Advent Reflection #2 - Healthy Chastity

Ok, so I can tell now that this booklet is going to take me places that I didn't expect. A reflection on chastity was not a topic that I looked for during Advent, but after reading the short section for Tuesday - The First Week of Advent I can see the connection.

Rolheiser says:

But a healthy chastity is not so much about sex as it is about reverence and
respect. It is not just about what we experience, but also about when we experience it. An experience can be wrong simply because
it is premature. Chastity, in the end, is about waiting, about trying to
carry all things, not just sex, at a more sublime level. To surround
anything with proper reverence is to say that it's important.

That's so true, isn't it? We're all about instant gratification. We want it all and we want it now... the coolest car, the biggest house, the trendiest clothes, the 100,00k job out of college... not to mention acting on our most primal urges. There seems not to be anything like courtship now -- sleep with a guy on the first or second date and if he doesn't suit you, or you don't suit him you move on to the next person. Is that intimacy? I don't see how it can be.

There is that old adage that still holds true, I think: "Good things come to those who wait." It's not just the thing that is good, it's the emotion that comes with it... that we've earned it through hard work or patience -- that it wasn't some fluke or stroke of luck. Because we earned it, it is ours!

So how does that translate to Advent? Why is the waiting good for us? We have God's love whether we truly earn it or not. This is His gift to us. Nor have we earned Christ's sacrifice on the cross for our salvation. Yet, we have it nevertheless.

Is it the feeling that if we wait and hope -- put in our time, as it were -- we might deserve such goodness?