June 3 2024 - St. Charles Lwanga - Winning the battle against Lust

 We celebrate today the feast of St. Charles Lwanga, that great Ugandan martyr for chastity. In the mid-1800s, Uganda had a very vicious, lustful king who would force himself on the young boys and young men of his court. Charles Lwanga, who had become a catechist, encouraged the boys to preserve their chastity by refusing the king’s advances. For opposing the King’s lusts, Charles was arrested and burned to death on June 3 1886.

In this age where lust and the corruption of youth through the proliferation of pornography and child trafficking are rampant, we invoke and celebrate and revere St. Charles, for protection from one of the great sins of our age, the sin of lust. 

Right before the turn of the new year, at his Wednesday audiences, Holy Father Pope Francis began a series of catechetical talks on the virtues and vices. He began his cycle of teaching on the importance of safeguarding the heart against temptations towards the deadly sins of gluttony, lust, pride, envy, and wrath, and the importance of striving to cultivate the virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice. You can read these talks for free on the Vatican website.

The Holy Father offers a powerful teaching on lust, which he says, “pollutes” the call to authentic love. He writes, “to love is to respect the other, to seek his or her happiness, to cultivate empathy for his or her feelings, to dispose oneself in the knowledge of a body, a psychology, and a soul that are not our own, and that must be contemplated for the beauty they bear. That is love, and love is beautiful. Lust, on the other hand, makes a mockery of all this: lust plunders, it robs, it consumes in haste, it does not want to listen to the other but only to its own need and pleasure; lust judges every courtship a bore, it does not seek that synthesis between reason, drive and feeling that would help us to conduct existence wisely.”

“…Winning the battle against lust, against the “objectification” of the other, can be a lifelong endeavour. But the prize of this battle is the most important of all, because it is preserving that beauty that God wrote into His creation when He imagined love between man and woman, which is not for the purpose of using one another, but for loving one another.”

During this month of June, which has sadly become in many places a celebration of lust, may those who struggle with lust be delivered. With the help of St. Charles Lwanga and his martyred companions, may we witness to that chaste Christian love which is truly life giving, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

- - - - - 

That during this month of June, dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, all Christians may witness to the tender love of Christ for sinners through our prayer, fasting, and works of charity. 

For our young people beginning summer vacation, that they may be kept safe from the errors of our culture and kept in close friendship with Jesus through prayer and acts of mercy.

For all the needs of the sick and the suffering, the homebound, those in nursing homes and hospitals, the underemployed and unemployed, immigrants and refugees, victims of natural disaster, war, and terrorism, for all those who grieve the loss of a loved one, and those who will die today, for their comfort, and the consolation of their families.

For all who have died, and for all the poor souls in purgatory, and for X. for whom this Mass is offered.

Incline your merciful ear to our prayers, we ask, O Lord, and listen in kindness to the supplications of those who call on you. Through Christ our Lord