Prayers For Holiness
Prayer as an Aid to Chastity
But above all, to acquire the virtue of chastity prayer is necessary: it is
necessary to pray, and to pray continually. It has already been said that
chastity can neither be acquired nor preserved unless God grant His aid to
preserve it; but this aid He gives only to those who ask it.
We should then, says St. Cyprian, instantly resist the first carnal
solicitations with which the devil assails us, and not permit the serpent, that
is, the temptation, to grow strong. St. Jerome gives this same advice: “You must
not permit bad thoughts to grow in your mind; no, kill the enemy when he is
small.” It is easy to kill a lion when he is small, but not when his has grown
to his full size.
Let us guard against reasoning with temptations contrary to chastity: let us
endeavor instantly to banish them. And, as the spiritual masters teach, the best
means of banishing such temptations is not to combat them directly face to face,
by making contrary acts of the will, but to get rid of them indirectly by acts
of the love of God, or of contrition, or at least by turning the mind to other
things.
But the means in which we should place the greatest confidence is prayer, and
recommending ourselves to God. It is useful, as soon as we perceive the first
motion of impurity, to renew our purpose to suffer death rather than consent to
sin, and immediately after to have recourse to the wounds of Jesus Christ for
aid.
It is also very useful to make the sign of the cross on the breast, and to have
recourse to our angel guardian and our holy patron. But above all, it is useful
to have recourse to Jesus Christ and the divine Mother by instantly invoking
their most holy names, and by continuing to invoke them until the temptation is
beaten down. Oh! how powerful are the most holy names of Jesus and Mary against
the attacks of impurity!
Devotion to the holy Virgin, who is called “the Mother of fair love, and the
guardian of virginity,” is a most useful devotion for the preservation of
chastity. And to recite, at rising in the morning and going to bed at night,
three “Hail Mary’s,” in honor of the purity of Mary, is a devotion that has
singular efficacy in obtaining the gift of continence.
Prayer for Holiness
O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, Who, by the will of the Father, with
the cooperation of the Holy Spirit, have by Your death given life to the world,
deliver me by this Your Most Sacred Body and Blood from all sins and from every
evil. Make me always cling to Your commandments, and never permit me to be
separated from You. Who with the same God the Father and the Holy Spirit, live
and reign, God, world without end. Amen.