When we accept the truth about sex and human sexuality as revealed to us by God, when we undertake the daily effort of ordering our thoughts and conduct to this truth, we embark on the road to love, which has its source in God (cf. 1 Jn. 4:7).
Only love gives sense to our lives. It is God through the beloved apostle John who summons us to “love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love” (1 Jn. 4:7-8).
Maturing in love is the supreme task, purpose, and meaning of our lives on earth. While passing from childhood into adolescence, the boy and girl are confronted with the great mystery of love, which is intimately linked to their respective sex and sexuality. God Himself inscribed in the heart of the man and the woman the desire to become “one body” in the sacrament of matrimony. This desire begins during adolescence with the boy’s and girl’s fascination with each other. In their masculinity and femininity they discover the mysterious beauty of their humanity. This discovery is enchanting; it raises as never before the temperature of their feelings, unleashing a desire for unity. The desire for union is strengthened by the fact that the beloved experience an arousal of the entire psychosexual domain. They discover that sexual experiences provide a powerful charge of sensual pleasure, which begs for consummation.
What does God say to the girl and boy in this situation?
Shun immorality!
First of all, He cautions against immorality, which destroys love: “Shun immorality. Every other sin which a man commits is outside the body; but the immoral man sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own” (1 Cor. 6:18-19).
The mutual love experienced by the boy and girl is a gift of God the Creator. He is the Expert who knows what needs to be done so that this gift may not be destroyed and our conscience dulled. Hence He warns against the danger of becoming “callous” by “giving oneself up to licentiousness and the practice of every kind of uncleanness” (Eph. 4:19). Licentiousness means giving in to the sexual impulse and stimulating the body and imagination so as to experience sexual pleasure. We do this when we engage in premarital sex, mutual caressing (petting), passionate kisses, masturbation, pornography, etc. In so doing, the boy and the girl treat each other’s bodies as mere objects of pleasure.
All these behaviors demonstrate a selfish focusing on the self and are thus a denial of love. Selfishness is a destructive force that enslaves and wreaks havoc on man’s spiritual domain. A heart enmeshed in the various sins of impurity is enslaved by selfishness and therefore incapable of showing or experiencing love. To remain in a state of impurity is one of man’s worst tragedies, since only those who are pure of heart are blessed (happy). Only they “will see God”—i.e. experience the love that has its source in God.
In God’s divine plan sexual pleasure is to be ordered to the law of love, which is to say the unselfish and total gift of the self to the beloved. This reciprocal, unselfish gift of the entire person (body and soul) by which the man and the woman become “one flesh,” is possible only within the sacrament of marriage. Through this sacrament Christ sanctifies the man and woman: they become husband and wife. Then, by the power of God, their becoming “one body” in the marital act serves a sacred sign of the sacrament of marriage—a means of mutual sanctification, an experience of mutual love within the love of Christ.
The sexual intimacy of a pure-hearted married couple is infinitely richer and more beautiful than mere sensual pleasure, since it is the experience of full spiritual and bodily union within the love of God Himself.
One has to grow and mature into such an experience of sexual intimacy. Thus Holy Scripture tells us: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from unchastity; 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” (1 Thess. 4:3-5). “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming” (Col. 3:5-6).
“Let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Rom. 13:13-14). “Brethren, we (…) exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you learned from us how you ought to live and to please God, just as you are doing, you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from unchastity; 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; that no man transgress, and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we solemnly forewarned you. For God has not called us for uncleanness, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you” (1 Thess. 4:1-8).
From emotional love to enduring love
Blessed John Paul II called on us to constantly strive against all kinds of impure thoughts, deeds, and desires by uniting ourselves in love with Christ, since only then will we be “interiorly free from the urges of our bodies and sex, free with the freedom of self-giving. (…) By freedom we mean above all self-possession (self-mastery).” Only those with pure hearts are free, since they are masters of themselves and capable of loving, which is to say, capable of making a disinterested gift of themselves to the point of sacrificing their very life. Self-denial, the rejection of possessive, narcissistic love, is not easy, for it means dying to ourselves every day, despising and rejecting every temptation to acts of impurity. By rising from every lapse into sin and persevering in our faith in Christ, we come to experience in our hearts the joy of pure love, which is His gift.
In this school of freedom Jesus teaches us to overcome our trifling emotions and root ourselves in Him. We learn not to become closed within ourselves, but rather to open ourselves up to others—to mature beyond emotional love toward an enduring love. Authentic love is much more than a feeling; above all, it is an act of the will independent of the emotions—a dispassionate gift of the self. We need to struggle daily with the powers of evil and our weaknesses—always to seek the good of others: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (Jn. 15:13). To pass from a possessive, narcissistic love to a love that is an act of the will independent of the emotions, to constantly chose the good of others, which is the unselfish gift of the self and the joy of pure love—this is only possible for those who have entrusted themselves totally to Jesus and allow Him to lead them through life.