clean of heart' (Ps. xxiii. 4)."
"Look here, upon this picture, and on this," days Hamlet. You have looked with delight Upon the lily of purity. Now look in the opposite direction and contemplate what a monster impurity is.
Father Schuen says: The alarming growth of this evil (impurity) makes it necessary to speak in plain, unequivocal terms upon this subject, which the priest, were he to consult his own inclination, would fain pass over in silence.
In the scales of divine justice impurity weighs very heavy. Consider what the sin of impurity really is. It is a profanation of the image of God. Man has received from God exceptional favors and privileges: "God created man to His own image and likeness" (Gen. i. 26). "The man is the image and glory of God" (1 Cor. xi. 7). By impurity the image of God is disfigured, for the impure man gives himself to the gratification of his animal desires and thereby desecrates his soul, upon which the image of God is stamped. Luxury is likewise a desecration of the body. In this a great deal is implied. The body of man is made a member of the body of Christ in Baptism: "Know you not that your bodies are the members of Christ? " (1 Cor. vi. 15). The body of the Christian is the temple of the Holy Ghost: " Know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, whom you have from God?" (1 Cor. vi. 19). The libertine makes the body an instrument of bestial lusts, and thereby degrades and profanes that which is a member of the body of Christ and a temple of the Holy Ghost. What a grievous sin this is I Hence you may understand the horror which God has for the sin of impurity.
