THE TRUTH AND MEANING OF

HUMAN SEXUALITY

Summary from the Document by the Pontifical Council

for the Family: “The Truth and Meaning of Human
Sexuality: Guidelines for Education within the Family,
8th December 1995.

By J.B. Doan, OP

www.vinhsonliem.net
A. Some unquestionable certainties:

1. Love is a gift from God, nourished by and expressed in

the encounter of man and woman. Love is a positive
force directed towards their growth in maturity as
persons. Love is precious source for the self-giving
which all men and women are called to make for their
own self –realization and happiness. Human love
embraces the body, and the body expresses spiritual
love. Therefore sexuality is not something purely
biological, rather it concerns the intimate nucleus of the
person. The use of sexuality as physical giving has its
own truth and reaches its full meaning when it
expresses the personal giving of man and woman even
unto death.
2. Unfortunately, love is exposed to the frailty brought
about by original sin, a frailty experienced today in
many socio-cultural contexts marked by strong negative
influences and at times deviant and traumatic.
3. By grace, chastity is something that is really possible
and a motive of joy, both for those who have the
vocation to marriage as well as to the consecrated life.
Chastity is not to be understood as a repressive attitude,
rather the purity and temporary stewardship of a
precious and rich gift of love. It is spiritual energy
capable of defending love from the perils of selfishness
and aggressiveness, and able to advance it toward its
full realization in each person’s specific vocation.
Chastity cannot exist as virtue without the capacity to
renounce self, to make sacrifices.
4. The problem is that our society has broken away from
the full truth about man, from the truth about what man
and woman really are as persons. Thus it cannot
adequately comprehend the real meaning of the gift of
 persons in marriage, responsible love at the service of
fatherhood and motherhood, and the true grandeur of
procreation and education.

B. Called to true love

 As the image of God, man is created for love. God

inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the
vocation, the capacity and responsibilities of love and
communion. We are not created for concupiscence
which only sees objects as a means to satisfy one’s
appetites. As a human person, we are capable of a
higher kind of love, namely, friendship and self-giving,
with the capacity to recognize and love persons for
themselves. This is a love which generates communion
between persons which considers the good of the other
as his or her own good. Here is the truth of our
existence: Humanity is loved by God. This truth is
revealed by Christ. God’s love for us revealed in Christ
is a love which builds up the true good of what means
to be truly human person and allows it to radiate to
others.
 Femininity and masculinity are complementary gifts
through which human sexuality is an integrating part of
the concrete capacity for love which God inscribed in
man and woman. Sexuality is a fundamental component
of personality, one of its modes of being, of
manifestation, of communicating with others, of
feeling, of expressing of of living human love. This
capacity for love as self-giving is incarnated in the
nuptial meaning of the body. The human body, with its
sex, and its masculinity and femininity, seen in the very
mystery of creation is not only the source of fruitfulness
and procreation, as in the whole natural order, but
 includes right from the beginning the nuptial attribute,
that is the capacity of expressing love: that love
precisely in which the man person/woman person
becomes a gift and by mean of this gift fulfils the very
meaning of his being and existence.
 Human sexuality is a good. When God created man in
his image and likeness, and “male and female he
created them.” Sexuality has love as its intrinsic end.
The relationship between man and woman is essentially
a relationship of love. Thus sexuality, oriented,
elevated, and integrated by love acquires truly human
quality. When such love exists in marriage, self-giving
expresses, through the body, the complementarity and
totality of gift. Married love becomes the power which
enriches persons and makes them grow and at the same
time, it contributes to building up the civilization of
love. When the sense and meaning of gift is lacking in
sexuality, a civilization of things and not of persons
takes over, a civilization in which persons are used in
the same way as things are used. In this context of a
civilization of use, woman, even man can become an
object for pleasure of men and woman.
 It is a gift of God. This truth stands at the center of the
Christian conscience. Human life is a gift received in
order to be given as a gift. The very essence of the
person’s existence is characterized by this very fact that
“it is not good that man should be alone?” This is an
existential truth. Alone, man does not completely
realize his existence. Rather, he realizes that it only by
existing with some one, precisely, for some one he is
completed. Married love is fulfilled the existence of
man in openness to the other person and in self-giving.
Likewise, the vocation to the consecrated life always
finds its meaning in self-giving, sustained by a special
 grace, the gift of oneself to God alone with an
undivided heart in a remarkable manner in order to
serve God more fully in the Church. Sexuality
characterizes man and woman not only the physical
level, but also on the psychological and spiritual,
making its mark on each of their expressions. Such
diversity, linked to the complementarity of the two
sexes, allows thorough response to the design of God
according to the vocation to which each one is called.
 The truth and meaning of human sexuality is fulfilled in
married love. In marriage, the physical intimacy of the
spouses becomes a sign and pledge of spiritual
communion, Marriage bonds between baptized persons
are sanctified by the sacrament. The authenticity of
married love is openness to life. Conjugal love while
leading the spouses to the reciprocal knowledge of each
other does not end with the couple, because it makes
them capable to the greatest possible gift, the gift by
which they become cooperators with God for giving life
to a new human person. The married couple, while
giving themselves to one another, give not just
themselves but also the reality of children, who are a
living reflection of their love, a permanent sign of
conjugal unity and a living and inseparable synthesis of
their being a father and a mother. Sexuality becomes
personal and truly human when it is integrated into the
relationship of one person to another, in the complete
and mutual lifelong gift of a man and a woman.
C. True love and chastity:

 Chastity: spiritual power which frees love from

selfishness and aggression, from self-indulgence of
sexual pleasure.
 Chastity is self-giving: the chaste person is not self-
centered, not involved in selfish relationship with
other people. Chastity makes the person pure in
mind and body, helps true self-respect and at the
same times makes one capable of respecting others.
Chastity helps us to reverence the dignity of the
persons insofar as they are created by God in his
own image and saved by Christ.
 Chastity is self-mastery, to govern one’s passions
and to find peace. Such self-mastery involves both
avoiding occasions which might provoke or
encourage sin as well as knowing how to overcome
one’s own natural instinctive impulses.
 The very fact that all are called to holiness makes us
courageously to do heroic acts of virtue. Therefore,
chastity should be a joyous and demanding path to
holiness for everyone. Married couples are called to
live conjugal chastity, to be faithful to one’s spouse
in heart and in body, to honor and be generous
towards one’s spouse and towards the life which
can arise from their act of love; others practice
chastity in continence.
 In order to live chastely, man and woman need the
continuous illumination of the Holy Spirit. At the
center of the spirituality of marriage lies chastity,
not only as a moral virtue (formed by love) but
likewise as a virtue connected with the gifts of the
Holy Spirit. PRAYER is the key and TRUST in
 Holy Spirit’s power of sanctification is
indispensable.
 Education for chastity strives to achieve three
objectives: to maintain in the family a positive
atmosphere of love, virtue and respect for the gifts
of God; to help children to understand the value of
sexuality and chastity in stages, sustaining their
growth through enlightening word, example, and
prayer; to help them to understand and discover
their own vocation to marriage or to consecrated
virginity for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.

D. In the light of Vocation, special to marriage

 Vocation to holiness to universal call which

manifest in one’s personal vocation to marriage or
to the consecrated life of virginity or celibacy.
 Vocation to Marriage: Married love has four
characteristics: it is human love (physical and
spiritual), it is total, faithful and fruitful love. The
family is in fact a community of persons whose
proper way of existing and living together is
communion of persons.
 Christian marriage is a sacrament whereby sexuality
is integrated into a path to holiness, through a bond
reinforced by the indissoluble unity of the
sacrament. The gift of the sacrament is at the same
time a vocation and commandment for the Christian
spouses, that they may remain faithful to each other
forever, beyond every trial and difficulty, in
generous obedience to the holy will of the Lord.
 What God has joined together, let not man put
asunder.

Prayer for chastity:

Dearest Jesus!

I know well that every perfect gift, and above all others
that of chastity, depends upon the most powerful
assistance of your providence, and that without you a
creature can do nothing. Therefore, I pray that you
defend, with your grace, the gift of chastity and purity in
my soul as well as my body. And if I have ever received
through my senses any impression that could stain my
chastity and purity, I ask you, who are the supreme Lord
of all my powers, to take it from me, so that I may with a
clean heart advance in your love and service, offering
myself chaste all the days of my life on the most pure
altar of your divinity.

Most Holy Virgin Mary! You are the Mother of fair love
and the guardian of virginity and purity. I pray that you
intercede for us and assist us to be courageously to
imitate Christ, your Son and our Lord, to be pure and
holy in our vocation to marriage or to consecrated life
for the sake of the Kingdom of God. Amen.