If what is most seen and most searched for on the internet is pornography — naked men and women, liberal sexuality and every form of sexual oddity and aberration — on this blog we are going to find instead the true meaning of sexuality, which is a marvellous gift created by God, and which gives us the grace of expressing our personality with greater intensity.

Welcome, dear friend! If you are here, know that it is not by chance, but perhaps because until today you had not read, did not know, or had not understood what human sexuality is. From today, on this blog, we are going to explore an area of human life that is so important and so fundamental for all who wish to walk with Christ — and also for those who can no longer stomach the world's wrong teaching about sexuality.

I invite you to explore this wonderful area of human life without fear and in a healthy way, where with examples from Sacred Scripture, with the testimony of the lives of the saints, with the guidance of the Catechism and of the Church's documents, we shall enter with some liveliness into the theme proposed: the power of virginity. It may sound strange, but be at peace — through this formation we are invited to live Heaven on earth.

What is sexuality? What is virginity? Why do we speak of the power of virginity? Is there really a power, or any benefit at all, in being a virgin in the twenty-first century? Is this not a thing of the past, a Catholic taboo? Follow the text through, and take it into prayer tonight, because I am certain that you will be surprised if you have never read anything on this subject — and that you will feel more encouraged if you have.

We already know that our struggle is not against men, but against the devil, against the world and against the sin that dwells in us. The thing is that the devil invents, contrives means, forms and options so that we may fall into sin. The world provides the setting, the moment and the exact hour for us to sin and to commit every kind of filth that the sin within us suggests.

To commit the horrendous sin of drug abuse, for example, one needs the drug — cannabis, cocaine, whatever it may be — in order to put it into the body. To commit the sin of drunkenness one needs alcohol to drink. To fall into the disgrace of murdering or robbing someone, an instrument is often needed: a knife, a gun. But to commit the sin of sexuality nothing at all is needed, because what is necessary is already with you. You carry it with you wherever you go!

KNOWING THIS, THE WHOLE OF HELL HAS INVESTED ITS EFFORTS IN BRINGING THE HUMAN BEING DOWN AND DRAWING HIM AWAY FROM GOD THROUGH THE VICES AND THE SINS BOUND UP WITH SEXUALITY — SINCE NINETY PER CENT OF THE PEOPLE WHO ARE IN HELL ARE THERE ONLY BECAUSE OF THESE SINS.

We who belong to God, we who want to follow Christ, we who carry in heart and soul the name of Catholics, have to pay the price of being truly Catholic not only in words but out of our lives. There is no use in saying that one is part of the Mystical Body of Christ if one does not live, or does not seek to live, as that Body demands.

Taking that as our hook, let us anchor ourselves in the firm and solid passage in which St Paul instructs us and urges us not to put our members at the service of sin or of evil, seeing that we have been set free by Christ, that we died with Him in baptism and that we belong to His people: new men, renewed by the Holy Ghost. Amen!

"Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin may be destroyed, to the end that we may serve sin no longer. For he that is dead is justified from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall live also together with Christ: knowing that Christ, rising again from the dead, dieth now no more, death shall no more have dominion over him. For in that he died to sin, he died once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God: so do you also reckon, that you are dead to sin, but alive unto God, in Christ Jesus our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, so as to obey the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of iniquity unto sin; but present yourselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of justice unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you; for you are not under the law, but under grace." (Romans 6:6-14)

NEITHER YIELD YE YOUR MEMBERS AS INSTRUMENTS OF INIQUITY UNTO SIN; BUT PRESENT YOURSELVES TO GOD, AS THOSE THAT ARE ALIVE FROM THE DEAD, AND YOUR MEMBERS AS INSTRUMENTS OF JUSTICE UNTO GOD!

Think a little about the depth of those words, and about the boldness of St Paul in writing such things to the pagan community of Rome, where sexuality was liberal and there was no question of setting a rule over the sexual impulses and appetites of that people — much like the community of Corinth.

When you read "yield your members to sin, or present them to God", which members do you think St Paul is speaking of? Certainly of all the human members. The arms, the hands, the fingers, as much as the legs and the feet; the members within and the members without. Have you and I been offering our members to the service of God, so as to be instruments of good?

Jesus warned us about our members too, setting them under the light of a danger: that we should be mastered by them and end up carried into hell.

"Woe to the world because of scandals. For it must needs be that scandals come: but nevertheless woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh. And if thy hand, or thy foot scandalize thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee. It is better for thee to go into life maimed or lame, than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee. It is better for thee having one eye to enter into life, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire." (Matthew 18:7-9)

Let us not be so foolish as to misread Sacred Scripture and imagine that Jesus is telling us to do exactly that — to cut off the hand, the foot or the eye and enter Heaven crippled. That is not it! It sounds like a joke, but there have been people who did it.

Jesus is speaking of imprisonment, of the loss of control, of the absence of self-mastery — of how many of us are slaves and cannot govern our own bodies. How many people today master large and powerful animals, master machines, hold whole cities and fortresses at their fingertips, and yet cannot master themselves, cannot master their own flesh!

The same can be said of the area of sexuality. It would seem easier to cut off the male organ, to take a knife to the female one, so as to be freed from whatever sexual prison we may have been placed in — but that is not what our Saviour proposes. What we need is to be freed from every spiritual prison, from every human oppression, and from every ruined conscience regarding sexuality.

To that end, let us understand better what sexuality is from God's point of view.

When God made us, He endowed us with a marvellous capacity: that of cooperating in His creative work. God placed in us the beauty of expressing our masculinity and our femininity in full. He set in us the genitals — a word born of the same root as genesis: beginning, the origin of life.

Human sexuality as God dreamt it should lead a man and a woman into full joy. Human sexuality also represents and translates the joy of God, but it must be respected and lived within the Lord's original plan — that is, within a union made official and witnessed in the Church, before God and before the community, sealed by the commitment of the sacrament of matrimony.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, in paragraphs 2332 to 2335:

"Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others. Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity. Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out. In creating man and woman, God gives them an equal personal dignity. Man is a person, man and woman equally so, since both were created in the image and likeness of the personal God. Each of the two sexes is an image of the power and tenderness of God, with equal dignity though in a different way. The union of man and woman in marriage is a way of imitating in the flesh the Creator's generosity and fecundity: 'Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh' (Genesis 2:24). All human generations proceed from this union."

Outside that matrimonial setting, every kind of active sexual life is contrary to the plans of God, and is therefore unfitting, disordered and sinful.

When we say this to children, to young people and to adolescents of this century — and to a good many adults and elderly people who have been made stupid, already spoilt by the wrong view of sexuality — they laugh in our faces and tell us that this belongs to the last century and that no such thing exists.

BUT HERE WE ARE NOT AFRAID TO SHOUT AND TO BE PROPHETS TO THIS CROWD OF IDLE, INFANTILE, COMFORTABLE AND PORNOGRAPHIED PEOPLE WHO STILL HAVE THE NERVE TO CALL THEMSELVES CATHOLICS: GOD HAS NOT CHANGED, DOES NOT CHANGE AND WILL NOT CHANGE. HIS TRUTH REMAINS THE SAME.

"Jesus Christ, yesterday, and today; and the same for ever." (Hebrews 13:8)

If some, or many, or all are so convinced of the impure view of sexuality that they cannot understand or even conceive of their own purity, that is no reason to fail to understand that God is pure — and that still today those who wish to belong to God must strive to live a life of purity and of holiness.

The word of God exhorts us to this reality. It is St Paul who catches our attention, pointing out the road of holiness, teaching us to avoid impurity, and saying that this is the will of God for us:

"For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that you should abstain from fornication; that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour: not in the passion of lust, like the Gentiles that know not God: and that no man overreach, nor circumvent his brother in business: because the Lord is the avenger of all these things, as we have told you before, and have testified. For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto sanctification." (1 Thessalonians 4:3-7)

One thing is certain, brothers and sisters: the devil does not want us to do the will of God, because he is the enemy of God — but he cannot attack God directly. So he attacks God's weak point, which is us, His beloved creatures, for whom He handed over His own Son and all His blood on the cross.

The devil does not want anyone to live in purity and in holiness! The devil hates those who are pure, who fight to keep themselves pure, and who also encourage those around them to live it, by the witness of their own lives, preaching that yes, it is possible to live this in the twenty-first century!

Jesus Himself said in the Sermon on the Mount that only the clean of heart shall see God (cf. Matthew 5:8). This is a choice we have to make today, and it can decide the whole course of our lives; it can settle the place where we shall spend eternity. It is worth thinking long and hard on what the Doctor of the Church, St Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, used to say:

"Ninety per cent of the souls damned in hell are damned for the sin of impurity."

Thinking of this, we can see that the whole world converges upon the same end, upon the same pit — and one begins to understand the present and deplorable situation in which we live, where sexuality is treated any old way: trivialised, spoilt, prostituted, sold and bought. How many have become slaves of their sexual whims!

When we look at the two photographs above, of course we immediately think that the first girl is a virgin and the second is not. It may look like a judgement that does not correspond to the truth, but one thing is certain: the purity (and innocence), or the impurity (and malice), that someone carries within reveals itself in the way they dress, in the way they present themselves before others, and above all in the way they carry themselves.

Girls and boys today take enormous pains and invest to the utmost in clothes, accessories, perfumes, make-up, hairstyles — all so as to look sensual and attractive, sexually speaking. What can we imagine, think or expect of somebody like that? The truth is that most people today have lost their purity. And many of them painfully, through negative experiences.

Do you know what is saddest of all? That Christians are like this too. They have lost their identity, they have lost the meaning of life, they have lost any sense of the value of sexuality, of purity, of innocence, of holiness — of the care and the tenderness with which the Lord clothed our sexuality, and of the price that was paid on the cross.

"Know you not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. Or know you not, that he who is joined to a harlot, is made one body? For they shall be, saith he, two in one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord, is one spirit. Fly fornication. Every sin that a man doth, is without the body; but he that committeth fornication, sinneth against his own body. Or know you not, that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, whom you have from God; and you are not your own? For you are bought with a great price. Glorify and bear God in your body." (1 Corinthians 6:15-20)

Ah, we do not know and have no notion of the spiritual realities that surround us. That is the great truth! If we knew, we would not lose our purity. The devil and the whole of hell rise up against the pure, against the chaste, and above all against virgins.

But what does it mean to be a virgin? Roughly, we can answer that it means never having had sexual relations. But it goes further than that.

Virginity is a choice of life, a conscious decision, and one that benefits both those called to matrimony and those called to the priesthood (in the case of men) or to consecration as religious (in the case of women) — blessed by God and commended by Sacred Scripture.

Virginity is a grace so great and so spectacular that those who no longer have it would wish to have that condition restored to them. There are people on the internet who say: "I lost my virginity — will you give me yours?" It seems a joke in poor taste, but deep down it reveals a wound and a pain in the soul of the one who lost it.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus Himself speaks of this:

"All men take not this word, but they to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs, who were born so from their mother's womb: and there are eunuchs, who were made so by men: and there are eunuchs, who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. He that can take, let him take it." (Matthew 19:11-12)

ALL MEN TAKE NOT THIS WORD! Eunuchs were those chosen by the king to serve him, and they were castrated so that there would be no risk of their being lost through matters bound up with sexuality. We may also read that word as applying to the virgins and the pure.

So there are people who are virgins and who keep themselves so; there are people who are not lost in this corrupted world; and there are others who make themselves virgins, pure, for the sake of the Kingdom of God. Jesus knew that no other motive would be enough for a person to make that choice and remain firm in it to the end of life here on earth, if it were not for Heaven.

It is striking and interesting to notice that the chosen ones, the favourites, the men and women closest to God and to Christ while He was here on earth, were and are the virgins.

St John the Evangelist, for instance, is called "the disciple of love", or "the beloved disciple". He rested his head on the breast of Jesus at the Last Supper (cf. John 13:23); he was the only one who stood firm at the foot of the cross with the holy women, and who received the great honour of taking Mary as his mother and bringing her into his home (cf. John 19:25ff). He was the only one of the apostles who did not abandon Jesus. Where did his strength come from? John was a young virgin who kept himself so until death: a virgin for Jesus.

Daniel was a young man who received the gift of interpreting dreams, and who interpreted the dreams of King Nabuchodonosor (cf. Daniel 2:19ff and 4:16ff). He would not prostrate himself before the false gods of Babylon — the same refusal for which his three companions were cast into the burning furnace and came out unharmed (cf. Daniel 3:21ff). There was in him "an excellent spirit", and for that the king set him over the whole kingdom (cf. Daniel 6:3). He prayed three times a day even in advanced age, and came out of the lions' den without a scratch (cf. Daniel 6:17ff).

Daniel was raised up by God, on account of his integrity, to help Susanna — an innocent woman — to be delivered from the false accusations raised against her (cf. Daniel 13:45ff), and to give a strong witness as a servant of God, which proved decisive for the conversion of many during the captivity of God's people in Babylon (cf. Daniel 14:29-42). Where did Daniel's strength lie? Without any doubt, in his virginity.

We know of many saints who were extraordinary, who were mystics, and who lived a very high holiness by virtue of their virginity — St Margaret Mary Alacoque, St Teresa of Avila, St John of the Cross, St Pio of Pietrelcina, St Bernard, St Thomas Aquinas, and others. But let us look at the Virgin Mary.

OUR LADY WAS A VIRGIN BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER JESUS WAS CONCEIVED IN HER MOST PURE WOMB. SHE IS AN EXCELLENT AND PERFECT MODEL FOR THE WOMEN OF THIS CENTURY TO IMITATE, AS ST JOSEPH IS FOR THE MEN.

She was what she was because of a life handed over to God, because of her self-emptying and her abandonment to the will of the Lord, because she was a woman of prayer, because of all the other qualities we know of — and because she was a virgin. Do not think that the merits and the graces of the Holy Family of Nazareth came only from having Jesus among them: they came also from the fact that Mary and Joseph were, and remained, virgins.

This matter of Our Lady and St Joseph being virgins troubles our Protestant brethren a great deal; they do not accept it, do not understand it and cannot conceive of such an idea — it even breeds a hatred of the claim, in the same way that the devil hates virgins and every virginity there is upon the earth, few though such people are compared with the number of those alive.

But the devil hates whoever is a virgin, and throws every demon he has into the temptation that will bring such people down, because he knows the power there is in virginity. And you who are reading, and I who am writing: do we know it?

There is a hidden power, a sacred worth, a divine strength, an integrity and a superhuman, supernatural grace that only those who are virgins can experience, witness, enjoy and put to use. There is a high holiness reserved for virgins. There is an intimacy, and there are gifts and charisms, kept in heaven of which only virgins can take possession.

Sometimes we hear so much about impurity, and about virginity no longer existing, that we are astonished and pierced with surprise when we learn — for example — that the man writing these lines was, when he first wrote them, a young man of twenty-three who was a virgin; that there really are virgins in the twenty-first century; and that these are the favourite disciples of Christ.

WHAT GREAT REJOICING WILL BE STIRRED UP IN HEAVEN IF THOSE WHO ARE READING THIS, WHATEVER THEIR AGE, RESOLVE TO KEEP AND GUARD THEIR VIRGINITY UNTIL MARRIAGE, OR UNTIL ETERNAL LIFE, IN THE CASE OF RELIGIOUS AND PRIESTS.

Virgins ought to raise the banner of virginity without fear and together, to declare in this profane world that yes, it is possible to be a virgin.

A beautiful example the Bible gives us, to close our reasoning and to end this post, is the daughter of Jephte. He made a fine prayer to God, asking for help and making a vow to the Lord in order to win the battle set before him. He won the battle, and had to fulfil his vow: to consecrate and offer in holocaust the first person who should come out to meet him when he arrived home.

Sadly it was his only daughter who appeared, and he had to keep his promise. She made him only one request:

"My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth to the Lord, do unto me whatsoever thou hast promised, since the victory hath been granted to thee, and revenge of thy enemies. And she said to her father: Grant me only this which I desire: Let me go, that I may go about the mountains for two months, and may bewail my virginity with my companions." (Judges 11:36-37)

Many women today seem rather to weep in order to lose their virginity. May we, after the example of Jephte's virgin daughter, sacrifice ourselves for God, offering Him in holocaust our virginity — that precious gift which He Himself gave us.

Let us pray, offering our virginity entirely to the Virgin Mary, as St Francis de Sales did:

"Lord God, my Father in Heaven. Lord who gave me life and the dignity of being your child, and who by the precious blood of Jesus poured out on the cross gave me purity, the grace of being a virgin: I wish to hand myself over and offer myself to You at this moment. I wish to offer and to give You the most beautiful thing the Lord ever gave me, which is the grace of my sexuality, the gift of being able to reproduce and to help in your marvellous work of Creation, begetting life in abundance.

I ask the Holy Ghost to seal my decision and to help me keep to this road until my death, for as long as the Lord wills. Wrap me about, Spirit of love and of holiness; take me and lead me along whatever paths the Lord wills, for on my own I cannot do it, my God. I need your help. It is this help that I cry out for at this moment. Come to my aid, Lord, and pour out your Spirit upon my sexuality, to purify me and to renew in me the gift and the grace of purity.

I hand myself over to you, Virgin Mary, as St Francis did, into your hands. I consecrate to you my sexuality, my integrity as a man (as a woman); I hand you my virginity. May you care for me, keep me, and do whatever is most pleasing to God.

I acknowledge that I have not always managed to flee the occasions of sin, the dangers that prowl about me, that infernal lion, Satan, who wants to steal my purity and the innocence of a child of God; but I ask that, by your intercession, under your sacred mantle, cared for by your immaculate hands and within your motherly heart, I may be clothed in your purity, your holiness and your virginity.

As you passed through the rite of purification in the temple when you presented Jesus, purify also, dear Mother, my sexuality; restore in me the gift of being a virgin, the gift of letting the presence of God show through. Like a small and fragile child who places all his trust and hope in his mother, I entrust myself into your hands and ask you, O moulder of saints, to guard me and protect me from the attacks of the devil, of the world and of so much illusion — from that false happiness of which those who have lost their virginity keep telling me.

I hand myself over to you and ask you to set me on fire with your mother's love, to free me from seductions, from sensuality, from impurity and from temptations. Thank you very much, holy Mother, for receiving me, for keeping me, and for delivering me from an impure future, far from God.

Glory be to the Lord for His love, for His Holy Spirit poured out upon me, for this seal and for this gift of being a virgin, so as to bear witness to the love and the power of God. Alleluia! Praised be the Lord for ever! Amen."

"Suffer children to come to me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God." (Luke 18:16)

May we take up this marvellous grace of being drawn to Christ as the little children were, so as to be touched and blessed by Him; and may we keep ourselves as lights in the midst of the darkness of this world, to shine out and reflect the light we carry within us, which is Jesus Himself — unafraid to be happy, to be virgin and to be holy.

May God bless us and give us the grace to know the power of virginity.