At Easter we not only proclaim as an article of faith that Christ rose bodily from the dead. We also profess our belief in the “resurrection of the body” as applying to each of us individually.

The Catechism tells us that not only will our immortal soul live on after death, but that even our “mortal body” will come to life again.” (n. 990) “In expectation of that day, the believer’s body and soul already participate in the dignity of belonging to Christ. This dignity entails the demand that [the believer] should treat with respect his own body, but also the body of every other person.” (n. 1004) In the words of St. Paul: “The body [is meant] for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? ... You are not your own … So glorify God in your body.” (1 Cor 6:13-15)

There are many implications in this for the way we live today, especially as Christian beliefs exercise less and less public influence on how people, including Catholics, conduct themselves in everything from sexual morality to the treatment given to human remains.

The immediate context of Paul’s words is the virtue of chastity. The new Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church YOUCAT, recently published and in the news, says this: “That person is chaste who has consciously accepted his sexuality and integrated it well into his personality.” (no. 404) The Corinthians to whom Paul wrote (like so many people today) were tempted to think of fornication and other immoral acts as a matter of indifference. Paul insisted that this is not so, and that every believer, united to Christ by baptism, is not only obligated but also capable of integrating sexuality within himself or herself in a way worthy of our human dignity as both corporal and spiritual beings. And as the YOUCAT points out: “Chastity and continence are not the same thing. Someone who has an active sex life in marriage must be chaste too. A person acts chastely when his bodily activity is the expression of dependable, faithful love.”

Let’s leave the world of the Corinthians and consider our own. The official preacher to the papal household, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, captures the state of things today when he writes: “Young men and women are pressured by their surroundings — often even by the school environment which ought to help them mature — to be ashamed of their chastity, to do everything to hide it, even to boast about experiences they have not had, simply so as not to appear different from other people. Someone has said that hypocrisy used to be the tribute paid by vice to virtue. Today it is the tribute paid by virtue to vice.”

The bishops of the United States hope that all Catholics will be as concerned as they are about defending marriage and family life as an indispensable foundation of society and church life. This includes a desire to remedy the situation that Fr. Cantalamessa describes by promoting the virtue of chastity among our young people. This is accomplished chiefly through the good example of their elders, and by our addressing serious threats to chastity like contraception, pornography and adultery.

As with every virtue, chastity requires a life-long effort at self-disciple and self-mastery. However, as Scripture tells us, we are not on our own. We are members of the Body of Christ. We have received the grace of God, who helps us on our way and raises us up when we fall.

In 2008 the U.S. bishops published a resource titled “Catechetical Formation in Chaste Living: Guidelines for Curriculum Design and Publication.” Although designed primarily for publishers in the development of new religion texts, these guidelines can also be a help to parents, catechists and Catholic school teachers. I invite you to view this document online by going to the USCCB website (www.usccb.org), clicking “departments” and then “catechism.”

Sometimes parents confuse formation in chastity with “sex education” centered on human anatomy and physiology. Certainly the two are not unrelated, but neither are they the same. The church acknowledges the primary role of parents in giving a concrete or more specific education in human sexuality. It is very clear, however, that today’s environment — with the strong influence of media, entertainment, peer pressure and  separate youth culture and market — requires the whole church, and especially parents, to be proactive in forming our young people in the virtue of chastity.

May is Mary’s month, and now also the month of the late great Pope John Paul II ’s beatification. I would like to close with what he once said about Mary and the virtue of chastity:

“Christ is certainly the first and highest example for every chaste life. However, Mary is a special model of chastity lived for love of the Lord Jesus ... She who is the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit par excellence helps believers rediscover their own body as the temple of God and to respect its nobility and holiness. Young people seeking genuine love look to the Blessed Virgin and invoke her motherly help to persevere in purity. Mary reminds married couples of the fundamental values of marriage … Her total dedication to God is a strong encouragement to them to live in mutual fidelity, so that they will never give in to the difficulties that beset conjugal communion.” (General audience, Aug. 20, 1997)

May Mary, patroness of our diocese, inspire us to make reparation for all the sins against chastity. May she intercede for the many Catholics who no longer recognize or accept that their bodies “are not their own,” having been redeemed at the price of Christ’s blood.