This verse is preceded by verse 18 which says: “Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.” A fight against sexual immorality requires heroism, especially with a young person. We can call it literally bloodless martyrdom. The saints recommended several principles. For example, in fuga salus – salvation in flight. Another motto was: principiis obsta – resist the beginnings. Jesus says concerning this: If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off; if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off; if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye or one hand than having two eyes or hands, to be cast into the everlasting fire.

In these oversexualized times, when the spirit of the world has contaminated the environment so much that even young children’s pure minds and imagination are systematically defiled and children are literally forced to become slaves of immorality, to speak about chastity – the angelic virtue – seems like a utopia. Naturally, to speak one-sidedly about the demands of the Gospel without giving the adequate means of fighting can even lead to mental breakdown. Education of the young generation in chastity is the greatest problem of mankind today. That is why teenagers worldwide, though brought up in good Christian families, experience a crisis and many lose faith in God which they came to in childhood. It is not because of the intellect but because people refuse to call a sin a sin and to fight against it and therefore in their pride they cast aside the law of God and begin to ridicule God. And they pretend to have great academic knowledge. It was the same in the time of so-called scientific atheism, as many of you experienced. Today, the fight against God takes a different form. Various other gods are forced upon man – different kinds of energy, divination, magic or pagan practices which allow man to open his heart in meditation to unclean demons, to pretend to have great “spiritual knowledge” and to talk about spiritual experience.

In this fight for purity, apart from the classic means used in the past – such as devotion to Mary, the sacraments, regular prayer and true fellowship (not to be alone) – we need to consciously avoid immorality on the Internet.

The Word of God expresses three truths: 1) our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, 2) the Spirit of God lives in us, 3) we are not our own. And it adds that we were bought at a price. This price was the death of Christ on the cross! Therefore we are called to glorify God in our body. The Scripture says in another place: “The body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord.” (v.13) Life is short, and what is more, we know neither the day nor the hour, so we must be ready at all times for departure from this life, God’s judgment and eternity. When we develop various diseases, e.g. blindness, paralysis, gangrene associated with amputation, diabetes, allergy, cancer, or suffer heart failure or a stroke… let us be aware that we are the living temple of God, the Spirit of God lives in us and we were bought at a price – not with silver or gold but with the precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore let us unite all suffering and cross-bearing in our life to the cross of Christ and His death, and let us become the propitiation both for our salvation and for the salvation of our neighbours.

Download: Reflection on 1Cor 6:19-20