Why did God create sexuality in man? Is it for procreation only? Bishop Moses in an old article of Al-Keraza wrote the following. God created sexuality for the sole purpose of preservation of the race in animals. That is why animals are only sexually active for a few days or a few weeks every year. This period of sexual activity is called “the period of heat”. During this period, the female produces a certain scent that arouses the male. Animals mate during this period and after that they are not sexually aroused. It is not so in humans, for they are the only members of the animal kingdom that are always in heat! So why is this?

Bishop Moses gives us the answer, it is because God wanted humans to share and enjoy a holy kind of love that is likened to the love of Christ and His church. Saint Paul says, “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” (Eph 5:32) This is how St. Paul speaks about the mystery or Sacrament of marriage. It is a great Sacrament, but only because if it mirrors the relationship between Christ and the Church. But as holy and as great is the use of sexuality within holy matrimony, its use outside marriage is so abhorable. Saint Paul adds, “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge” (Heb 13:4) and again, “Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.” (1 Cor 6:18) Sexuality within marriage is uniquely blessed as a sacrament that emulates the love between Christ and His bride, the Church, while sexuality outside marriage is distinct from any other sin, because it defiles the image of love between Christ and the church. “Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid.” (1 Cor 6:15)

Saint Athanasius the great has a wonderful analogy to contrast sexuality within and outside marriage. He tells us, If a soldier goes out to war and kills twenty of the enemies soldiers, he is decorated. But, if in the time of peace he goes out in the street and kills one man, he is condemned. It is the same action, done in different circumstances with completely opposite outcomes.

There is no more evidence that human marital love is blessed than the fact that when God wanted to give us a description of the love between Christ and the church (or the human soul, the unit of the church) He gave us this in one book of the Bible called the Song of Songs. It is a book that is often misunderstood and often attacked even as pornographic. But, there is nothing sinful or pornographic about the marital relationship, because it simulates the love between Christ and the church. “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.” (Eph 5:25) This is where marital sexuality differs from sinful sexuality. Sinful sexuality is concerned with taking, grabbing, exploiting, self gratification, while marital sexuality is about giving. Marital sexual love should be modeled on the love of Christ to the Church, Who “gave himself for it” Marital sexual love is about self giving not grabbing or taking, and that is what makes it holy, because it is Christ like.

“Flee fornication” says St. Paul, but someone may say, easier said than done! And I agree, for chastity is the most elusive virtue. You think that you have reached it only to be overthrown once again in its pit.

The Bible tells us about the perils of fornication, “Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Cor 6:9_10)

In this sweeping sentence, the Bible condemns all sorts of sexual immoral acts. Fornication means pre-marital sex, while adultery means extra marital sex. They are two degrees of one sin except that the punishment is different! A fornicator commits sin against his/her own body and also against his or her partner, while an adulterer commits sin against his/her own body, the partner and the spouse. Note that homosexual acts are also condemned. “effeminate” and “abusers of themselves with mankind” refer to both participants in a male homosexual act.

Lesbianism is also condemned in the Bible, “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature .” ( Rom 1:26 )

The Lord adds to this list of sexually immoral acts, all sorts of lustful passions, “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” (Matt 5:28) It goes without saying that a woman looking with lust upon a man, or a person looking with lust upon someone from the same sex will be as guilty.

Today, the list has gotten bigger, for pornography became such a major problem with even little children. Pornography leads to sexual phantasies and masturbation.

While condemning these immoral acts, the Bible does not explain to us how we can fight against them. For this we have to draw on the experience of the desert Fathers. They are the experts on the subject.

COVERING THE BASICS:

According to the desert Fathers, there are some preliminary steps that one has to take before his quest for chastity. Here is what they say:

CONTROL YOUR TUMMY:

It is very unlikely for someone who is overcome by gluttony to be able to achieve chastity. That is the consensus of opinion of the Fathers. A full tummy, ignites the passions of the flesh. It makes sense that if one is not able to control his passion for food, he will not be able to control the more difficult sexual passion.

CONTROL YOUR SLEEP:

Oversleeping, say the Fathers, also contributes to increase in the sexual drive. One has to fight against oversleeping in order to avoid falling into sexual sins. The Bible actually advises us against oversleeping. Proverbs 6:9 exhorts us, “How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep?” and again Proverbs 20:13 advises us, “Love not sleep, lest thou come to poverty.”

CONTROL YOUR TEMPER:

The Fathers insist that if we cannot control anger, we will not be able to control our carnal desires. The Fathers classify sins and they tell us that anger and fornication belong to the same category of “excitable sins”. One of the Fathers even tells us that the demon of anger and the demon of fornication are one and the same. One who is easily excitable to anger will be easily excitable to the dictates of the flesh.

Here is what the Fathers tell us about this:

As a person progresses in mildness and patience of heart, so also does he in the purity of body. And the further he has driven away the passion of anger, the more tightly will he hold on to chastity. [1]

There are two more factors that I would like to add from my experience with young people, and these are:

DRINKING:

Alcohol is a very potent stimulus of the passions of the flesh. Resistance to sexual sins dissipates when one allows himself to drink even moderately. The great Shakespear realized this and wrote in one of his plays describing the effect of wine on sexual behaviour, “It creates the desire but takes away the performance!” Through the many years I have served as a priest, I have heard many horror stories about drinking and fornication, but this one stands in my mind. It concerns a 16 years old girl of German descent, who was very religious. She used to come and baby sit my children when they were little. We were very pleased with her, since she read the Bible to our children. (A rare find even in the seventies) One day her mother told her, “you don’t have a life! Why don’t you attend the neighbourhood New Year’s party?” She agreed. Someone gave her this funny tasting orange juice and she drank it. Not only did she lose her virginity on New Year’s Eve, but she realized later that she became pregnant. The perpetrator was a married man with kids. The mother refused to allow her an abortion. She was a retired nurse, she went back to work to allow her daughter to keep the baby. Six month later, she died of a heart attack.

DANCING:

Dances are the commonest way for “relationships” to start. Again, it suffices here to tell one of the many horror stories that sticks up in my memory. It was the eighties, and I had to go to the U.S.A. to serve instead of another priest on vacation. After communion, I was approached by a 13 years old girl who wanted to confess. I took her to the office of the priest I was covering for, and she went on crying and sobbing. I tried to calm her down, asking about the reason for her tears. Finally she started talking, “I had sexual intercourse”. It turned out she went to a dance (her parents were “enlightened”), danced with a 15-year old boy, and before the night was over she had lost her virginity. “Did he rape you?” I asked, “No Abouna, I wanted it as much as he did. With the music and the lights and our bodies close to each other, I had no desire to resist.” That was her answer.

Let us return now to the Fathers. They tell us that even if we control overeating, oversleeping and anger, we still need another virtue before we can attain to chastity. They tell us,“You covet chastity, then covet humility, because without humility you cannot obtain chastity.” The commonest problem in the fight against desires of the flesh is self reliance. “I am going to do this and this, and I will have victory!” Let me give you a dictum about spiritual strife, anything that starts with “I” is doomed to fail! Unless we abandon relying on ourselves, we will fail and fail and fail. No one was ever able to control carnal desires by self control! Here is what one of the Fathers tells us in this regard:

We are unable to acquire chastity through our efforts, unless, while exerting ourselves constantly, we are taught in the school of experience that it is granted to us by the bounty of divine grace. For this reason, one should persevere tirelessly in his efforts, so that he will deserve to be freed from the assaults of the flesh, thanks to the divine gift. He must not believe that he will attain by himself the bodily chastity that he seeks. [2]

In trying to explain this concept to young people, I use this analogy: Imagine a little child trying to reach a toy placed on a table. The table is too high for him to reach, so he tries to stand on his tiptoes but it doesn’t work. He stars jumping up and down but he cannot reach. He even tries to climb on some object or another, only to fall and hurt himself. Totally frustrated, he starts to cry. His father, who has been watching him, then reaches for the toy and gives it to him. The little child did not get the toy by his own efforts, but the efforts inclined the heart of his father to help him.

The problem is that we do the same, we try and try and fail and then in our frustration we cry, and God will give us a respite from the fight, but sooner or later, the devil will suggest to us that we did that by our own effort. Once you admit this thought you lose everything and you are back to square one. The most amazing thing that this keeps repeating itself and we keep on repeating the same mistake without ever learning why we keep falling back. Abbot Chaermon has this to say about this state of affairs:

For each one of us who contends against the spirit of fornication, it is a notable victory not to expect relief through our own efforts. That is not easy even for the experienced. For when purity smiles on them ever so slightly, they immediately flatter themselves in the depths of their conscience by a pride that subtly slips in. They think that they achieved this by their own diligent zeal. Thus, it is necessary for them to be deprived of heavenly protection and to be oppressed by these passions which the divine power had extinguished, until they realize by experience that they are unable to attain the good of purity by their own strength and toil.

Again and again the mercy of God will give us a glimpse of purity and again and again we will fall into the trap, stealing the work of the grace of God and ascribing it to our own effort. This goes on and on until we finally realize that our efforts are worthless and that only God’s grace can give us purity.

What can I do when I fall into this trap? First of all you have to realize that God allows these falls for your own good. Second, acknowledge that your pride is the reason for your fall and ask God to give you back His grace. Here is what Abbot Chaermon says:

When someone has begun to rejoice over an extended period of purity believing that he can no longer fall away from his virtue, he will start boasting within himself. But, when having been abandoned by the Lord for his own good, he realizes that the state of purity in which he placed his confidence is abandoning him, let him return at once to the Author of his integrity. .... One has to be trained by God through these oscillations until he is confirmed by the grace of God in the purity he is seeking.

These “oscillations” may take years and years before reaching true chastity. But these oscillations are useful because they give us experience not only in fighting against fornication but also against pride and self righteousness.

Do not be dismayed if you have been falling again and again in this trap, for it is difficult even for the experienced as Abbot Chaermon tells us. Amma Sarah, one of the great women ascetics of the desert, fought against fornication for fourteen years until God granted her freedom from this passion, and so did Saint Moses the Black.

Finally, when we are humbled by the many times we thought that we have prevailed only to discover that we did not, we fall into the state of the “littleness of heart” and we admit defeat and our total inability to win this war. It is then that God intervenes and grants us a reprieve out of pity. Now that we have been exceedingly humbled by our dismal performance, grace surprises us, the war ceases and the temptations do not bother us anymore. Then we feel a wonderful warmth in our heart, because now we know with great certainty that this “sudden death” of the sinful movements of the flesh is a gift of grace totally unrelated to our efforts.

THE STRUGGLE FOR CHASTITY:

Like any other virtue, prayer should be the first mainstay of the struggle to attain chastity. Show God that you really desire chastity and that you are not paying Him lip service. You should develop hatred for impurity, because you cannot fool God by asking Him to give you purity while deep inside you enjoy sin.

But, what if you cannot reach this stage? Some young people come to me saying, I really want to repent, but I cannot bring myself to hating sin. Well, go to God honestly and tell Him about your predicament. Say with the Psalmist “Create in me a clean heart O God.”

The Prayer of the Oblations, which is said in the Morning offering of Incense is a beautiful prayer asking God to reward those who have offered unto God. But it also asks God to reward “those who desire to offer but have none.” Take your cue from this prayer, throw yourself at the feet of the Saviour and say to Him, “Lord, I am one of those who desire to offer but have none. I wish I could offer a true desire for purity but, I am unable to.”

Saint Augustin was once in this stage, he used to pray saying, “God, I want to repent but not now for I have not had my fill of pleasures!” God caught up with Saint Augustin, and the man that lived in sin for 30 years, became a bishop!

Beware of making vows of chastity to God, or promising Him anything! Because you will be promising something you have no control over in the first place.

Next to prayer, you have to put a sincere effort in the fight against impurity. It does not make any sense to pray to God to give you purity while you watch pornography, or give in to evil thoughts without attempting to arrest them.

Do not look for immediate results for your “efforts” for this is self righteousness. Only God knows your progress. Fight as much as it is in your power without worrying about the end result. God will mark you for effort and not for results. God knows that you are no match for the Devil, and does not expect you to prevail over him. God just wants you to fight courageously even if you lose in the end.

Abbot Theophan the Recluse gives a nice analogy for this. He says, “If a soldier is surrounded by his enemies and goes on fighting until he is seriously wounded in the battle, he is decorated as a hero. But if he sees the enemy around him and raises the white flag and surrenders, he is considered a traitor and is punished accordingly.”

Actually, you may feel that you have lost, but God will count this as a victory. There is a nice story to illustrate this from the “Life of Antony” written by Saint Athanasius. Saint Antony was tempted by the devil in so many ways, he appeared to him in the shape of beasts to frighten him, in the shape of women or gold to tempt him, but St. Antony resisted. Finally, the devil appeared to him in his ugly shape and started beating him up until he lost consciousness. When his disciple found him in this state, he carried him and put him in the church of the nearest village. When Saint Antony regained consciousness, he looked up and saw the ceiling of the church open and the Lord Jesus appeared to him sitting on the throne of His glory. Saint Anthony felt sorry for himself and said to the Lord, “Where have you been Lord when the devil was beating me up?” The Lord answered him, “I was right beside you Antony, but you were doing so well that I decided not to intervene so that you don’t lose your reward!” You see, Saint Antony saw defeat in the beating that the devil gave him but the Lord saw in it a victory worthy of a reward. The moral of the story is this, just fight, don’t worry about the results of the fight.

THE WILES OF THE ENEMY:

The enemy tries to put as many obstacles in our way or trick us to quit the fight. Here are some of his famous tricks.

You resist for a long time then you are overcome, so he suggests to you that since all is lost, why not indulge some more and try later. Wrong! Since you fought with courage, all is not lost, you did not lose the war, you just got wounded in the battle. Do not give in and wallow in your impurity because that is treason! If you lost while fighting, you deserve a reward! To give in to his suggestion that “all is lost” and that “it doesn’t matter any more” is to help him rob you of your reward! So, stand up and resume fighting and do not give in to the thoughts of defeat, and the Lord, who endured the temptations of the devil, will pity you and help you.

The other trick is this, he suggests to you that since in the end you are going to lose, so why bother fighting? He tried this one on a monk and the monk told him, “One blow for you and one blow for me!” It is like a boxing match, you try to give your opponent as many blows as you can regardless of how many blows you receive. Only at the end of the match will you know the score !

Another famous trick is this, you fell into sin, you feel guilty and want to go back to God and ask for forgiveness. The devil rebukes you saying, “How dare you show your face or talk to God after what you have done!” And then he suggests to you, “Wait for a few hours or a few days until you are “clean” and then pray! Wrong! You come to God as you are. When the Prodigal Son decided to come back, he came immediately. He had the stench of the swine he had bean living with allover him. He did not wait to put clean clothes on him. It was the Father who took away his filthy clothes and gave him a clean robe. The Father did not disdain the stench of his son. He was overcome by His love for his son who was dead and is now alive. He ran and embraced him even though he had the stench of sin allover him.

Father Lev Gilet, an Orthodox monk noted for his spiritual writings, once wrote this, “You must be certain that in the same moment that you are committing sin, God loves you.” The devil may suggest otherwise but he is a liar.

So, as soon as you fall, immediately go on your knees before your loving Father and tell Him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.” Immediately you will feel the warm embrace of the Father and His loving kisses. Once more you are on your feet fighting again with courage. Needless to say that this initial act of repentance does not take the place of confessing to your Father in confession.

Another trick he will try is this one, he comes and says to you, “How many times you have done this? Do you think God will go on accepting you every time you come running back to Him?” The answer is yes! For when Peter asked the Lord how many times he should forgive his brother every day, the Lord answered him seven times seventy. Don’t you think the Lord Who expects us to forgive each other seven times seventy every day will give us the same chance? As many times as you fall come back to God. He will never turn His back on you.

A lay person went into a monastery and asked one of the monks, “what makes you different from us who live in the world?” and the monk answered, “We fall, then we rise up, then we fall, then we rise up then we fall then we rise up!” You see, we are all in the same boat!

Do not over grieve if you repeatedly fall, for Theophan the Recluse tells us that this is a sign of pride. Consider this as a remedy sent to you by God to teach you humility. One of the Fathers of the desert said, “Defeat with humility is better than victory with pride.” And Saint Isaac the Syrian tells us this, “Some please God by their virtues, others by their contrite and broken heart.” So, even if you fall into sin and show a contrite and broken heart, this will please God too.

Some people get discouraged because they have been trying without success. Someone asked Abbot Chaermon, how long it takes a person to gain chastity? He answered,

Whoever has withdrawn himself from every useless conversation, has put to death all anger, concern and worldly care, does not over eat or over sleep, and yet does not believe that he will obtain it by these efforts, but rather by the mercy of the Lord, for such person it is not impossible to attain purity in six months.

How long do you think it will take someone who has not yet reached this level of spirituality to attain purity? Six years? Think of Amma Sarah, who fought for fourteen years before being granted victory.

Sometimes we can trick the devil! Like the monk who used to get very hungry and is tempted to break his fast, who used to tell himself, “Let us pray two more psalms then we eat.” and afterwards, he says, “Just two more psalms and surely this time we will eat !” and he goes on and on. Suddenly he is not hungry anymore, because the devil gave up on him! We can use the same technique in fighting the urge to sin, say to yourself, “Let us sleep tonight and see what happens tomorrow!” This way we can postpone falling until we are completely exhausted, and gradually our staying power will increase and the frequency of our falling will decrease.

Finally, what should we do when God grants us chastity? Let us listen to what Abbot Chaermon tells us in this regard:

One who has acquired chastity should rejoice at the purity that has been bestowed upon him and should understand that he has acquired it not by his own effort and vigilance but by the protection of the Lord. And he should understand that his body will persevere in this as long as the Lord mercifully permits it. ... He should never trust in his own virtue, nor be weakened by a flattering sense of security knowing that he will be sullied (become dirty again) if the divine protection departs from him for a little while. Therefore, in all contrition and humility of heart, one must pray ceaselessly for perseverance in this purity.

[1] Second conference of Abbot Chaermon in John Cassian: The Conferences.

[2] Second conference of Abbot Chaermon in John Cassian: The Conferences.