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While Lent offers us a clear path of conversion, turning away from the world, Easter invites us into God’s own life. In Lent, we seek to die with Christ; in Easter, we must live with him. It appears an anticlimactic season after the rigors of prayer and fasting, but Lent is ordered to Easter as a period of training to live a more joyful and integrated life in Christ.
The word “chastity” might take us right back to the battle of Lent. Isn’t that one of those negative words focusing on prohibitions? The Church’s teaching, however, leads us to a positive vision focused on integrity: “Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2337). This vision focuses more on life than death, living a truly human life that allows the interior order of the soul to God to permeate our entire being.
The word chastity, therefore, needs to be resurrected in our understanding. Bishop Erik Varden, former Trappist Abbot of Mount St. Bernard’s Abbey in England and now Bishop of Trondheim in his native Norway, offers a glorious revivification in Chastity: Reconciliation of the Senses (Bloomsbury, 2023): “To tie chastity down, as has been done, to mere mortification of the senses is to make of it a tool to sabotage the flourishing of character. It is also to misunderstand, misrepresent, and misapply the meaning of a complex notion. I hope, in this book, to release ‘chastity’ from imprisonment in too narrow categories, allowing it to stretch, extend its limbs, breathe freely, perhaps even sing. I use these images advisedly. Unless chastity has a degree of full-bloodedness, it is not a real thing, but counterfeit” (10). We must resurrect chastity, not simply as a term but as a source of the Lord’s risen life within us.
Varden brings delight to an area most seek to avoid, bringing light and joy into a serious conversation about inner disorder. He illuminates chastity through art, drama and literature while remaining down-to-earth. The book speaks to real human experience more than offering a scholastic treatise. Touching on this point, he explains, “That is why I am keen to ground my reflection on chastity in the narrative of a dignified substance divinely adorned, then stripped of glory, reduced to a state of confused desire, ever wanting more than earthly life can provide yet able, even among thorns, to know moments of exultant joy, proceeding homeward – whether or not one knows where home is – robed in mercy” (46). What an elegant tribute to the work of the Resurrection to restore us to glory.
Continued below.
denvercatholic.org
The word “chastity” might take us right back to the battle of Lent. Isn’t that one of those negative words focusing on prohibitions? The Church’s teaching, however, leads us to a positive vision focused on integrity: “Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2337). This vision focuses more on life than death, living a truly human life that allows the interior order of the soul to God to permeate our entire being.
The word chastity, therefore, needs to be resurrected in our understanding. Bishop Erik Varden, former Trappist Abbot of Mount St. Bernard’s Abbey in England and now Bishop of Trondheim in his native Norway, offers a glorious revivification in Chastity: Reconciliation of the Senses (Bloomsbury, 2023): “To tie chastity down, as has been done, to mere mortification of the senses is to make of it a tool to sabotage the flourishing of character. It is also to misunderstand, misrepresent, and misapply the meaning of a complex notion. I hope, in this book, to release ‘chastity’ from imprisonment in too narrow categories, allowing it to stretch, extend its limbs, breathe freely, perhaps even sing. I use these images advisedly. Unless chastity has a degree of full-bloodedness, it is not a real thing, but counterfeit” (10). We must resurrect chastity, not simply as a term but as a source of the Lord’s risen life within us.
Varden brings delight to an area most seek to avoid, bringing light and joy into a serious conversation about inner disorder. He illuminates chastity through art, drama and literature while remaining down-to-earth. The book speaks to real human experience more than offering a scholastic treatise. Touching on this point, he explains, “That is why I am keen to ground my reflection on chastity in the narrative of a dignified substance divinely adorned, then stripped of glory, reduced to a state of confused desire, ever wanting more than earthly life can provide yet able, even among thorns, to know moments of exultant joy, proceeding homeward – whether or not one knows where home is – robed in mercy” (46). What an elegant tribute to the work of the Resurrection to restore us to glory.
Continued below.
The Fullness of Life: Bishop Erik Varden’s Resurrection of Chastity
While Lent offers us a clear path of conversion, turning away from the world, Easter invites us into God’s own life. In Lent, we seek to die with Christ; in Easter, we must live with him. It appears a
denvercatholic.org
