List of points

'For this is the will of God, your sanctification… Let every one of you learn how to make use of his body in holiness and honour, not yielding to the promptings of passion, as the heathen do, who do not know God.' We belong to God completely, soul and body, flesh and bones, all our senses and faculties. Ask him, confidently: Jesus, guard our hearts! Make them big and strong and tender, hearts that are affectionate and refined, overflowing with love for you and ready to serve all mankind.

Our bodies are holy. They are temples of God, says St Paul. This cry of the apostle brings to mind the universal call to holiness which Our Lord addresses to all men: estote vos perfecti sicut et Pater vester caelestis perfectus est. Our Lord asks everyone, without distinction of any kind, to cooperate with his grace. He demands that each of us, in accordance with his particular state in life, should put into practice the virtues proper to the children of God.

Thus, when I remind you now that Christians must keep perfect chastity, I am referring to everyone: to the unmarried, who must practise complete continence; and to those who are married, who practise chastity by fulfilling the duties of their state in life.

If one has the spirit of God, chastity is not a troublesome and humiliating burden, but a joyful affirmation. Will power, dominion, self-mastery do not come from the flesh or from instinct. They come from the will, especially if it is united to the Will of God. In order to be chaste (and not merely continent or decent) we must subject our passions to reason, but for a noble motive, namely, the promptings of Love.

I think of this virtue as the wings which enable us to carry God's teaching, his commandments, to every environment on this earth, without fear of getting contaminated in the process. Wings, even in the case of those majestic birds which soar higher than the clouds, are a burden and a heavy one. But without wings, there is no way of flying. I want you to grasp this idea clearly, and to decide not to give in when you feel the sting of temptation, with its suggestion that purity is an unbearable burden. Take heart! Fly upwards, up to the sun, in pursuit of Love!

I must remind you that you will not find happiness if you don't fulfil your Christian duties. If you were to leave them aside, you would feel terrible remorse and would be thoroughly miserable. Even the most ordinary things, which are licit and which bring a bit of happiness, would then become as bitter as gall, as sour as vinegar and as repugnant as arum.

Let each of us, myself included, put our trust in Jesus, saying to him: 'Lord, I am ready to struggle and I know that you do not lose battles. I realise too that if at times I lose, it is because I have gone away from you. Take me by the hand. Don't trust me. Don't let go of me.'

You may be thinking: 'But, Father, I am so happy! I love Jesus! Even though I am made of clay, I do want to become a saint with the help of God and his Blessed Mother!' I don't doubt you. I am only forewarning you with these words of advice just in case, just supposing a difficulty were to arise.

At the same time, I would remind you that for Christians (for you and me) our life is a life of Love. This heart of ours was born to love. But when it is not given something pure, clean and noble to love, it takes revenge and fills itself with squalor. True love of God, and consequently purity of life, is as far removed from sensuality as it is from insensitivity, and as far from sentimentality as it is from heartlessness or hard-heartedness.

It is such a pity not to have a heart. How unfortunate are those people who have never learned to love with tenderness! We Christians are in love with Love: Our Lord does not want us to be dry and rigid, like inert matter. He wants us to be saturated with his love! People who, for the sake of God, say No to a human love are not bachelors or spinsters, like those sad, unhappy, crestfallen men and women who have despised the chance of a pure and generous love.

If, alas, one falls, one must get up at once. With God's help, which will never be lacking if the proper means are used, one must seek to arrive at repentance as quickly as possible, to be humbly sincere and to make amends so that the momentary failure is transformed into a great victory for Jesus Christ.

You should also get into the habit of taking the battle to areas that are far removed from the main walls of the fortress. We cannot go about doing balancing acts on the very frontiers of evil. We have to be firm in avoiding the indirect voluntary. We must reject even the tiniest failure to love God, and we must strive to develop a regular and fruitful Christian apostolate, which will have holy purity both as a necessary foundation and also as one of its most characteristic fruits. We ought as well to fill all our time with intense and responsible work, in which we seek God's presence, because we must never forget that we have been bought at a great price and that we are temples of the Holy Spirit.

What other advice do I have for you? Well, simply to do what the Christians who have really tried to follow Christ have always done, and to use the same means employed by the first men who felt prompted to follow Jesus: developing a close relationship with Our Lord in the Eucharist, a childlike recourse to the Blessed Virgin, humility, temperance, mortification of the senses ('it is not good to look at what it is not licit to desire,' was St Gregory the Great's warning) and penance.

You might well tell me that all this is nothing but a summary of the whole Christian life. The fact is that purity, which is love, cannot be separated from the essence of our faith, which is charity, a constant falling in love with God, who created and redeemed us, and who is constantly taking us by the hand, even though time and again we may not even notice it. He cannot abandon us. 'Sion said: "The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me." Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness to the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you.' Don't these words fill you with immense joy?