Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
To educate the young people to the chastity
I should like you to be free of anxieties. An unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord. But a married man is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is divided. An unmarried woman or a virgin is anxious about the things of the Lord, so that she may be holy in both body and spirit. A married woman, on the other hand, is anxious about the things of the world, how she may please her husband. I am telling you this for your own benefit, not to impose a restraint upon you, but for the sake of propriety and adherence to the Lord without distraction. 1Cor 7,32-35
In the today’s passage Paul speaks of the virginity, as a way of life to be completely of the Lord, in the soul and in the body. Although, today, some part of the clergy strongly objects, in the opinions and in the facts, this choice which the Church still maintains for the consecrated persons, we enter into this controversy only to say that the best priests we have known have kept themselves away from these issues. We wish, however, to say a few words on the virginity as a phase of maturation and preparation for the marriage. It is a subject for the young people. A few days ago, while traveling by train from Milan to Saronno, a teenager girl sitting in front of me, talking on the phone to a friend confided: “You know, I am no longer with Albert, there was no physical agreement between us: I changed story, now I am with Henry, the one who last year was with Carla”. O tempora, O mores! – What times, what morals! – The latins cried in this way when they were faced with so disconcerting situations. Certainly we have not to return to the time when the engaged couple was used to come to the marriage without the necessary intimacy between them, which would allow each other to know the feelings, the ideas and even the physical accord. But today the situation has completely reversed: the word engagement has disappeared, just talking about life stories in “marital status”, which follow each other and the virginity is no longer considered a valuable asset to offer for a love which would last for the entire life. The position of the Church, and also ours, is that the mutual gift of two lovers is permissible only when they can assume the related full responsibility, including the acceptance of a birth. This is what has happened to our son Marcos, who now lives in Palermo: he has assumed his responsibilities and he has a nice family with a beautiful baby. To recall his grandfather, he called him Pierluigi, but because he is brazilian, he calls the baby Giginho: we are sure that he will become a good soccer player! It is necessary to help the young people to well manage the freedom they now enjoy and really the only valid means available to us are the education to the prayer, to the meditation on the Word of God and to the attendance of the sacraments.