Day 46. From Malls to Walls
It is impossible to go through life without trust. That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear
We crave intimacy. So much of the effort we pour into our bodies is about attracting “the One.” Somewhere out there, we believe, is the One person who can take away the deep loneliness we experience inside. If we’re in the right place, at the right time, with the right looks, and the right personality, we’ll meet that right One and everything – everything – from that point on will be so…right.
This craving is intensified by a frightful realization: there’s nobody out there. Very few people can give us that intimate companionship we need. We go looking for loving, caring friendships and all we get, for the most part, are surface associations with self-centered people. All of the good ones – relationships, that is – are taken. As it begins to dawn on us how out of reach an intimate relationship may be, our hunger for love may lead us to take increasingly desperate measures.
So we try to maximize our friendships. The more people we know, the more possibilities of finding that intimacy, right? Which brings us back to malls. In my earlier comparison, I described malls as places of maximum openness. You would never expect to find a sign on the front door of a mall, or any store in the mall, that says, “Keep Out” or “No Admittance” or “Access Denied.” Similarly, our hunger for intimacy makes us unwilling to bar any doors, close off any entrances to ourselves.
Our culture tells us that we should have no secrets and no personal sanctuaries. The celebrities we follow on social media provide a steady stream of details about their private lives, while media outlets fill in the rest with the latest gossip. We see our friends posting pictures and messages that are shockingly revealing and wonder if we should do the same. Meanwhile we silently scroll, letting our newsfeeds feed this insatiable curiosity. We are a culture of voyeurs, peeping through the windows of our screens, ogling each other.
What is the result of allowing full access to the deepest, most intimate parts of ourselves? (I’m speaking here about all forms of intimacy: physical, emotional and spiritual). When someone can enter the most sensitive, precious and personal sanctuaries of our lives and take whatever they deem useful, what does that do to us? I know. I see it daily.
When someone enters the inner sanctuary of another person to obtain pleasure or to assert power, the results are devastating. It is a violation that wounds, and it wounds deeply. What’s more, the person so wounded may not see it right away. It may take years of relational or sexual carelessness before the damage is recognized. Suddenly the “mall” approach is revealed for the farce it always was. The wounded person withdraws in self-reproach asking, “How could I have left the most sensitive parts of myself so wide-open to the public? How could I have been so stupid?” It is easy to see where this leads. Our malls become walls.
Never again.
That’s the conclusion we may draw if we’ve been wounded like this. We close down all access to ourselves. We build high, thick walls to keep out intruders. We hate the violators and all who remind us of them. We shut down, close out, run away and hide in a self-imposed dungeon of isolation.
Or we may take a different approach. For some the anger we feel at being violated is turned on the next available partner. We take our revenge by setting into motion a cycle of empty and angry sexual encounters. “You can get my body,” we say to each hook-up, “but you will never have my heart.” Our goal is to hurt, as we have been hurt; to make someone else feel the misery we feel.
If you have never been hurt in this way, you may still know of friends who are locked up in such painful patterns. Either way, we should be aware of the close relationship between the “mall” approach to intimacy and the “wall” result. Generally speaking, one leads to the other.
In these cycles of pain, celibacy may actually seem like a safe haven, a place where no one can hurt me. It may appear as a secure island that no one can visit but me. Yet a vocation, which is profoundly relational and intimate, can never be built on fear.
In my experience, it is fairly common that young men and women who are considering a vocation have a history of past sexual encounters. While this doesn’t bar the way to a chaste life dedicated to the service of God, it is a very important issue. The self-gift of sex by its very nature makes a permanent impression on the soul. This intimacy, once lost, leaves scars. We get hurt. We build walls. We damage our ability to trust.
Even though repentance and conversion are powerful corrective medicine, the residue of those encounters will always be a force to be reckoned with in a celibate life. The pull of sexual desire will be sharply felt throughout one’s discernment. The lingering memory of it will make long term, stable fidelity more difficult, though certainly not impossible. And trust will be more difficult – trusting others and trusting God.
If you are a virgin, you may have managed to avoid this although sexual sin and its destructive results aren’t limited to those who engage in intercourse. In other words, it is quite possible to be a virgin and still be unchaste. Pornography, oral sex and masturbation are among the numerous sins that a virgin may commit while remaining, strictly speaking, a virgin. These sins still damage our ability to make a gift of ourselves, they warp our view of our own bodies and of the opposite sex, and they are grave matter – capable of sending us to hell, if we fail to repent and confess them.
You may be a virgin who has been faithful in the struggle for chastity – repenting of failures, making regular use of the grace of reconciliation and trusting in God’s mercy. If so, you are in the best position to make a gift of yourself. While you are certainly not exempt from issues of trust and betrayal, your wounds are less likely to present obstacles. If, by God’s grace, you have remained relatively free of these burdens, give thanks to the Lord! Yours is the real sexual freedom. You have understood on some level that sex has a purpose; a meaning. It is for permanent, exclusive, total union with a spouse. It is for cooperating in God’s creative initiative and for receiving the gift of life. While others have “freely” engaged in sexual intimacy only to create for themselves much emotional and relational baggage, you are truly free. Your self-gift remains unencumbered by regrets, excuses and shame.
Whatever our past, we must learn a new approach to intimacy. It is a difficult but also a wondrous journey of discovery! We grow in a new appreciation of a long neglected virtue: chastity. For the Israelites, the reconstruction of the temple that had been destroyed proved to be a long struggle. They labored with brick and mortar in one hand and sword in the other (Neh. 4:16f). We too must understand that restructuring our relationships in chastity will involve both labor and conflict. As with anything worth fighting for, though, the final result is a prize worthy of our highest aspirations and our noblest efforts.
Novena Prayer
Jesus says: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
Pier Giorgio responds: What wealth it is to be in good health, as we are! But we have the duty of putting our health at the service of those who do not have it. To act otherwise would be to betray that gift of God.
Let us pray: Blessed Pier Giorgio, help me to seek God’s righteousness, His plan for my life and for the salvation of the world. Show me the way to self-surrender, so that I may desire nothing more than to be of service to the Lord and His Kingdom. Lead me to the table of love, where I will be satisfied.
Blessed Pier Giorgio, I ask for your intercession in obtaining from God, Who is righteous and just, all the graces necessary for my spiritual and temporal welfare. I confidently turn to you for help in my present need: (in your own words, ask for the Lord to give you greater charity in all of your relationships and to purify them from all self-interest).
A Book of Prayers in Honor of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, by Rev. Timothy E. Deeter
Make it My Own
Daily Discernment Workbook
MY FAITH BUILDERS
1. Chastity Defined
Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being. Sexuality, in which man’s belonging to the bodily and biological world is expressed, becomes personal and truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of one person to another, in the complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman.
Catechism of the Catholic Church #2337
Based on this passage from the Catechism, what are at least seven advantages I can think of to living a chaste life?
EXAMINE MY HEART
2. Invisibility Cloak
The two-edged sword of being known.
To be seen or not to be seen? To be known or not to be known?
Maybe we fear being known, but we also fear being unknown, or overlooked, or worst of all, misunderstood. Sometimes the disconnect between our fame-fantasies and our real-life resistance can show us this inner contradiction. Can I relate to any of these situations?
I dream of being famous but I cringe when someone says nice things about me in public.
❑ I can relate ❑ No, that’s not me.
I practice a musical instrument and imagine applauding audiences but dread recitals and public performances.
❑ I can relate ❑ No, that’s not me
I pursue a profession that is held in high honor but then I shyly avoid honors and recognition (but resent it when others gain recognition by seeking it intentionally).
❑ I can relate ❑ No, that’s not me
I want to be in charge, but hate the visibility and accountability of a recognized leadership position.
❑ I can relate ❑ No, that’s not me
I dream of a romantic relationship, but fear speaking deeply with people of the opposite sex.
❑ I can relate ❑ No, that’s not me
Maybe I can't relate to any of these, but if I can, what do I imagine is going on here?
What do these contradictions teach me?
GOING DEEP
3. Never Have I Ever…but then again…
I use these questions to reflect on my past dating and relationship experiences, if they’re applicable. Answering honestly doesn’t brand me as a ‘bad person,’ but opens my life to the light of God’s transforming truth. If my responses don’t fit below, I’ll use my journal. And this self-check is for my own reflection. What I choose to share with my discernment advisor is up to me.
Have I ever ended a dating relationship because it was getting too close and I feared rejection, so I made the move to break it off before the other person could? (No/Yes/If so, why?)
Have I ever stopped trying in a relationship because I was tired of the effort, because it was too complicated? (No/Yes/If so, why…like more deeply, why?)
Have I ever tried to make someone be attracted to me but then rejected them once they showed interest? (No/Yes/If so, why?)
Have I ever had sex because I thought it would make the relationship less awkward and get us past the difficulty of getting to know each other? (No/Yes/If so, why?)
Have I ever preferred masturbation and sexual fantasy to time with my boyfriend or girlfriend? (No/Yes/If so, why?)
Based on my observations above, would I say that, for me, intimacy (“into-me-see”) is fairly natural and easy, extremely difficult or somewhere in between? Why?
What reasons can I give myself that (trusting in faith) finding intimacy is not hopeless for me?
(Hint: I have a powerful friend helping me)
Conclude with
“Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be.
World without end, Amen.”
[0] lead quote - Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear, an Entertainment, 1943, Penguin Classics, 2005 edition
[1] By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. “Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action.” “The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose." For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of “the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved.” CCC 2352, par. 1 Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other….It is a grave offense. CCC 2354