Heroism and Human Sexuality
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What is Heroism?
Heroism means being willing to sacrifice great goods and great pleasures for the sake of a greater good and a greater joy.
Christ is the supreme hero. He lays down His life. He allows all respect for His dignity and His physical integrity to be taken from Him. He is willing to let go of all physical comfort and the very breath of His lungs.
He does that in order to save the world, which, to Him, is a greater good. He dies so that He can rise again and lead all willing men and women with Him to Heaven.
The most vivid, and striking form of heroism comes in the act of a physical martyrdom, where the saint imitates Christ by preferring death to sin. This is the Christian’s greatest triumph and very few people have the opportunity to realize this kind of heroism
But all of us, every Christian, is called to the heroism of living our sexuality in a chaste, and holy way.
And down through the ages, the world shows its incomprehension, and its hatred, for the heroism of Catholic chastity.
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Christ’s teaching on Marriage
People are always complaining that the Catholic Church’s teaching on marriage and sexuality is unrealistic and unlivable. That shouldn’t be surprising, because when His Apostles heard Jesus say that to divorce one’s wife and marry another is a sin, they felt the same way. They said, “That’s not livable. Nobody can do that. It would be better not to marry.”
It’s amazing how everybody loves the idea of heroism: but when Jesus and His Church actually ask us to be heroic, everybody protests.
In fact, they not only protest against the truth of the Church’s teaching but, in many cases, they lash out in anger to destroy the witness to that truth
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The Heroism of Marriage and Chastity
It’s heroic to give everything to a marriage.
To give your life, your whole life, to be faithful to one person. To give your potential for new life, and promise to take responsibility for any new human being that God brings into the world through you and your spouse.
It’s also heroic to give your life fully to God through celibacy. To say, “I know that one day I will enter the kingdom of heaven, where we are neither married nor given in marriage. And I will begin that life now.” To say, “I will imitate my Lord, who remained unmarried so He could be radically available, and serve all equally.” To say, “I will avoid being concerned about many things in marriage, and instead focus on the one ultimate thing: serving my King and His Kingdom.”
When God made you a man or a woman, He made you for one of these two forms of heroism. He made you either to abstain wholly, or to be married.
The world hates both these forms of heroism. It says that both are unnatural, both unlivable. It hates celibate chastity. It hates indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman.
And from time to time, its hatred becomes violent.
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Attacking those who proclaim the Christian message of Heroic Sexuality
John the Baptist was the first to be martyred because he said, “You should not marry your brother’s divorced wife.”
John the Baptist lived the heroism of celibate chastity and he proclaimed the truth about how to live the heroism of married fidelity. Then he was martyred for it.
The king and queen, those in power, didn’t want to hear the call to living marriage and sexuality in an ordered way.
Fifteen hundred years later, St. Thomas More was martyred for the same reason.
He was a married man, a man true to his word to stay faithful to one woman. But the king of that time wanted him, needed him, to say that it was okay for him to divorce his wife and marry another. Thomas more wouldn’t do it. And like John the Baptist, he was beheaded.
Now, once more, we find ourselves in an age where if one breathes a word against any kind of bizarre sexual deviation, it’s called hate-speech. You get cancelled. In some cases, in some countries, you go to jail.
That shouldn’t be a surprise for us. In Jesus’ time, people were outraged at hearing they had to act like men and women, and be true to their word. They’re outraged at hearing it now. As Jesus says, “If the world has hated me, it will hate you too.”
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The Lonely Heroism of the Church
We belong to the Church, which is most hated for being true to the Gospel teaching on marriage and sexuality. That’s a good indicator that it’s the true Church of Christ.
But remember, even if the world hates the truth about marriage and sexuality, the world secretly, deep-down, knows that it needs that truth.
Everyone wants to believe in love, permanent love, unconditional love, a love that brings more life and more love into the world. Everyone wants to believe in that kind of love, because everybody needs to believe in that kind of love. And the Catholic Church is the last institution under the sun still fighting for that kind of love. Still fighting for the 100% love of indissoluble marriage and celibate chastity.
It’s hard to live that kind of love. It may demand a kind of heroism. And it’s hard to preach that love, as John the Baptist and Thomas More and witnesses in our own day remind us, preaching the Gospel truth on human sexuality can lead to a real martyrdom.
But we were put on this earth to follow and imitate Christ. And if He chooses us to be His heroes, then so be it. By His grace, we will be.