“It is often thought that continence causes inner tensions which man must free himself from…continence, understood integrally, is rather the only way to free man from such tensions. It means nothing other than the spiritual effort aimed at expressing the ‘language of the body,’ not only in truth but also in the authentic richness of the manifestations of affection.”~ St. John Paul II
“…continence…is rather the only way to free man from such tensions…” Saint John Paul understood keenly that the only way to sexual purity is through the integration of the whole man; i.e. a healthy respect for our sexuality and a purposeful effort to consciously heal those inner sources of tension. As John Paul expressed, sorrowfully, the desire to retrain our sexual impulses is often imagined as a raging beast lying just within – struggling and straining to release itself; only contained by constant clenching of the will. This modality always reminds me of the classic science-fiction film “Forbidden Planet;” about a self-righteous and assuredly solid super-genius who keeps his “monster from the id,” or inner violent demons, always submerged and seemingly in-check, until, at the end, they are released and it destroys himself and all those around him; the storyline was a take-off of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” The point of this example: that trying to sequester our emotions, no matter how disordered, can lead to an uncontrollable discharge of those passions. This often played out in my own life, especially right after leaving the gay lifestyle, when I haphazardly attempted to push down deep within me all those still nagging desires for male sexual companionship; the results of these constant struggles to suppress all my thoughts was a barrage of migraine headaches and persistent latent desire to angrily act out.
Because I was not addressing the root cause of my disordered yearnings, nothing was being remedied or healed; it was like a cancer patient sitting at home and just wishing that the tumor would go away; when, in reality, it was growing and becoming worse. The reason for my inner battle was that I had not really internalized what purity, or as John Paul puts it – continence, meant to me and my life. Although I emotionally and somewhat philosophically understood, from both my dramatic conversion and through a cursory reading of “The Catechism,” what purity entailed, I was not able to grasp its full meaning. For, despite my best efforts, I still perceived Jesus as scary and vengeful; He was the great big God of no: no I could not do this; no I could not think about this, or no I could not be attracted to that person. Consequently, I kept Him at a distance.
While I stewed alone, a tried to keep everything inside me concealed, I subsequently never healed. Then, it was only after many years, and much prayer, and suffering that I rather begrudgingly turned away from the cage door that I had been pushing against for far too long. This does not mean that I unleashed all my pent-up passions in a Caligula-esque parade of perversions; what it entailed was an opening up of myself; because that wild beast I had been trying to subdue – was me! It was all the tragic hurt inside me; all the pain; all the frustrations of my childhood, and all the abuse and pride that marked every day in the gay scene. Keeping it bottled-up and keeping it hidden from Christ accomplished nothing. He was the only one who could make sense of it; and He was the only one who could, not make it go away, but finally resolve it and allow me to become the man He had always intended me to be.