints were saying: chastity is at once an effort and a grace, a fight and a beauty, a discipline and a freedom.
Mary, the All-Pure, model and help
All the voices of the saints finally converge on a single figure: Mary, the Immaculate, the All-Pure. The saints of chastity unanimously presented her as the model of purity and the surest help in the fight. Saint Alphonsus, Saint John Bosco, Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort all teach that Marian devotion is, in temptations against purity, a privileged protection. The logic is simple: purity is a gift; it is obtained by asking; and none obtains this grace better than through her who is its masterpiece.
The Marian spiritual tradition says it simply: to keep Mary's ways is to find the purity one sought[34].
For the spirituality of the Divine Will transmitted by Luisa Piccarreta, Mary is more still: the creature in whom the human will, perfectly united to the divine Will, was of a purity without shadow. Chastity finds there its crowning: no longer merely resisting evil, but living in total transparency to God, like Mary.
Table: the great voices of chastity
The table below sums up the principal voices gathered in this article, the striking image each left, and the lesson we draw from it.
| Saint or doctor | Era | Strong formula or image | Lesson drawn |
|---|---|---|---|
| Saint Augustine | 4th-5th c. | "Give what you command" | Chastity is first a grace to be asked for |
| Saint Jerome | 4th c. | "I praise marriage, for it gives me virgins" | Hierarchy of gifts, without contempt for marriage |
| Saint Thomas Aquinas | 13th c. | "Lust blinds the mind" | Purity keeps judgment clear |
| Saint Francis de Sales | 16th-17th c. | "The lily of the virtues" | Gentleness and firmness; turn away, do not argue |
| Saint Alphonsus Liguori | 18th c. | "He who flees, conquers" | Prayer, flight from occasions, recourse to Mary |
| Saint Curé of Ars | 19th c. | "Nothing so beautiful as a pure soul" | The beauty of purity makes its price loved |
| Saint Maria Goretti | 20th c. | "No, no! It is a sin!" | Purity of soul is worth more than life |
| Saint John Paul II | 20th c. | "Purity is the glory of the body" | Chastity, condition of true love |
What do the saints advise for living chastity?
If we gather the counsels the saints repeat, a small number of means returns with striking constancy — from the Desert Fathers to John Paul II. They are not developed here: they are the object of the article How to grow in chastity. But their convergence deserves noting as a common wisdom of the saints:
- Ask for chastity as a grace, with Augustine: "Give what you command."
- Flee occasions, with Alphonsus and Philip Neri: here, "courage consists in fleeing."
- Guard the senses, above all the eyes, with Aloysius Gonzaga and the Curé of Ars.
- Have recourse to the sacraments — the Eucharist that strengthens, confession that raises up.
- Turn the heart toward Christ, with Francis de Sales, rather than argue with temptation.
- Entrust oneself to Mary, help of pure souls.
- And never forget patience: chastity is "a long and exacting work," never acquired once and for all.
These counsels are not a mechanical recipe, but the decanted experience of twenty centuries of sanctity. They all say the same thing: chastity is not first a heroic effort of the solitary will, but a friendship with God which, little by little, makes the heart free, limpid, and able to love.
To go further
- How to grow in chastity — the positive, practical way: the nature of chastity (CCC 2337), its laws of growth, and the saints' concrete means for making it grow.
- How to grow in the fight against lust — the complementary negative way: the direct fight against the vice of lust.
- How to grow in purity of heart — the limpidness of the whole heart, of which chastity of the body is the first step.
- How to grow in temperance — the cardinal virtue framing this whole fight.
- Divine Will — the crowning of purity: living in total transparency to God, like Mary.
Notes and References
Gospel according to Saint Matthew 5:8, official liturgical translation (AELF): "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Sixth of the Beatitudes (Mt 5:1-12).
1Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2519: "The 'pure in heart' […] even now are given to see 'according to God' […]. Purity of heart enables us to see God." Official French edition, Mame/Plon, 1992.
2Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622), Introduction à la vie dévote (1609), Part III, ch. 12 ("On Chastity"): "Chastity is the lily of the virtues, and it makes men almost equal to angels." Widely circulated text; many editions.
3First Letter of Saint Paul to the Thessalonians 4:3-5, official liturgical translation (AELF): "This is the will of God, your sanctification: to keep away from immorality […], without letting yourselves be carried away by the passion of desire, as do the pagans who do not know God."
4Saint Augustine (354-430), Confessions, Book VIII, ch. 7, § 17: "Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo." ("Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.") Augustine adds that he feared being heard too quickly. Reference edition: Les Confessions, Bibliothèque augustinienne collection (Desclée de Brouwer) or GF-Flammarion.
5Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book X, ch. 29, § 40: "Da quod iubes et iube quod vis." ("Give what you command, and command what you will.") This formula on continence as a gift of grace stood at the heart of the Pelagian controversy (cf. De dono perseverantiae, 20, 53).
6Saint Jerome (347-420), Letter 22 to Eustochium (year 384), § 20: "Laudo nuptias, laudo coniugium, sed quia mihi virgines generant." ("I praise marriage, I praise wedlock, but because they give me virgins.") Reference edition: Lettres, text established and translated by J. Labourt, Les Belles Lettres (CUF).
7Council of Trent, 24th session (1563), Doctrine and canons on marriage, canon 10: anathema on whoever denies that the state of virginity or consecrated celibacy is "better and happier" than the married state. Cf. Denzinger-Hünermann, Enchiridion symbolorum, no. 1810. The Church honors marriage as a sacrament while holding the superiority of the virginal gift.
8Saint Cyprian of Carthage (c. 200-258), De habitu virginum ("On the Dress of Virgins"), 3: consecrated virgins are "flos est ille ecclesiastici germinis […], illustrior portio gregis Christi" ("the flower of the Church's seed […], the most illustrious portion of the flock of Christ"). Text in Corpus Christianorum / PL 4.
9Saint Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296-373), De virginitate (On Virginity), PG 28. Christian virginity is presented there as a life imitating that of the angels. The authenticity of the Greek treatise is debated; the doctrine remains received in tradition.
10Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Summa Theologiae, IIa-IIae, q. 151, a. 1: chastity is a part of temperance that moderates the desire for sexual pleasures according to reason; the name comes from its "chastising" (castigat) concupiscence. Reference edition: French translation of the Revue des Jeunes (Cerf) or the single-volume Cerf edition.
11Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, IIa-IIae, q. 15, a. 3, taking up Saint Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, XXXI: "blindness of mind" (caecitas mentis) is born of lust, as "dullness of sense" is born of gluttony.
12Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, IIa-IIae, q. 153, a. 5: because venereal pleasure is the most vehement, it is in lust that the use of reason is most hindered. Synthetic translation from the Latin text; to be checked against the critical edition.
13Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, IIa-IIae, q. 153, a. 5: the "daughters of lust" (filiae luxuriae) are blindness of mind, thoughtlessness (inconsideratio), inconstancy, rashness, self-love, hatred of God, attachment to the present age, and horror or despair of the age to come.
14Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction à la vie dévote, Part III, ch. 13 ("Some counsels on chastity") and Part IV (on temptations): counsel to turn the heart toward Christ crucified and not to argue with impure temptation. Synthetic formulation from the text of de Sales.
15Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787), Del gran mezzo della preghiera (1759): "He who prays is saved; he who does not pray is damned." Central thesis of the work. Many French translations (old editions and reprints).
16Saint Alphonsus Liguori, constant teaching of his works of spirituality (La vera sposa di Gesù Cristo, Pratica di amar Gesù Cristo): in temptations against purity, "courage consists in fleeing" the occasion, unlike other temptations which are faced head-on.
17Saint Philip Neri (1515-1595): maxim reported by his biographers (notably Pietro Giacomo Bacci, Vita di san Filippo Neri): in the fight for purity, "cowards win the victory" — that is, those who flee the occasion without presuming on their strength.
18Saint Ambrose of Milan (c. 340-397), De virginibus, Book I, ch. 2, on Saint Agnes: "nova martyr aetate, fortis martyrio" — a child in age, but strong in martyrdom. Ambrose makes Agnes the model of virgins. PL 16.
19Saint Dominic Savio (1842-1857), resolution taken on the day of his First Communion (8 April 1849) and kept as a motto for life: "La morte, ma non peccati" ("Death, but not sin"). Reported by Saint John Bosco, Life of the Young Dominic Savio (1859).
20Saint Maria Goretti (1890-1902), words reported at the beatification trial from the statements of her repentant aggressor, Alessandro Serenelli: "No, no! È peccato! Dio non lo vuole! Tu andrai all'inferno!" ("No, no! It is a sin! God does not want it! You will go to hell!"), 5 July 1902 at Le Ferriere di Conca.
21Saint Maria Goretti, words of forgiveness reported on the eve of her death (6 July 1902): she declared she forgave her murderer "for the love of Jesus" and wished him to join her in Paradise. Serenelli, converted after his imprisonment, testified at the trial and attended the canonization (24 June 1950).
22Pius XII, homily for the canonization of Saint Maria Goretti, 24 June 1950, Saint Peter's Square: he proposes her as a model to youth faced with the "seductions of vice" and celebrates purity kept even unto blood.
23Saint John Mary Vianney (1786-1859), Catechism on the prerogatives of the pure soul, collected in the Esprit du Curé d'Ars (Abbé Monnin): "There is nothing so beautiful as a pure soul; if we understood it, we could not lose it."
24Saint John Mary Vianney, Catechism on impurity, collected in the Esprit du Curé d'Ars: "There is nothing so ugly as an impure soul." The saint used deliberately stark images to wake sleeping consciences.
25Word attributed to Our Lady and reported by Saint Jacinta Marto (1910-1920), quoted by Sister Lucy of Fatima in her Memoirs (3rd and 4th Memoirs): "The sins that lead the most souls to hell are the sins of the flesh." This is a reported private revelation: it indicates that these sins lose the greatest number of souls (because the most widespread), not that they would be the gravest in themselves.
26Venerable Marthe Robin (1902-1981), Journal (December 1929 – November 1932), Foyer de Charité editions, 2012, p. 38: "Every imperfection, even the slightest, darkens the purity of the soul and delays, if it does not prevent, its perfect union with God."
27Saint John Paul II (1920-2005), catechesis on the theology of the body, general audience of 18 March 1981: "Purity is the glory of the human body before God. It is the glory of God in the human body." Cf. Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, Cerf edition.
28Karol Wojtyła (the future John Paul II), Love and Responsibility (Miłość i odpowiedzialność, 1960), French translation Stock/Dialogue: chastity is presented as the condition of authentic love of the person, which prevents reducing the other to the rank of an object of enjoyment ("the value of the person" against the "consumer attitude").
29Benedict XVI, encyclical Deus caritas est (25 December 2005), nos. 3-5: the Christian faith has not "destroyed eros," but purifies and heals it to lead it to its true greatness, opening it to self-gift. Official text on Vatican.va.
30Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2337: "Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person, and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being."
31Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2345: "Chastity is a moral virtue. It is also a gift of God, a grace, a fruit of spiritual effort."
32Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2342: "Self-mastery is a long and exacting work. […] It includes times of progress and times of regression."
33Summary paraphrase, in the line of Saint Alphonsus Liguori (The Glories of Mary) and Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort (Treatise on True Devotion): recourse to Mary is presented as a privileged help for obtaining and keeping purity. It is not a textual quotation from these works.
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