Chris O’Neill “Walking with St. Joseph” Discussion Questions
Understanding the Virtue of Chastity
“I think, generally, we have a very narrow understanding of the virtue of the chastity…[which] does an injustice to St. Joseph and the truth about the depths of his love for his wife, Mary Immaculate.”
What was been your understanding of chastity prior to experiencing this talk? What stuck out to you from what Chris shared?
“Our idea of chastity is often rather simplistic and often very negative. We don’t consider what chastity makes us capable of. We don’t think of chastity as…a manly strength…. Chastity has to do with what we see when we look at another person, particularly another woman.”
Do you look at the virtue of chastity from a negative or a positive viewpoint? Rather than thinking about what Chastity keeps you from doing, what do you think it might make you capable of?
“Jesus calls us to something far greater, far more beautiful and challenging than just fulfilling the minimum moral obligation [as in ‘Don’t have sex with people you’re not married to.’]“
How chaste am I in the way relate to other women? Can you describe a time when you have been moved by the beauty and goodness of a woman without that turning into a desire to lust or to use? What is that experience like and what does it move you to do?
“In the integrity of his body and soul, Joseph was a man who was fully alive. It would be a terrible mistake to think of St. Joseph’s interior life as one that constantly had to exercise white-knuckle to control over his desires…[or] to think of him as if he didn’t see, did not know or was in no way attracted to his wife’s extraordinary beauty [or] that their marriage was one of propriety and convenience [or] that he wasn’t deeply interested in her. Their marriage was a true marriage…”
What do you think of St. Joseph’s love for his wife? What does it inspire you to strive for in your vocation to love?
Strengthening the Virtue of Chastity
Chris offers 2 practical suggestions to help us strengthen our practice of the virtue of chastity:
Radically honest and regular confession.
What has my relationship with the Sacrament of Reconciliation looked like? What can I do to grow in being honest on the inside and outside with myself, so as to grow in my honesty with God?
What do I do to examine my conscience regularly?
2.Relearn generous hospitality and friendship.
What was my hospitality like prior to the pandemic of the past 15 months? How did this time of ‘social distancing’ effect the way I genuinely opened myself to others? What hungers for authentic, loving friendships awoke in me because of being isolated?
Chris spoke about the fruits of us as men to gather in men’s groups. How is my experience in my men’s group a “school…to appreciate others in their [wholeness of body and spirit?]” If I’m not involved in a men’s group yet, what’s one step I can take to join one or make the community of men I associate with a community that sees each other in our wholeness?
