May 13 Sat
Purity.- St Peter writes to the Christians of his time, and indeed to Christians of all times: “Beloved, I beseech you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh that war against your soul. Maintain good conduct among the gentiles, so that in case they speak against you as wrongdoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.”
Today's world also needs the witness of souls dedicated entirely to the service of Jesus Christ. “A reddish-blue wave of filth and corruption has set out to overcome the world, throwing its vile spittle over the Cross of the Redeemer.
“Now he wants another wave to issue forth from our souls – a wave that's white and powerful, like the Lord's right hand – to overcome with its purity all the rottenness of materialism and undo the corruption that has flooded the world. It is for this, and more, that the children of God have come.” St Josemaría
This is the meaning of the virtue of chastity in our life: dedicating ourselves to God's service with all our faculties and senses, each in his own state in life. And we do it for an apostolic reason: to bring souls to him. The spirit God wants us to live, being crystal-clear and pure, can only survive in a clean heart. And it is seeing a clean life that attracts others to God's love. Purity, which is very pleasing in the sight of God and his immaculate Mother, gives us a supernatural strength which attracts people, and enables us to live in total and exclusive dedication to the service of God in the apostolate.
By practicing the virtue of purity with loving care, we become the sweet fragrance of Christ, which attracts other souls towards our Lord. “The bonus odor Christi, the fragrance of Christ, is also that of our clean life, of our chastity – the chastity of each one in their own state, I repeat – of our holy purity, which is a joyful affirmation. It is something solid and at the same time gentle; it is refined, avoiding even the use of unfitting words, since they cannot be pleasing to God.”