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Question

Dear Father,
We are a young couple who has unfortunately lived in sin for about one year. After consulting each other, we have now decided to start from scratch by inviting God into our lives. We are not married and have often had sexual intercourse. We have always used all kinds of contraception (the mini-pill in particular) without being able to dominate our impulses. The problem of instinct persists to this day and we are now living in regret.
We are writing to you hoping for an answer that can help us get back into God’s graces.
Thank you in advance.

Priest’s answer

Dear friend,
1. Purity is essential in the life of a couple.
You will have noticed yourself that you have lost many things living in impurity. Now, you want to recover them along with purity.
The first thing you lose through impurity is the personal presence of God. This cannot be otherwise. In fact, through pre-marital acts combined with contraception, you become arbitrators of yourselves and your body and, though not on purpose, you turn your back on God and feel deprived of His personal presence inside your heart.

2. Other than that, you lose or prevent yourselves from reaching another reality, that is essential for the serenity and the length of your couple’s life: your self–dominion in many areas of life.
The lack of self-dominion is like the inability to put yourself on the brakes. However, when brakes do not function, you expose yourself to various accidents.
So where there is no purity, instinct rages.
Since we are not divided in compartments, it is easy to be unrestrained in speaking, in our whims, in not wanting to give up our pique and squabbles.
In a word, the lack of purity favors aggressivity.
There is one document of the Church’s Magisterium that expresses this clearly by stating  “Chastity is the spiritual power which frees love from selfishness and aggression” (Pontifical Council for the Family, Human Sexuality: Truth and Meaning, 18).
Aggressivity hurts.

3. What is then the remedy for this?
I will propose only one, although there are many. Jesus said: “Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41).
The secret of serenity and safety of our present and future is enshrined in these words by the Savior. You have to place big trust in prayer because through prayer we bring Jesus Christ into our life. We bring Him as Savior.

4. St. Augustine in his Confessions admits: “And knowing that I could not otherwise possess her except God gave it  (Book of Wisdom 8,21)” (Confessions, VI, 11).
On the necessity to ask God for continence, he also writes: “As we set out to speak about such an important matter, and say what he grants us to say, the first thing to say, and demonstrate, is that continence is a gift from God. In the Book of Wisdom we find it written that, unless God grants it, no one is able to be continent” (De Continentia, I, 1).

5. Specifically, commit yourselves to recite the Holy Rosary together, particularly now as May is coming, and entrust the purity of your affection to Mary, who is invoked as the Mother of Fair Love (Sirach 24,24).)
God entrusted Her with the task to obtain for us this virtue, which is the secret for all the other good.
Say it together! At the end of this prayer, you will feel a great peace and some serenity of the soul which lessen the desire to discuss, squabble and even commit impure acts.

6. In this way, by seeing one another praying, you will respect and love each other more with a love that cements the hearts and binds them to God.

7. You write: “we decided to start from scratch by inviting God into our lives”.
Saint Francis of Sales, addressing the spouses, says: “Would to God that His Dear Son were bidden to all weddings as to that of Cana! Truly then the wine of consolation and blessing would never be lacking” (Philothea, III part, chapter 38).
What this Saint tells the spouses, I say it to you, who are engaged, too: invite Jesus and our Lady to stay together with you.
You can invite them by gathering together in prayer. You will know this for sure, they will come to you and will not take anything from you.
They will remain with you to secure you the wine of joy and their blessings.

I bless you and assure you of my prayer.
Father Angelo