How Chastity Is Tested

Your shrewd question has anticipated the subject, which would have had to come up in our discussion even if you had said nothing. So I do not doubt that you will grasp it well, since your sharp minds have run ahead of our teaching. For the difficulty of any question is easily removed when the inquiry anticipates the answer and is the first to travel along the road it is to follow. [a]

So, for the treatment of the faults we spoke of above, dealing with other people is not merely no hindrance but a considerable help. For the more often their outbursts of impatience are exposed, the deeper the grief and heartfelt sorrow they bring on those who have given way, and the quicker the recovery of health they bring to those who struggle against them. That is why, even when we are living in solitude, where no provocation or occasion for irritation can come from other people, we ought deliberately to meditate on the things that provoke it. Then, as we fight against it in our thoughts with continual struggle, a quicker cure for it may be found for us.

But against the spirit of sexual immorality the system is different and the method is changed. For just as we must deprive the body of opportunities for lust and of contact with flesh, so we must deprive the mind of the memory of it. For hearts that are still weak and infirm, it is dangerous enough even to allow the slightest memory of this passion, so much so that sometimes the remembrance of holy women, or the reading of a story in Holy Scripture, stirs up a dangerous excitement. For this reason our elders used deliberately to leave out passages of this kind when any of the younger monks were present.

But for those who are perfect and established in the feelings of chastity, there can be no lack of tests by which they may examine themselves and confirm their perfect uprightness of heart by the uncorrupted judgment of their own conscience. So for the man who is thoroughly established there will be a similar test even with regard to this passion. One who is sure that he has altogether rooted out this evil may, for the sake of testing his chastity, call up some picture as if with a lustful mind. But such a test should by no means be attempted by those who are still weak, for to them it will be dangerous rather than useful: that is, to turn over in the heart intercourse with a woman, and caresses that are in some way tender and very soft. When, then, someone grounded in perfect virtue finds in himself no assent of the mind and no stirring of the flesh aroused by the lure of the most caressing touches he has pictured in thought, he will have a very sure proof of his purity. And training himself to this steadfast purity, he will not only possess the blessing of chastity and freedom from defilement in his heart, but even if he is obliged to touch a woman’s body, he will shudder at it.

With this Abbot John brought his conference to an end, since he saw that it was just the time for the meal at the ninth hour. [d]