Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

I will allure her;
I will lead her into the desert
and speak to her heart.

Despite passages such as this from Hosea, Isaiah, the Song of Songs, Saint John, Saint Paul, and Revelation, popular Catholic spirituality – as opposed to the contemplative tradition – shuns eroticism. The Baltimore Catechism never dared to describe to grade school children God’s passionate -- almost barbaric if not downright savage -- love for the Church. It is a subject we still avoid on Sunday morning, lest we scandalize the naïve.

But it does appear occasionally during the weekday morning masses when no one is paying a whole lot of attention. If they heard it at all, they’re pretty sure they didn’t hear it that way.

And yet we need to hear this message. We need a rebirth of wonder in the beauty, holiness and irresistible charm of chastity. Not even God could refuse when the chaste Virgin Mary begged God to send his messiah.

Chastity – whether marital or celibate – seems unnatural and unhealthy to many people. The psychiatric community regards the whole discussion with suspicion. Our sexualized culture cannot imagine that sexual desire should be disciplined and directed into subterranean chambers where it becomes subtle and sublime.

But the Holy Spirit still draws us into the desert where there are neither companions to distract nor words to explain God’s ferocious love. When we return from that desert, as married men and women and as celibate religious, we will have “knowledge” of sexual love.