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The commandment of chastity pertains first to the body and to our outward conduct, and second to the soul and its inner thoughts.
As for inner chastity, it consists in doing every good thing for God and before God, not for the sake of men (not out of a desire to please others); in suppressing within ourselves the very seeds of harmful thoughts and desires; in considering all others better than ourselves; in envying no one; in assuming the nothing good comes from ourselves, but ascribing everything to the will and providence of God; in always remembering the presence of God; in being attached to God alone; in preserving our faith pure and inaccessible to any heresies; and in attributing inner purity not to ourselves, but to our Savior Jesus Christ, Who is its source.
Inner chastity also consists in this: that as long as we live, we do not consider ourselves to have completed or finished the labor of virtue, but strive until death brings our days to an end; that we regard the labors and sorrows of this present life as nothing; that we are not attached to anything, and love nothing on earth except our neighbor; and that we await the reward for our good deeds not on earth, but from God alone in heaven.
—Hieromartyr Cyprian of Carthage
On chastity
Chastity is restraint and the overcoming of lust through struggle.
Every Christian must know that the purity of the outward man—that is, bodily purity—without the purity of the inner man—that is, of the spirit—is not true purity. As St. Euthymius the Great explains, even if a person does not commit a defiling sin with the body, but commits adultery in the mind—entertaining impure thoughts, holding onto them, submitting to them, and delighting in them—he is an adulterer and cannot be a temple of the Holy Spirit. For the Holy Spirit is like a bee; just as a bee does not enter a foul vessel, so the Holy Spirit does not enter an impure soul.
To live chastely means to live under the guidance of a sound and whole mind, not allowing yourself any pleasure that is not approved by right judgment; to keep the mind free from defilement by impure thoughts, the heart untainted by impure desires, and the body uncorrupted by impure deeds.
If a king wishes to capture an enemy city, he first cuts off its supply of food; the citizens, being weakened by hunger and unwilling to perish, surrender. So it is with carnal desires: if a person lives in fasting and abstinence, these desires grow weak within the soul.
—St. John the Dwarf
Purity of chastity is when, along with bodily purity—freedom from all carnal defilement—the purity of the soul is preserved from all impure thoughts and desires.
Purity is a sign of the soul’s health and a source of spiritual joy. He who desires to acquire love for God must take care for the purity of his soul. True purity grants boldness in prayer. Such boldness is the fruit of purity and of the labor to acquire it.
He who indulges the belly and yet seeks to overcome the spirit of fornication is like one who tries to extinguish fire with oil.
Purity is the virtue opposed to the passion of fornication. It is the estrangement of the body from actual sin and from all actions that lead to sin; the estrangement of the mind from impure thoughts and fantasies; and the estrangement of the heart from impure feelings and inclinations—after which follows the body’s freedom from carnal desire.
For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour; Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God (1 Thess. 4:3–5). Sensual pleasure compels us to do things we would not even dare to speak of.
Eat bread with measure and drink water in moderation, and the spirit of fornication will flee from you.
—Venerable Abba Evagrius
If the fire of carnal lust burns you, oppose it with the fire of Gehenna—and the fire of your lust will at once be extinguished and vanish.
A Christian must be an ascetic
Before man sinned against the laws revealed by Divine revelation, he had already sinned against nature itself—that is, against the laws placed within nature by the Creator.
Thus, all living things require food to sustain life, yet only man is capable of turning nourishment into pleasure that becomes a passion, fattening himself to the point of losing his health. All living beings need drink, yet only man seeks pleasure in such kinds and quantities of drink that deprive him of self-awareness and self-control. All creatures possess the instinct to continue of their kind, but man alone turns this instinct into a source of shameful vices, debauchery, and terrible diseases. All living beings love freedom of life and movement, yet man alone pushes his freedom into lawlessness and excess, committing so many different crimes that lawmakers cannot devise sufficient measures to prevent or restrain them. Every creature of God rejoices in times of freedom and well-being from the surge of life coming from this, but man alone strives to turn his whole life into an unceasing holiday, exhausting himself in the invention of pleasures, and wasting his best powers and abilities in idleness and dissipation.
Therefore, in order to remain faithful just to nature, man must be an ascetic.
This was understood even by the ancient pagan philosophers. How then could a Christian not be an ascetic, if he desires to embody in his fallen nature that lofty ideal of truly human life that is revealed to him in the Gospel?
—Archbishop Ambrose (Klyucharev)
From: Readings For Every Day of Great Lent, Ed. N. Shaposhnikova (Moscow: Danilov Monastery, 2025).
