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"He took and healed him and let him go." St. Luke, 14:4.
In his Divine Comedy, the poet Dante tells of a trip to heaven, hell and purgatory. As he comes to the second circle of hell, he finds pitch darkness. A perpetual wind is roaring and moaning. There he sees, like flocks of starlings blown in a winter wind, many souls. Some fly singly, some in couples, whirled here and there and dashed against the rocky cliffs. For them there is never a moment's rest. Their wails and curses pierce the roaring gale.
These are the souls who had given themselves up to all kinds of impurity, and had never repented. In life they permitted themselves to be blown about by the gusts of passion. They made no effort to control their desires. Their punishment is to be blown about forever in this black, blustering breeze of hell.
The poet also takes us to the mountain of Purgatory. There we find those who had sinned against chastity, but who had repented and tried to correct their ways. Here they make amends for their sins. They were in the last and highest terrace of the mountain, because, as Dante maintains, this is the last sin that men get rid of.
And what was their purifying punishment? From the side of the mountain shot forth flames of fire almost leaping across their path. It was a fearful sight. But these souls atoning for their impurities walked willingly through the flames, singing a hymn to the God of purity, the Father of mercy.
The flames caused intense pain but no injury. They were the very opposite of the earthly fires of lust, which cause pleasure but also cause injury.
At last they come to an Angel of God, who, with flaming sword, joyfully sings to them: "Blessed are the clean of heart."
Dante and Virgil must pass through this flame also to reach the pathway that leads to the Earthly Paradise at the top. There Dante learned with new clarity that true love, unselfish love, drives out mere lust.
1. Lust, the third horseman of spiritual death, is an immoderate love of fleshly pleasure. It is a desire for impure and excessive indulgence. It is displeasing to God who expressly forbade it, and is nearly always a mortal sin. We see how God punished this sin with the Deluge (Genesis, 7 :11), and with the destruction of Sodom (Genesis, 19 :24). It causes the loss of more souls than any other sin.
2. Lust takes various forms and shapes:
a. It is lust purposely and knowingly to cause or to keep impure pictures in the mind. Most impurity begins in the mind or imagination.3. The effects of impurity are especially deadly:
b. Lust leads to the reading of sensual books and magazines.
c. It prompts people to attend movies or watch shows which are morally objectionable.
d. It makes people hear and repeat sexually explicit 'jokes' or stories, and talk about such subjects with impure pleasure.
e. It leads men and women to seek impure company and engage in promiscuity, and some even accept and embrace the unnatural and deviant sin of homosexuality.
f. It makes people immodest in their dress, their actions and their very walk and talk.
g. It leads to impurity alone.
h. It causes some to lead others into sin.
a. It drives out grace, the life of the soul.4. What are the weapons against this killer of souls? Time and again we have heard what to do. Perhaps today all may take these suggestions to heart, when we realize the harm done to soul and body by immoderate desire for sexual pleasure:
b. It creates a dislike for prayer and good works.
c. It weakens faith and dims the spiritual vision.
d. It inspires beastly selfishness, artificial contraception, cruelty, injustice, and sometimes even ending in abortion or other murders.
e. It makes people lazy both physically and spiritually.
f. It creates a distaste for all religion.
g. It fills the soul with discouragement and despair.
h. It weakens and often destroys the health from sexually transmitted diseases, some which lead even to death (AIDS).
i. It breaks up families and homes, fills our prisons and hospitals, costs countless millions to the tax-payer, and brings pain and disgrace to the innocent as well as to the guilty.
a. Avoid the occasions of sin. Avoid like leprosy the places, people, situations, and times when tempted against purity.
b. Pray, not only when temptation comes, but also in those untempted moments.
c. We must have help to be chaste. Our best helps are fervent and frequent
Confession and Holy Communion.
d. We should deny ourselves other, smaller things. This helps to build up will power.
e. Remember the terrible punishments of impurity. Keep in mind Dante's picture of sinful souls, impure, unrepentant souls, knocked around like birds in a storm, in the dark, dread pits of hell. Also remember, as encouragement, his picture of souls who committed impurities, but repented and reformed.
f. Watch the senses of sight, hearing and touch.
g. Keep busy with work or some hobby.
h. Be humble. We should know and admit that we cannot go it alone.
i. Trust in God. He will not allow us to be tempted above our powers to resist. He is ready to give us His grace and help at all times.
We read in the Gospel of Luke, quoted above, that Jesus cures a man of dropsy. Lust is like dropsy - a spiritual dropsy. Christ will also cure those of lust if they come near and stay near to Him. One need only look up to our Lord today and ask Him to cure us of all impurity in mind, speech and act. One need only ask him to make one pure after the example of Himself and His Blessed Mother.
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Adapted from Prayer, Precepts, and Virtues
by Fr. Arthur Tonne, 1949
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