Chastity is Essential to Marriage Preparation
by Pope John Paul II
Most of you will walk the path of life in marriage. This too requires a kind of education. You need to equip yourselves for the magnificent commitment of marriage and founding of a family - the most important unit of the Christian community. As young Christians, you must carefully prepare to become good spouses and good parents with families of your own.
Essential to preparing for marriage is your vocation to chastity. I know that young people reject hypocrisy. You want to be honest with yourselves and others. A chaste person is honest. When God created us He gave us more than one way to "speak" to each other. Besides expressing ourselves through speech, we express ourselves through our bodies. Gestures are like "words" that tell who we are. Sexual actions are "words" that reveal our hearts. The Lord wants us to use our sexuality according to His plan. He expects us to "speak" truthfully.
Honest sexual "language" requires a commitment to lifelong fidelity. To give your body to another person symbolizes the total gift of yourself to that person. But if you are not married, you are admitting that you might change your mind in the future. Total self-giving would then be absent. Without the bond of marriage, sexual relations are a lie. And for Christians, Marriage means sacramental marriage.
Chastity - which means respecting the dignity of others because our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (Cor. 6:19) leads you to grow in love for others and for God. It prepares you to make the "sincere gift of self" that is the basis of Christian marriage. More important, it teaches you to learn to love as Christ loves, laying down His life for others (John 15:13).
Do not be deceived by the empty words of those who ridicule chastity or your capacity for self-control. The strength of your future married love depends on the strength of your present commitment to learning true love, a chastity which includes refraining from all sexual relations outside of marriage. The sexual restraint of chastity is the only safe and virtuous way to put an end to the tragic plague of AIDS which has claimed so many young victims.
Helped by God's grace in the Sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist, "be strong and of good courage" (Dt. 31:6) the Pope urges you to commit yourself to this spiritual revolution of purity of body and heart. Let Christ's redemption bear fruit in you! The contemporary world needs this kind of revolution!
