Most people believe the political spectrum is something like this:

The assumption embedded in that image —which most believe— is that the center is where wisdom and prudence live, that the extremes are inherently dangerous and that moving toward either end is necessarily negative.

But there’s a massive problem with that view, and that is that the scale that we’re using to measure “extremes” is not fixed or objective. Beyond that, we’ve fallen for rhetorical tricks that have convinced us that every “extreme” is necessarily and inherently wrong. This is —as we’ll see— not true at all: extremes can be good when they are morally coherent. There is such a thing as extreme goodness, extreme virtue, extreme and radical rejection of sin. None of those are bad, but they are extremes.

So what if the scale itself is the problem?

The Scale Measures Nothing Fixed

Many believe that the left-right political spectrum is a fixed scale.

But history proves the contrary. The left-right distinction originated in the seating arrangement of the French Revolutionary Assembly in 17891: those who supported the king sat on the right, those who opposed him sat on the left. That is the entire origin of the most dominant political framework in the modern world.

This physical seating arrangement gave rise to the political terminology we use today. The "left" came to symbolize progressive, liberal, and radical ideas, while the "right" became synonymous with conservative and traditionalist values.
— Ronald Dodson, The Left versus the Right

But even though as time went on, these terms became associated with certain specific ideas, “left” and “right” and even “conservative” and “liberal” have meant radically different things in different eras and different countries. What is “moderately liberal” in one decade is “extremely conservative” in the next.

The scale does not measure a fixed moral or political reality. It’s not objective but completely arbitrary, measuring the relative distance from wherever the current consensus happens to be standing.

The Center Lacks a Foundation

You can probably begin to see the problem with the whole right vs. left debate and with aiming for the center as the correct moral option. Those who vote “center” regardless of anything else are basing their opinions on terms that are subjective and undefined: left and right don’t really mean anything fixed, and thus the “center”, being a concept completely dependent on their position on a made up spectrum, means even less.

The man who prides himself on being “centrist” or “moderate” has not found the truth equidistant between two errors. He has simply refused to commit to a position, looked at an arbitrary line, and accepted the assumption that the extremes are inherently problematic.

The center shifts with the consensus — which means the centrist does not hold a stable conviction, but a moving average of whatever the culture currently believes. What was considered “center” two decades ago is considered strongly conservative nowadays, as the Overton Window2 has shifted dramatically to the left since the end of the last millennium. The liberals have become more extreme, and the conservatives have become more liberal. The “center”, which exists simply as a middle point somewhere between the two, devoid of any stable foundation, simply shifts with the window, trying to pass as “reasonable” by presenting itself as “not extreme”.

You can see how aiming for the center by default is a form of intellectual cowardice dressed as reasonableness. It’s the easy way out: instead of choosing a moral code, you simply choose “the center”, knowing that this weak neutrality will likely be accepted by most.

What we should be trying to arrive at is at the Aristotelian mean. And this is not the political center (because it changes with the Overton Window), but the precise point of virtue between two vices (objective and timeless), which requires judgment and wisdom to locate, not merely shunning what is currently being labelled “extreme”. The Aristotelian mean requires you to first know what virtue actually is, which means you cannot locate it by consulting a poll or a political consensus.

Extreme Is Not a Moral Category

The word “extreme” describes a position on a scale, not any sort of moral quality. It’s not wise to choose your political or moral position simply by avoiding what is called “extreme”, because you can be at the extreme of virtue or the extreme of vice —one of them is objectively good, the other one isn’t. And on that same line, the “center” can shift towards all the wrong things, and be false and evil without being labeled “extreme”.

The point is that your moral position should not be determined by a scale that is, after all, completely subjective and liable to being shifted by cultural forces. You shouldn’t shy away from extremes just because, nor should you aim at the center by default.

You can hold an extreme commitment to truth or an extreme commitment to lies. We Christians know and understand this: Christ’s demands are extreme by any reasonable measure. We are called to total self-denial, total love of enemies, the surrender of everything. The saints were extreme. The martyrs were extreme. But they were also right. They were also moral.

What made them right was not that they found the center but that what they were extreme about was worth being extreme about. Something is not wrong because it is extreme. It is wrong because it is false or evil —and those are independent questions.

The Real Question

I want to invite you to think about things differently: strip the left-right framework entirely and replace it with the only question that actually matters: is it true, and is it good? Is it rooted in the eternal moral laws that lead to genuine human flourishing?

A man of conviction does not base his decisions off of a subjective political scale. He challenges it and asks whether it conforms to reality, to reason, and to God. And then he chooses the option that most closely aligns with the eternal laws that are the only source of objective morality there could possibly be.

The center doesn’t give its adherents the moral high-ground, nor is it inherently good by avoiding “extremes”. It is, at best, the safe bet, and at worst, a comfortable excuse for never having to decide what you actually stand for.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

Thank you for reading!

If you enjoyed this post and could leave a like or comment it would be greatly appreciated, as it will help my work reach more people.

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Everyone knows there are certain habits that lead a man to perdition. But from what I’ve seen, most people fail to see beyond the obvious ones (porn, masturbation, etc.) and thus don’t recognize other harmful behaviors that are more subtle and hidden.

The reality is that we all engage in a long list of destructive habits. Without careful consideration and a strategic approach to eliminating them, they will eventually lead you astray and, simply put, destroy your future.

Let’s get right into it. Here are the top 10 habits that you need to quit asap:

#10: Substance Abuse

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.
— Titus 2:11-12

I’m not referring to hardcore drugs here. Of course you should avoid them altogether. But I’ve come to realize most of us are addicted to lots more substances than we might think. Maybe it’s coffee. Maybe it’s sugar. Maybe it’s junk food. Maybe it’s nicotine. Maybe it’s a particular supplement. The list goes on and on.

You cannot allow yourself to become dependent on any substance, even if it’s not bad on its own. Take caffeine, for example: it’s not the substance that’s bad, it’s the addiction to the substance.

God calls on us to live detached from wordly things, so we can better focus on eternity.

The cure to this habit: Practice asceticism, fast, and voluntarily give up —permanently or temporarily, depending on the nature of the addiction— those things that you are too fond of.

#9: Carnal Thinking

For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
— Romans 8: 6-8

Every aspect of your being should be oriented towards God. Thinking carnally —letting your flesh and its desires guide your decisions and instruct your intellect— goes directly against the precepts of a sound life under God. The carnal mind is not subject to the law of God.

We are to practice purity in our thinking, for it’s from our minds that our actions and beliefs flow from. It’s a battle that we all must face, but a necessary one: to guard our minds against carnal thinking, to make sure our mind is focused on the world to come, and let eternity be the goal at which we aim.

The cure to this habit: Practice chastity, ask for this virtue in prayer (Our Lady, Saint Augustine, or St. Maria Goretti are great saints to ask for the virtue of chastity). If you struggle with pornography and masturbation, check out this app.

#8: Childish Entertainment

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things.
— 1 Corinthians 13:11

This one might be tough to read for some of you, but I promise I don’t write this intending to judge you or criticize you. This is something that I struggled with myself. I believe it’s not fit for a man to still be hooked to childish forms of entertainment: video games, fantasy TV and movie shows, anime, etc. These things —in my opinion— keep you from maturing and keep you attached to childhood, directly impeding your development as a man. I know because I was an avid gamer until a couple of years ago and I had to make a great , intentional effort to stop wasting my time with games.

Again, it’s not that video games and TV are “wrong” in and of themselves, it’s simply that a man should occupy his mind with higher things. There’s always something better to do than spending countless hours playing games or watching movies. These are legitimate forms of recreation, but you need to be very careful that they don’t become an attachment. You should be able to enjoy the odd movie or sports game here and there, but they should never be a priority in your life.

A man simply should not know every little detail and “easter egg” from the entire Marvel multiverse. It’s a net negative to be so invested in childish things because it distracts you from more fruitful, productive things.

The cure to this habit: Find better forms of entertainment, start a creative project, sell your console and TV if you cannot keep yourself from using them. Throw aways the superhero T-shirts.

#7: Lack of Contentment

 But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.
— 1 Timothy 6:6-7

Because this life is temporary, and because we understand we can take nothing out of this world into the next one, we have to learn to be content with what we have. Focusing on what you lack is a sign of ingratitude, and it leads to dark places: instead of thanking God for the blessings he’s given you, you start resenting Him for not giving you more.

Additionally, those things that really matter are those you can’t measure: the love of your family and friends, the life God’s given you. The very best things in life, those that bring true joy, are not material. Learn to be content with the simple things, focus on the blessings you do have, and set your mind and heart on preparing for eternity.

The cure to this habit: Practice minimalism, give to charity regularly, learn to do away with things that you don’t need.

#6: Low Self-Esteem

 For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
— Ephesians 2:10

Not only will low self-esteem make it difficult for you to achieve your goals here on earth, but it also goes directly against our faith. Think about it: you are made in God’s image. He put careful thought into creating you. He crafted every single detail of your being. He made you exactly as you are. Who are you to say He made a mistake? Who are you to say His work is not good?

You are a perfect creation, not only in your present state but also in your potential. Your understanding, your criteria, and your feelings about yourself do not trump God’s design.

However, you need to honor God by working to build yourself up in character and virtue. It’s not enough to sit back and rejoice in the knowledge of being created in God’s image. You are to use this knowledge virtuously by making of your life something beautiful and pure.

The cure to this habit: Pray and meditate on God’s love for you. Be conscious of trying to see yourself as Jesus would. Build yourself both spiritually and in matters of the world.

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This is the second installment of a series of 2 articles titled St Thomas Aquinas on the Daughters of Lust: A systematic breakdown of how lust affects the will and intellect.

You can read the first installment here.

Two weeks ago we looked at St. Thomas Aquinas’s theory of the “eight daughters of lust”, eight negative effects that sexual immorality has on the will and intellect.

In the first installment of this series, we went through the four “daughters” that affect the intellect (Sexual Sin Makes You Dumber). In this second and final installment, we’ll analyze the remaining four daughters, those that affect the will (Sexual Sin Makes You Weaker). If you haven’t, I recommend you go and read the first installment before you continue reading this article:

As was said in the aforementioned article, the goal of this series is twofold:

1. To help you run a more honest and unbiased self-diagnosis.

2. To help you understand just how deeply sexual sin affects you, so that you can no longer justify it as “not that bad”.

Finally, at the end of this essay, I’ll also share some practical resources to help you quit pornography and defeat other forms of sexual immorality.

The 4 Daughters of Lust that Affect the Will

In the previous installment, we gave the example of the man who’s intelligent, capable, well-intentioned and otherwise disciplined, but whose judgment collapses consistently in certain areas of his life, usually when it comes to choosing to pursue chastity. That’s a good way of understanding how lust blinds the intellect.

When it comes to the will, consider the example of a man who has intellectually chosen to quit pornography and stop pursuing casual sex, but who simply cannot get himself to follow through.

Whereas in the first example the man is intellectually blind to the consequences and thus actively chooses poorly or justifies his sexual immorality, in this case the man chooses correctly with his intellect but has a will too weak to follow through. This is caused by the “four daughters” that affect the will, which are:

• Self-love: This is defined as an inordinate desire for pleasure for the self, by which a man chooses external, worldly goods instead of higher spiritual ones.
  Example: A man intends to keep a boundary (e.g., no porn, no provocative scrolling), but when temptation hits he quietly rationalizes “I deserve this,” making the pleasure the practical “end” of what he chooses next. In this case, the intellect is willing (sets the boundary), but the will is weakened and thus pushes towards the object of immediate pleasure.

• Hatred of God: Because of the aforementioned self-love, hatred of God arises as the will recognizes God as the One Who forbids the desired pleasure. Thus, the will directly shuns God (in aversion) when it becomes clouded by lust to the point of loving the self in a disordered manner.
  Example: Even when a man knows confession, grace, and God’s commands would help, he feels drawn to resent God’s law, because he feels like “God is just ruining my fun”, and thus he delays repentance because he doesn’t want to give up the pleasure.

• Love of this world: This is the effect by which a man treats worldly achievement/experience as the means to final happiness. Instead of setting his sights on eternity, a man acts as if the final objective of his existence was to be found among the things of this world.
  Example: A man starts prioritizing environments that feed lust (certain accounts, parties, flirting “for confidence,” bingeing content) not merely as entertainment, but as the “path” he instinctively uses to feel complete. The effect is that he’s less willing to choose prayer, purity, or stable commitments.

• Despair of the next world: As bodily pleasures intensify and as the will becomes more and more drawn to them, spiritual pleasures begin to be despised. In turn, spiritual goods start to seem pointless and/or unattainable.
  Example: After repeated falls, a man stops expecting real change: “I can’t,” “it’s too late”. He loses hope and interest and quits trying to pray, go to confession, or practice virtue, because eternal life no longer feels desirable or reachable.

Lustful actions have deep rooted and long lasting negative effects on your ability to think, reason, and choose the right course of action. The man who persistently engages in sexually immoral behaviors will slowly become less intelligent (literally), and weaken his will, becoming a slave to the pleasure that he has made it his life’s mission to get.

When the lower powers are strongly moved towards their objects, the result is that the higher powers are hindered and disordered in their acts. Now the effect of the vice of lust is that the lower appetite, namely the concupiscible, is most vehemently intent on its object, to wit, the object of pleasure, on account of the vehemence of the pleasure. Consequently the higher powers, namely the reason and the will, are most grievously disordered by lust.
— St. Thomas Aquinas, ST II-II

I can also tell you, from experience, that the theory we just examined is undeniably true. My life has changed dramatically ever since I started living chastely. It’s one of those things that you likely won’t even believe until you’ve experienced it yourself, but it’s as if you had been living with a veil over your eyes that lifts as soon as you clean up your life, allowing you to see the world clearly and understand profound things better.

Why Defeating Lust is Critical

Lust is probably the vice that is hurting young men the most all over the world. Sexual immorality is rampant, largely due to a lack of understanding of the vastly negative array of effects that lustful actions have on the mind, body and soul.

That is why it’s so important to understand the eight daughters of lust, because understanding the full damage of sexual immorality may finally give you the arguments you need to take a stand against it.

As you can see, sexual immorality affects everything else in your life. The good news is that it’s possible to defeat this enemy, and doing so will not just make you feel better, but it will make your intellect sharper and your will stronger.

Practical Resources to Help You Quit

I’ve written lots of articles about quitting sexual immorality in this blog, which I’ll link at the end of the article, but to save you some time, the tool I find myself recommending most is Relay, a Christian app built for men fighting pornography and sexual sin, combining accountability, structure, and a community of men in the same battle. Several men I know personally have told me it made the difference after other approaches had failed.

If you have been trying other methods and they haven’t worked, I recommend you give this one a try and see if it helps you. You can get a 7-day free trial with the code AETERNUM:

Try Relay for free here

Maybe after reading this you realize that your own will has been weakened by lust, or maybe you don’t.

Whatever the case, I want to encourage you to pursue chastity as a priority in your life. For me, choosing chastity was the final “yes” I needed to give God before He could truly start transforming my heart.

The shackles of sexual immorality can be broken, the daughters of lust can be defeated, and you can reclaim the faculties that pornography and masturbation have stolen from you.

God is there, ready to help you grow in virtue, ready to purify you. All you need to do is accept His help.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

Additional Resources

Thank you for reading!

If you enjoyed this post and could leave a like or comment it would be greatly appreciated, as it will help my work reach more people.

Also, if you liked this article, you’ll love my book.

When I first started this project, I took a lot of inspiration from the Art of Manliness, by . I loved —and still do— the aesthetics of his blog, and how it promoted a return to the lost art of being a gentleman.

Last year, I read a book titled “The Catholic Gentleman”, by Sam Guzman. The book details how to be a gentleman from a Catholic perspective, which I think is a topic that needs to be more widely discussed, as the rules by which we Catholics order our lives are fundamentally different from those in the secular world.

For that reason, I decided to write my two cents on this topic, and give you ten unspoken rules of masculinity that make a modern Christian gentleman.

10. Learn people’s names

When you first meet someone, it’s a sign of respect to pay attention to their name and remember it afterwards. I’m terrible at this, but I’ve noticed just how disrespectful it feels when you have to keep asking someone for their name when they’ve told you multiple times already. Our names are something that we hold in high regard —a fundamental part of our identity—, so when you remember someone’s name, you are showing them that they are seen and valued.

9. Be the same man in every room

There’s a crisis of integrity plaguing most men today. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to encounter men who act, think, and speak in the same manner regardless of the context they find themselves in. Out of cowardice, or perhaps due to a disordered need to be liked by everyone, most men hide their true selves and compartmentalize their beliefs depending on the room they’re in.

A true gentleman is honest and upfront about the things that he holds sacred. He doesn’t hide his faith out of fear, he doesn’t avoid sharing who he truly is to be liked, and he doesn’t act differently depending on who he’s with.

Bear in mind, however, that integrity doesn’t mean imprudence. You need to be wise and understand when something is better left unsaid. But there’s a way to be wise and open, and it’s our duty to find that path.

8. Control your sexual urges

Controlling lust is the modern rite of passage from boyhood into manhood. Until you learn to control your sexual urges, you’ll forever be a slave to them.

Yes this is difficult. Yes, we live in a society in which we are bombarded by sexual content left and right. Yes, it’s the main sin of our age.

But that just means that conquering it makes you all the more virtuous. A man who controls his sexual urges shows uncommon temperance and fortitude. In contrast, a man who can’t control his most basic urges shows a lack of self-control that bleeds into every other area of his life.

The undisciplined man is ruled by his appetites. The gentleman, in contrast, rules them.

7. Return what you’ve borrowed promptly and without reminder

Nothing stains a man’s reputation faster than failing to make good on his word. Few things are more awkward than having to ask someone to return what they’ve borrowed from you. A gentleman fulfills his obligations, and that includes even “meaningless” obligations like returning what you’ve borrowed in exactly the same state that you received it. Borrowing something is a promise that you’ll return it, and failing to do so willfully and in due time is failing to keep it.

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A few days ago, in the middle of a conversation with a family member whom I don’t often talk to, I noticed something interesting that motivated me to write this article: her eyes were jumping all over the place, to her phone, to the door, to the waiter, everywhere but toward me.

This is something that has become more and more common, and it’s, in my opinion, a direct consequence of our quick dopamine addictions and of the loss of attention span that has become the norm thanks to the excessive use of our mobile phones.

We joke about how we’ve become distracted and addicted to cheap dopamine, but under the jokes hides a sinister reality: far from it being a victimless crime, our inability to concentrate for long periods of time is slowly harming us deeply, not just on a personal level, but culturally too.

The Personal Dimension: How This Affects You

The anecdote I related at the beginning of the article isn’t really anything special. It’s the new normal. Most —if not all— the conversations we have nowadays remain on an extremely superficial level, not just because people are slowly becoming less interesting by abandoning genuine hobbies and losing their exploratory spirit (that’s a matter for another article), but more so because it’s impossible to reach deeper levels of discussion when we compulsively pick up our phones every 30 seconds.

Even worse, the man who cannot sit still in a conversation is not merely distracted, but also anxious. The compulsive phone-checking is a symptom of a soul that panics at the prospect of being alone with a thought for more than a few seconds.

This anxious restlessness destroys the possibility of ever going deeper. Anytime you lose your focus on a conversation, you are immediately taken to the surface. When you ask a question and don’t pay attention to the answer because your mind is somewhere else, you miss the opportunity to dive deeper and further pursue a particular line of thought. If you can’t focus on what’s being said —really focus— the conversation will jump from shallow topic to shallow topic, without ever reaching any significant depth, because it’s much easier to ask about the weather or about a football game than it is to pursue the important truths that hide beneath the surface.

In an article I published last year, we looked at the way in which St. Benedict sought to eliminate acedia and restlessness from the monastic life, because he understood just how much damage this inability to stay put caused our souls:

“He understood that moving from place to place was but a symptom of a deeper problem, that of a restless heart that believes the next thing will finally work, or that somewhere else is where you’ll find peace. He understood that restlessness made it incredibly difficult to explore the depths of the soul, achieve any sort of mastery, and get closer to holiness.”
From St. Benedict’s Rule for Stability and Consistency

What St. Benedict identified on a macro level is also true in the micro dimension. He noticed that it took years of focus to master an art and to grow spiritually, and we are seeing that losing our ability to focus on a concept or conversation for more than 10 seconds is making us shallow, perpetually distracted, and anxious.

The damage, however, does not stop at the individual. A culture is nothing more than the sum of the interior lives of its members. When —as we’re seeing now— those interior lives become shallow and colonized by distraction, the society they produce will naturally bear the same mark

The Cultural Dimension: How This Affects Our Culture

As I said at the beginning of this article, we are mostly aware of the consequences that our dopamine addictions have on a personal level, but what happens when an entire society loses its ability to focus and venture into the depths of their own souls?

It’s been said that some of the masterpieces of art and architecture of the ancient world simply couldn’t be created or built nowadays, because there aren’t any artists capable of creating or building them. That is probably true, but it’s also true that things would surely be different if we just managed not to check our phones every time an interesting thought started to form in our minds. Maybe an artist somewhere could paint a new Sistine Chapel ceiling if he wasn’t watching Subway Surfers reels with one hand and holding the paint brush with the other.

Maybe there would be space for more masterpieces of literature if we weren’t going back and forth between the work at hand and YouTube shorts. Maybe, just maybe, we would build more beautiful buildings, commit to longer term projects, and allow God to use us as His creative instruments if we weren’t so incredibly prone to being swayed by our uncontrollable need for quick reward.

“The greatest menace to our capacity for contemplation is the incessant fabrication of tawdry empty stimuli which kill the receptivity of the soul.”
— Josef Pieper

All genuinely beautiful cultural creations require some level of interior stillness in order to receive inspiration from the source of beauty Himself: God. It is from this contemplative receptivity that great art, great architecture, and great literature (all marks of a great culture) have always emerged. This contrasts strongly with the frantic productivity of our age, and it’s instead a kind of deep, sustained attention that allows a man to be used as an instrument of something greater than himself.

When our brains are this distracted, we can’t focus and tap into the God-given creativity within us, and thus we remain on the material level, failing to grasp any shades of the divine and missing out on the astonishing beauty that the interior world offers. This manifests itself in the culture that we create, making the physical and spiritual world around us shallow, material, merely functional and gray.

The Way Forward

The recovery of our capacity to penetrate the surface —whether that’s in conversation, in art, or in prayer— starts with the same act: the deliberate refusal to reach for the phone. The discipline to focus on what you are currently doing, on the person you are speaking to, or on the piece you are creating. This is not, however, a “productivity hack”. It is way more important than that.

What we are looking to recover is our capacity for interiority, the inner silence without which neither beauty nor God can be heard. A man who has lost that silence has not merely become less productive. He has become less human.

And in exactly the same way, a culture filled with superficial-level humans will become a superficial, materialistic and ugly void, a society of numbness and function without soul.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

Thank you for reading!

If you enjoyed this post and could leave a like or comment it would be greatly appreciated, as it will help my work reach more people.

Also, if you liked this article, you’ll love my book.

The battle against sin can be very discouraging, especially when you feel like you’re making no progress at all towards purifying your thoughts, words, and deeds. It gets to a point when the cycle becomes familiar, so much so that we accept it obediently: the fall, the confession, the resolution, the brief period of clarity, and then the slow return to the same disorder you swore you had finally defeated.

You have addressed lust and found yourself back in it. You have confessed anger and watched it resurface within the week. You have resolved against pride, against avarice, against the particular sin that seems to define your struggle, and you have kept that resolution until you didn't. Slowly, somewhere around the thousandth failure, despair starts to creep in. You are willing to fight, but it seems like you’re fighting a circular battle that has no end.

The reason why this happens is most likely that you’re fighting the wrong battle. Most of the sins you probably recognize, confess, and try to eliminate are symptoms, not root causes. This leads to a mistake in the way you approach them, treating each sin as a separate problem requiring a separate solution. As if lust and anger and avarice were independent failures that could be addressed one at a time, in isolation, without reference to each other.

That approach feels and sounds logical. However, according to a seventh-century Byzantine theologian who paid for his convictions with his tongue and his right hand, it is structurally wrong, because sins are not separate. It’s not like each sin is a tree that you can cut off independently. No, according to St. Maximus the Confessor, sins are all branches of the same tree. And you have been pruning branches while the root goes untouched.

Who Was Maximus the Confessor?

Maximus was a seventh-century Byzantine theologian and monk who, at the age of 82, was tortured for refusing to endorse the Monothelite heresy, the position that Christ had only one will, as opposed to two wills (human and divine).

They cut out the old man’s tongue and mutilated his right hand so that he could no longer write or speak, convinced that in so doing they had silenced this witness to the orthodox and apostolic faith.
What they failed to realize is that a confessor of the faith confesses that faith not only with his words, but with his whole being. And so this mute old man, missing a hand, became a living word. His silence was more powerful than any letter he had written or speech he had given, confessing his and the Church’s faith in the Incarnation of God’s Son.
Maximus was exiled to present-day Georgia. Exhausted by the torture he had suffered, he died that same year.1

St. Maximus was not someone writing from the comfort of a desk, theorizing without practicing what he preached. This was a man who understood the relationship between disordered will and disordered life from the inside, at a cost so high that most of us will never fully grasp. His theological anthropology —his account of what goes wrong in the human person— was forged under an intense pressure that tested every claim he made about the human will and about the structure of sins and passions.

One of his most significant findings was that he pinpointed and identified the root of sin in his Four Hundred Chapters on Love, and gave it a name: philautia.

The Root of All Disorder: Philautia

Philautia, as Maximus describes it, corresponds to irrational self-love. It’s not selfishness in the obvious sense or the crude self-centeredness that any man can recognize and condemn in himself but something far more subtle, far more pervasive, and far more difficult to uproot precisely because it does not always present itself as a vice.

“He who drives out self-love, the mother of the passions, will with God's help easily rid himself of the rest, such as anger, irritation, rancor and so on.

But he who is dominated by self-love is overpowered by the other passions, even against his will. Self-love is the passion of attachment to the body.”
— St. Maximus the Confessor, 400 texts on Love2

The important thing to note is that, according to St. Maximus, philautia is not another sin that you need to add to the list of sins you’re currently fighting against, but the root of all other disorders, the sin that breeds all sins. This is why it’s so powerful to understand how to fight directly against it, so that you actually address the root cause of your disorders, not the symptoms.

How the Passions Are Organized

In his work, the Four Hundred Chapters on Love, St. Maximus explains that the passions are not just a random catalogue of human failures, and that they have a structure —a genealogy. At the base of that structure sits philautia, irrational self-love, specifically attachment to the body as a self-enclosed unit, as if the self were its own origin and end.

From philautia flow three general passions: gluttony, avarice, and vainglory. From those three, every other passion grows.

“Overeating and gluttony cause licentiousness. Avarice and self-esteem cause one to hate one’s neighbor. Self-love, the mother of vices, is the cause of all these things.

Self-love is an impassioned, mindless love for one’s body. Its opposite is love and self-control. A man dominated by self-love is dominated by all the passions.”
— St. Maximus the Confessor, 400 texts on Love

It’s important to note that Maximus does not condemn self-love altogether. Rightly ordered love of self (in God, through God, toward God) is not philautia. Philautia is the love of self as a closed system, the self that does not refer itself to anything beyond itself.

How Philautia Manifests Itself

As we said, philautia does not usually present itself as obvious selfishness, but rather as reasonable, often justifiable self-protection, legitimate comfort, earned reward, and personal preference. In practice, the manifestaion of philautia might look like this:

• The man who consistently prioritizes his own comfort over the demands of his vocation. For example, the husband who chooses to watch a sports game during the weekend instead of spending time with his kids under the apparently valid pretext of needing rest or some time alone. In the accumulated small decisions that define a life, philautia presents itself as choosing our own preferences over sacrifice or service.

• The man whose spiritual life is organized around what he gets from it: consolation, peace, “nice” emotions, or a sense of being right with God, rather than around love of God Himself.

• The man who is generous in public and privately resentful about the cost.

• The man who justifies sexual sin because it makes him feel nice, go to sleep easier, or simply comforts him somehow.

• The man who has made his own peace, his own stability, his own emotional equilibrium the organizing value of his household, so that his wife and children unconsciously have to arrange themselves around his moods.

• The man who mistakes the absence of obvious vice for genuine virtue, because he has never interrogated the self-referential logic that governs his daily decisions.

• The man who justifies sinful or disordered actions under the pretext of health, caring for himself, “looking out for number one”, or not wanting to be taken advantage of.

All of these are rooted in philautia, as all of them are different branches of a tree that starts with a disordered love of oneself.

It’s possible that you’ve recognized yourself in one of the earlier examples, but the question that naturally arises is: if philautia generates all the other passions, what dislodges it?

Thankfully, St. Maximus doesn’t just provide us with a general diagnosis of the genealogy of sin, but he goes on to list specifically how philautia generates all other passions (lust, gluttony, etc.), and most importantly, to explain and prescribe the one movement that directly attacks philautia at its root and that will allow you to start making serious progress in breaking free from all other vices.

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This is the first installment of a series of 2 articles titled St Thomas Aquinas on the Daughters of Lust: A systematic breakdown of how lust affects the will and intellect.

Part 2 drops the 4th of June, 2026.

A common misconception that keeps many enslaved to sexual sin is that they think that it’s exclusively a private matter. They believe that lustful actions do not cause any harm beyond the individual spiritual life, and thus, on some level, they think it’s “not that bad” to engage in sexually disordered actions.

The problem with this view is that it ignores the very tangible consequences that persistent sexual sin has on the will and intellect. St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologiae, identifies what he calls the “eight daughters of lust”1, eight negative effects that sexual immorality has on the will and intellect. Four of these “daughters” correspond to the intellect, and four correspond to the will.

Anecdotically, it’s easy to see the truth in Aquinas’ theology: you have probably encountered at least some men who are intelligent, capable, well-intentioned and otherwise disciplined, but whose judgment and willpower collapses consistently in certain areas of their lives, usually when it comes to acting chastely or controlling their sexual urges. These are men who seem to have their lives together, and yet, when it comes to sexual immorality, they have some pitch black blind spots that lead to them justifying their sin or simply ignoring the incoherent way in which they are behaving.

These blind spots are caused by the four daughters of lust that affect the intellect, which we’ll analyze in this article. In the next installment of this series, we’ll take a look at the remaining four daughters, which are the ones that affect the will.

The goal of this series is to help you run a more honest and unbiased self-diagnosis, and to help you understand just how deeply sexual sin affects you, so that you will have more reasons for fighting against it. Towards the end of this article, I’ll also share some practical resources to defeat pornography and other forms of sexual immorality.

Lust Is Not a Private Sin

As mentioned earlier, it’s important to begin by understanding that sexual sin is not private, in the sense that it’s not self-contained. It’s not just a personal weakness that doesn’t bleed into the rest of your life. The premise that defeats this assumption is that a human is an integrated whole, and just like your physical health affects your mental health, so too spiritual disorder causes intellectual disorder, for example. In that sense, we need to understand that the will and the intellect are not isolated faculties —and no section of your life is completely isolated.

Disorders in one faculty or area create more disorders in other areas. Sexual sin doesn’t “stay in its lane”, it wrecks havoc in all other areas of your life, by clouding your intellect and lessening your willpower.

The specific way in which lustful actions affect the intellect is as follows:

The 4 Daughters of Lust that Affect the Intellect

These “four daughters” are consequences that persistent sexual sin has on your intellect. Think of them as blind spots that appear when you keep engaging in sexually immoral behavior.

• Blindness of mind: This is defined as the inability to think with clarity about God, one’s own life, and one’s obligations. Blindness of mind is the effect by which the right knowledge of spiritual things is prevented. The man who cannot pray seriously, for example, is often not spiritually dry but sexually disordered.
  Example: A man who habitually consumes pornography can still “know” religious facts intellectually, but in practice he becomes incapable of perceiving the deeper realities of what grace, repentance, or chastity actually means for him. The consequences of this is that prayer feels flat, Scripture doesn’t penetrate, and even serious spiritual warnings seem unreal or irrelevant.

• Rashness: This is a collapse of deliberation, or, in plain terms, acting without thinking. This occurs because there is a connection between habitual lust and impulsive decision-making in other areas of life. After all, a man who can’t control his sexual impulses will be less capable of controlling his other impulses, making him more emotional, reactive, and prone to acting without weighing the consequences of his actions.
  Example: A man sees a “quick” path to gratification (a message, an unsupervised situation, a click he tells himself is harmless) and moves immediately, without consulting conscience, prayer, or seeking counsel, because the potential pleasure has already fixed his attention and weakened careful judgment of what spiritual good is at stake.

• Thoughtlessness/lack of consideration: Thoughtlessness is similar to rashness so I’ll do my best to explain why it’s distinct from the other daughters of lust. Rashness means acting impulsively without allowing space for deliberation, whereas thoughtlessness means a lack of intentionality in your choices, failing to examine the consequences rightly and an inability to properly weigh the importance of the matter. Think of it this way: rashness is when you hit click on an immoral picture right away before counsel and deliberation; thoughtlessness is when you don’t even consider the consequences properly in the first place. They are closely linked together, but they are fundamentally different.
  Example: After noticing an urge or temptation, a man doesn’t slow down to examine what’s happening (What am I choosing? What will this lead to? Is this compatible with virtue and his duties?). He fails to reflect because his intellect is drifting.

• Inconstancy: Inconstancy appears as a vice similar to effeminacy, in the sense that it is an incapability of persisting in what sound reason has chosen and abandoning it under pressure.
  Example: A man makes a good resolution or commitment: “I’m done; I’ll never go back to watching porn,” but when the next strong trigger arrives (stress, loneliness, late-night phone use), he ignores the earlier judgment and returns to the sin, not because he changed his mind about what was right, but because the lust-impulse overpowers the decision he previously chose and understood.

As you can see, lust is not something “harmless” or isolated. Sexual immorality is, in fact, a vice that clouds your intellect, makes you less capable of reasoning properly, and put bluntly, makes you dumber and blind to the consequences of your actions.

It’s quite interesting, when you think about it: why do you think that so many obviously erroneous ideologies are so widespread today? Why do you think that there is so many people who seem to have no common sense?

As we’ve seen, in a culture in which sexual immorality is the norm, the natural —and expected— consequence is that people’s intellects will be clouded, and thus they will lose the ability to reason properly, becoming more susceptible to propaganda, lack of emotional self-control, and thus it’ll be easier for dangerous ideologies to spread.

The Good News

I’m not sharing all this to try and make you feel guilty or hopeless, but simply as a theological and psychological theory that will help you in your fight against sexual immorality. In fact, I believe this should, if anything, increase your hope, because now you see just how much better your life will be after quitting pornography and sexually immoral behavior. By understanding that your intellect is clouded, you can now see how much brighter a life of chastity is.

Because the good news is that if lust produces these effects systematically, then chastity reverses them. When you start practicing chastity and purifying your life, you’ll gain the opposite virtues to the vices that lust causes: understanding (the virtue opposite blindness of mind), counsel (the virtue opposite rashness), sound judgment (the virtue opposite thoughtlessness), and constancy (the virtue opposite inconstancy).

Gaining custody of your sexual life does not merely make you feel better, it —literally— makes you smarter! Your intellect clears. Your judgment improves. Your prayer life becomes possible again. You gain wisdom and understanding.

The same faculties that were degraded by the vice are restored by the contrary virtue.

On a Practical Note

We’ve seen just how deeply sexual immorality affects you and how important it is to purify your intellect. I can also tell you, from experience, that the theory we just examined is undeniably true. My life has changed dramatically ever since I started living chastely. It’s one of those things that you likely won’t even believe until you’ve experienced it yourself, but it’s as if you had been living with a veil over your eyes that lifts as soon as you clean up your life, allowing you to see the world clearly and understand profound things better.

If you want to think more clearly, lead more effectively, pray more seriously, and govern your household with authority, quitting porn and sexual immorality is the place to start. Not because sexual purity is the whole or end goal of the Christian life, but because its absence makes the rest of the Christian life progressively harder to live.

Practical Resources to Help You Quit

I’ve written lots of articles about quitting sexual immorality in this blog, which I’ll link at the end of the article, but to save you some time, the main resource I always recommend is Relay, a Christian app designed specifically for overcoming pornography and sexual sin. It provides structured accountability, evidence-based protocols, and a community of men fighting the same battle.

There’s a ton of positive testimonials of men who have found freedom from pornography addiction, masturbation, and other forms of sexual immorality with the help of the structured, evidence-based protocol that Relay offers. Many men (even some close friends) have also told me personally it made the difference after other methods failed.

If you have been trying other methods and they haven’t worked, I recommend you give this one a try and see if it helps you. You can get a 7-day free trial with the code AETERNUM:

Try Relay for free here

The Man You Could Be

Maybe after reading this you notice some of the blind spots that sexual immorality has caused in your own intellect, or maybe you don’t. Whatever is the case, I want to encourage you to genuinely pursue chastity. The clean, sharp intellect that chastity produces is one of many reasons why you should absolutely prioritize quitting pornography, masturbation, and sexual immorality as a whole, but it’s not even the most important one.

We live in a spiritual universe, in which our actions have more consequences than we can see with our eyes. Every single evil thing you do has a spiritual consequence, beyond the psychological consequences that sin also carries with it.

This is why Christ warns us so strongly against sins of the flesh:

If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.
— Matthew 5:29

No sin is “meaningless”. No sin is private. Sexual sin definitely isn’t. We need to face the harsh reality of the evil it contains, because only then will we understand why it’s so critical to quit.

Beware, brother, if you do not be converted now, you may never be converted.
— St. Alphonsus Liguori

Do not postpone this. Do not brush it off. Take it seriously. Do whatever you need to do to purify your life. Work to order your life towards all that’s good, beautiful, and true, and be radical in rejecting sin. Give it all to Christ, and let Him be your strength. Help Him too, by making an effort, by taking this purpose seriously, and by doing whatever it takes to get rid of these sins that have led so many men to intellectual disorders, but mainly —and much worse— to eternal damnation.

God is with you, you are in my prayers, and surely too in the prayers of all the men who fight this battle alongside you.

May God bless you and keep you.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

PART 2:

Additional Resources

Thank you for reading!

If you enjoyed this post and could leave a like or comment it would be greatly appreciated, as it will help my work reach more people.

Also, if you liked this article, you’ll love my book.

Last year, I published one of my most successful articles to date, The Best Protocol for Quitting P*rn. It was a practical, step-by-step guide to help any man release himself from the grip of lust and sexual immorality.

After seeing how well readers received the protocol, I started thinking about other vices common to the modern man that could be somewhat easily solved by implementing the right protocol. While there surely are many, many vices to create protocols for (and I will in the future, if you guys like this one), the one that stood out the most to me was the habit of laziness and procrastination.

I think that —after p*rn— laziness is possibly the single most common vice that plagues young men today, and the one which most affects their chances to live a purposeful, happy life. It’s very sad to see so many young men basically wasting their entire lives scrolling their phones for hours on end, watching mindless series and movies, and failing to control their energy and redirect it towards something productive, and I believe it’s critical that, as men, we learn to build the discipline and willpower necessary to do the work and build a prosperous, meaningful life.

When I talk about laziness, I’m not talking about “rest”. Rest is necessary and honorable. Rest allows you to give God His due and helps you manage anxiety, stress, and other mental pressures. What I’m referring to is the lack of mental fortitude and discipline that leads to the avoidance of responsibilities, the postponement of action taking, and the disordered attachment to comfort and ease (in that sense, laziness is very similar to effeminacy).

You know, the kind of laziness that keeps you glued to your phone watching useless content instead of doing the work that you know you must do. Or the laziness that keeps you comfortable and warm in bed instead of getting up and working out when you’re supposed to. These are all forms of laziness that stem from deeper causes, and while they might not be easily defeated —it’ll take effort—, there are simple steps you can take to finally become a man who takes action, keeps his word, and defeats the vice of laziness.

Without further ado, here’s the step-by-step protocol to stop wasting your life:

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You probably feel the pressure that this world puts on your shoulders. Being a man is challenging enough on its own, and it’s made even more difficult by the fact that we are now living at a time when the greatest social crime is being a Christian man.

Our faith gets mocked and ridiculed everywhere we go. Masculinity is deemed “toxic” unless it complies to the demands of the feminist mob. Hollywood, corporations, and the entire entertainment industry spend billions of dollars trying to “deconstruct” gender norms and feminize men.

A few decades ago, these attacks on Christian masculinity were more subtle and harder to recognize. Now, they have become open frontal attacks by forces of darkness that know full well that evil can only spread if Christian men fail to hold the line. Thus, they seek to shut us down, emasculate us, surround us with confusion and ostracize us.

My goal here, however, is not to complain. Things are as they are, and we shouldn’t whine about it. But it’s important to recognize what’s going on before we can devise strategies to change it. And it’s even more important to do so when you consider that there’s a wide array of men who remain dormant and anaesthetised to the hostility of the postmodern world.

One of the risks of waking up to this reality is to try and find a tangible enemy in the people who —often through no fault of their own— have served as the instruments of these destructive ideologies. We need to remember that no human, no matter how misled, brainwashed, or even evil, is the actual enemy. Our fight shouldn’t be directed against our fellow men, but against evil itself, against the spiritual forces that seek to usher in destruction and chaos:

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
— Ephesians 6:12

This battle is spiritual. It always has been and it always will be. And throughout history, the greatest saints have known this, and understood that their purpose on earth was to fight those powers and principalities, by standing firm in the Truth amidst the onslaught of a hostile culture.

St. Athanasius, for example, spent the better part of his episcopal career in exile — five times, under four emperors — for refusing to compromise on the full divinity of Christ when Arianism had captured not only the culture but much of the Church hierarchy itself. There is even a phrase attributed to him that shows how much of an outcast he’d become: Athanasius contra mundum (Athanasius against the world).

Athanasius and many other revolutionary saints are our spiritual ancestors, and they fought back at a time when rebellion could mean exile or even death.

In contrast, all that’s being asked of us is to face a little discomfort and to muster the courage necessary to preach our faith loudly and clearly and to live coherently with it. We’re not being asked to perform deeds of great courage —although we should still aim for that—, we’re simply being asked to commit to our faith fully, to stop hiding it, and to preach a different message than what the world promotes.

A handful of men committed to living virtuously, fully determined to pursue holiness as their life’s mission can completely transform our culture. I recently announced my new book, The War on Christian Men, and that’s exactly what it is: a serious attempt to equip the Catholic man with the theological clarity, historical memory, and practical formation he needs to hold the line in his own life, his household, and his community.

The devil fears holy, masculine Christian men more than anything else. Because we’re the ones who build cathedrals, establish orders, convert nations.
— The War on Christian Men

Get the book here

I am convinced that it is at times like these, when everything seems hopeless, that great saints are born. We can be those great saints. We can refuse to misuse our ambition or shut it down altogether, opting instead to aim it towards the only goal worth pursuing: holiness.

God needs men who are willing to step up to the arena, to be warriors in this spiritual war. He needs men who commit their entire lives to pursuing sanctity, who don’t pick and choose their faith when it’s convenient but who openly proclaim the Gospel and the name of Christ.

In the book, you’ll find practical strategies to combat sin, historical and theological breakdowns, and exclusive essays not available anywhere else. If you are one of the many Christian men who feels like you’re called to something higher, this book was written for you, to help you order your ambition towards virtue and strengthen your soul and will against the hateful culture that wants nothing more than for you to remain mediocre, lost, and purposeless.

Check out the book here

May we all have the courage to fight back, devote our entire lives to service in the name of Christ, and bring the light of Our Savior into a world that desperately needs it.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

I’m often shocked when I realize just how susceptible I have been to modern programming and how many false beliefs I’ve internalized over the years. I think it’s wise to remain vigilant and to not think yourself immune to the propaganda that’s been spread over the last decades, because when you think yourself immune, you’ll be less aware of the lies they want you to believe.

Among Christian men, I’ve noticed 10 prevalent lies that most of us have internalized, and that have had the effect of emasculating us and making us less fit to lead our families and communities.

Here are 10 Lies that the modern Christian man has allowed himself to believe:

10. “Religion Has no Place in the Public Sphere”

Many well-intentioned Christians have let the world convince them that their faith is something that should only be practiced in private, because otherwise they would be “imposing it” on everyone else.

The problem here is that the public sphere will always be guided by moral principles, and if these principles are not based on the Christian faith, they will necessarily be opposed to it.

Our responsibility as men of faith extends far beyond the private sphere, and we are not only allowed but commanded to participate in the playing fields of the world and to openly proclaim that Christ is Lord, so that we can become beacons that reflect the light of God.

9. A Christian Man Should Just be “Nice”

Behind the pretext of “being nice”, most Christian men have internalized a cowardice that makes them incapable of standing by their values or proclaiming the Truth firmly.

Nowhere are we commanded to be “nice”. We are commanded to be kind and loving, but very often that means not being “nice” by worldly standards. The “niceness” that calls for unrestrained tolerance and acceptance of sin and evil is the kind of passive, counterfeit kindness that the world promotes so that evil ideologies can spread uncontested.

We are called to be much more than nice. We are called to be saints, and there has never been a saint who hasn’t had the courage to stand against the powers in place and proclaim the Gospel loudly and clearly.

8. All Ambition is Pride

There has been a subtle but persistent effort by the enemy to convince Christian men that any kind of fire and any kind of ambition is immoral and necessarily prideful. Afraid to fall for the greatest sin of all (pride), many Christian men have chosen to put out their fire altogether, to numb their ambitions and refuse to pursue any worthy, magnanimous goals.

Instead of ordering that ambition towards holiness and service, Christian men have chosen to believe the lies of the enemy and have started to believe that ambition is always, undeniably, an expression of pride.

Ambition needs to be ordered towards eternity, not eliminated altogether.

7. Humility Means Putting Yourself Down

Humility is probably the single most misunderstood virtue there is. A lot of people either consciously or subconsciously understand humility to mean putting oneself down.

Just like ambition and pride are not the same thing, humility and self-deprecation differ vastly.

Humility simply means standing in Truth, being accurate in recognizing your flaws and limitations and not thinking yourself to be more or less than what you truly are.

True humility is not self-deprecating nor exaggerated, but the proper, honest recognition of where you stand and who you are.

6. Anger is Always Sinful

“He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust.”
―Thomas Aquinas

I believe that many of the cultural crises we are facing (abortion, surrogacy, etc.) have managed to spread in large part because we have not been angry when it was righteous to be. Maybe if we had been more outspoken about the evil behind these practices before they became mainstream we could’ve prevented them from spreading so quickly.

But because we’ve fallen for the lie that anger is always sinful or “unchristian”, we have become passive spectators of evil, ignoring our duty to be angry when there is a just cause for it.

As St. Thomas says, the real immoral action is to live amidst injustice without anger. And that’s exactly what we’ve been so comfortably doing.

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The world our Lord created is so incredibly beautiful that I often wonder how it’s even possible for so many to despise existence or, what’s more common, to approach it apathetically, failing to see the wonders of even the most common life.

We’ve become so incredibly preoccupied by trying to accomplish mundane goals that the true meaning of life passes right in front of us, and we are so hypnotized by worldly pressures that we don’t even see it. It is true that there are dark powers that seek to drive us into a sterile life devoid of purpose, but paradoxically, the powers that feel so strong and which we so easily allow to enslave us are in reality so incredibly weak that a mere moment of enlightenment and a simple choice to live life differently is enough to defeat them.

How different would the world be if we all made it our mission to live richly, to truly approach each day with a joyful spirit, to see the beauty in the chaos, and find even in the struggle shades of the perfection that’s to come?

Not only would we get rid of the crushing weight of our own arbitrary demands, but we would also make significant, almost involuntary progress towards developing virtue.

When you make a choice to focus on the good things in life, you are suddenly free to enjoy the many licit pleasures this world offers, without needing to find their counterfeit versions in the dark embrace of sin.

A man who lives a rich life, full of beauty, worthy struggles, and loving relationships will naturally start moving away from sin, because sin loses its power when you love the life you’re living.

Sin, in essence, offers an escape and promises—falsely— the fulfillment of an unfulfilled longing of your heart.

If your heart is full with beauty and life, perhaps the temptation to sin will still be there, but it will lose a lot of its appeal. A man who has a lot to live for will have reasons to resist sin and to avoid the inescapable negative consequences of it. X user Angelo Romano recently posted a very clear example of this:

His post was mostly focused on having hobbies and licit passions that you enjoy and that cultivate virtue in order to more easily avoid sexual sin, but we can extrapolate his point and arrive at a broader conclusion: by filling your life with beauty and with the licit, ordered pleasures God has created, you can strengthen your soul against the temptations of the enemy.

Sin is often strongest against an idle mind. Boredom, apathy, and acedia all contribute to sinful behaviors, because an empty mind will be more easily drawn towards the “pleasure” that sin offers. In contrast, a mind preoccupied with exciting, good, virtuous pursuits and pleasures will not feel the need to pursue the illicit pleasures of sin. Romano continues:

Lifemaxxing —the intentional enjoyment of all the good things this world offers— is your antidote against the apathy that leaves you hollow and seeking the false fulfillment of sin.

Now, this does not mean that all of those who choose to go through life with a spirit of righteous enjoyment will avoid all temptations or be completely free from the pull of sin. But living fully, dangerously and beautifully is one of the most powerful tools you can wield against the darkness of sin: when it comes creeping into your life, you’ll have millions of reasons to refuse it. You’ll know how beautiful life is without it, and you’ll be less likely to risk everything for a pleasure that is not just unfulfilling, but illicit and destructive. Your life will be so pleasurable in all the right ways that sin will no longer be as alluring.

Learn to live a life so unbearably beautiful, so rich with all kinds of licit pleasures, so full of good people, so full of sheer enjoyment, that sin becomes as ugly in your view as it actually is, and so that you might reach the end of your days in peace, fully devoted to a life worth living, and with a hopeful spirit, knowing that what’s to come after death is even more wonderful than the beautiful life you built on earth.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

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If you enjoyed this post and could leave a like or comment it would be greatly appreciated, as it will help my work reach more people.

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No one seems to be able to speak plainly anymore. Political correctness has gotten to all of us, and we’ve fallen into the habit of tiptoeing around everything, always fearing the consequences of being “offensive” by daring to speak or act in a way that isn’t sugarcoated and wrapped in rainbow bubblewrap.

You see this in many scenarios:
A father corrects his son’s disrespect firmly (not violently, not cruelly, just firmly). A stranger overhears and whispers: ‘That’s abuse.’

A coach demands excellence from his athletes, pushing them past their comfort zones. Parents complain: ‘He’s too hard on them.’

A spiritual director tells a man the blunt truth about his sin. The man leaves offended: ‘Where’s the mercy?’

We’ve lost the ability to distinguish between severity —a virtue, when properly ordered and exercised— and cruelty.

This has led to a world in which we’re constantly afraid to correct one another, forgetting that it’s our duty to do so. Even within the faith, we’ve let the incessant trigger warnings of the world infiltrate our speech and our actions. Modern Christianity has embraced a sort of therapeutic softness and elevated it as the highest virtue.

The results of this disorder are that we offer gentleness without strength, mercy without justice and compassion without correction. We’ve reduced the faith to emotional affirmation, and any form of strictness—even loving, necessary discipline—gets labeled as “toxic,” “harsh,” “uncharitable”, or my personal favorite “unChristlike”.

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This is a very new phenomena that has become mainstream over the last couple of decades, and it’s an epidemic of softness that has led us to forget —or willfully ignore, because it’s a virtue that requires courage— the value of strictness.

The ancient Romans and early Christians lived by a virtue that we’ve completely forgotten in our obsession with avoiding offending others: severitas—severity, strictness, demanding excellence. And far from being cruel, it was actually essential to masculine formation, holiness, and building men of character.

In this article we’ll analyze why Christian severity is not cruelty, why we desperately need it, and how to practice it virtuously, without becoming a tyrant.

What Is Severitas? (The Roman Foundation)

Severitas (Latin) means strictness/firmness in judgment and punishment: a kind of justice that responds to wrongdoing with appropriate severity.1

Severitas was strongly prized as a core masculine in the ancient Roman world, mainly alongside other virtues like gravitas (dignity), pietas (duty), and virtus (courage).

Severity was thought to be an essential virtue to military discipline, fatherhood, education, self-governance, and overall masculine development, as a virtue directed towards excellence in behavior. Nowadays we might consider any severity as negative judgment, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth: unjust judgment is to severity what tyranny is to leadership—a negative shadow of a virtue that is objectively good.

In every vocation, severitas served to push men towards excellence and fortitude, saving them from the natural consequences of a life of pampering and indulgences: mediocrity.

The incredible cultural, military, and institutional advancements of the Roman world were caused in no small part thanks to this virtue: philosophers, artists, educators and military commanders all practiced it in some form or another, because they understood that only by demanding excellence —righteously—, can great aims be accomplished.

Severitas was simply about refusing to accept less than what men were capable of becoming. The problem with the practice of severitas in the pagan world was that it was almost exclusively ordered towards pursuing worldly accomplishments, which led to it becoming a sure path to tyranny, pride and vainglory.

The early Christians who lived and eventually thrived in the Roman world didn’t eliminate severitas —a common misconception—, but simply baptized it and integrated it into a broader Christian moral and anthropological system, because they understood that it was a virtue indeed, just a virtue that needed to be ordered towards the only worthy kind of excellence: spiritual excellence.

The Baptism of Severitas

The Early Church embraced severity, but made an effort to transform it, by keeping the rigor, the discipline, and the strictness, but redirecting them towards holiness instead of earthly glory.

In this sense, they gave severitas a new, purer foundation, as it became a virtue motivated by love (desiring the sanctification and salvation of another), instead of a behavior motivated by pride, utilitarianism or the desire to dominate.

The early Church didn’t just invent this, they found support in Scripture:

It’s clear throughout the Bible that divine love includes —and perhaps even requires— discipline. Severity then, properly ordered, is an expression of love, not —as our excessively soft era would have us believe—, an expression of cruelty.

The entire Christian tradition rests on the shoulders of great saints who practiced severity because they understood that the cost of not doing so could be that millions of souls could be sent to hell.

Even saints remembered for their mercy and tenderness, like Saint Francis of Assisi, were so incredibly strict that they would be called abusive or insane by today’s standards. There are a lot of anecdotes about the strictness with which this great Saint lived which would shock many:

When his appetite for something particular was aroused, as often happens, he seldom ate that thing afterward. Once, when in an infirmity he had eaten a little chicken, after he regained his strength of body he entered the city of Assisi, and when he had come to the gate of the city, he commanded a certain brother who was with him to tie a rope about his neck and to drag him in this way like a robber through the entire city and to shout in the voice of a herald, saying, “Behold the glutton who has grown fat on the meat of chickens, which he ate without you knowing about it.”2

The teachings of the early Christians (and from most Saints since then) were blunt, stripped of comfort, and focused on radical detachment, obedience, and honesty about human weakness. There wasn’t any sugarcoating, any fear of offending nor any discomfort in speaking the truth plainly when what was at stake was saving sous.

This same spirit carried into organized monastic life through rules like those of Saint Benedict and Basil the Great, which imposed strict schedules, silence, labor, and accountability. These systems demanded total commitment, aiming at a complete surrendering and a total transformation into holiness through discipline and correction.

None of this went against the Christian call to charity and mercy. It simply balanced that mercy and that gentleness with truth and justice. Justice and charity are two sides of the same coin, and the greatest theologians, philosophers, and saints have known this: speaking the truth, warning about the consequences of sin, and thus attempting to help others find salvation in Christ is the greatest possible act of love.

Severity and strictness are warranted when the most precious asset in the entire universe —souls— are at stake.

A World Without Truth

After WWII, Western culture underwent a massive shift: psychology replaced philosophy and spiritual direction, feelings replaced objective morality, and self-esteem and the pursuit of personal realization became the highest goods.

Whereas before we understood the need to adhere to strict moral and behavioral standards, with the rise of individualism and relativism —which started much earlier, but accelerated towards the middle of last century— we adopted a sort of carelessness, opting to just seek what felt “good” in the moment instead of obeying the eternal rules set there for our benefit and sanctification.

In the minds of most, severity became indistinguishable from abuse, because every attempt to demand higher standards of behavior (for yourself and others), were instantly labelled “oppressive” and abusive, as they went against the highest —supposed— good of free development of personality.

For example, we knew some years ago that children needed discipline to become virtuous, but now we instead adjust to the desires of the child, lest we “oppress” them by helping them develop a strong character centered on a clear moral code.

Even within our faith, this became a problem:

The reaction of the Church to the last few decades of terrible controversies has been to try and attract more people to the faith by showing how “open-minded”, “tolerant”, and “inclusive” Christianity is.

This has backfired tremendously, and it’s had the effect of further relativizing truth and trying to adjust the Gospel to the postmodern time, instead of remaining firm in the teachings of Christ and on the traditions of the Church.
— The War on Christian Men Part II: The Infiltration of the Church3

The soft, overly gentle, passive, and emotional message that has been pushed in an attempt to be seen as more inclusive has led to us rightly emphasizing God’s mercy, but wrongly concluding —or failing to explain otherwise— that mercy excludes correction.

The error comes in thinking that “Jesus was gentle and loving, therefore we should never be harsh or demanding,” while forgetting that He constantly corrected and rebuked the pharisees, drove the moneychangers from the temple. and warned repeatedly of hell, judgment, and eternal consequences.

Jesus was severe when severity was loving. He didn’t coddle people into damnation out of fear of offending them.

The point is that both inside and outside the faith, we’ve abandoned the virtue of severity, and we are paying the price.

Men are lost as a consequence, and millions of souls are being damned because we are too afraid to practice severitas with ourselves and with the people we love. It’s because of this failure to demand more from ourselves that mediocrity, purposelessness and sadness are so prevalent in most modern men.

We desperately need to reclaim this virtue, but the way to do it might seem counter-inituitive to most of you. So how exactly can you reclaim this virtue and avoid the weakness, mediocrity, sadness, and purposelessness that the world offers you?

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I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the incredible demands of Christian life. Maybe those of you who’ve been faithful all your life have grown used to the selfless nature of life under Christianity, and thus can practice it somewhat effortlessly.

For me —and I think for all of us who’ve come to the faith after wasting years pursuing the things of the world—, it’s different. The way I lived before Christ came to save me is radically different from the way I strive to live now, and certain things remind me of how life used to be when I was walking down the wide road to perdition, and it’s a striking contrast to realize just how many things I need to give up in order to live virtuously.

One of those things is the attachment to solitude.

The Temptation of Solitude

Solitude is not something that most people consider to be a negative temptation, but allow me to make my case.

It’s not that being alone is always and necessarily negative —that is obviously false—, but rather that loneliness can easily become an escape from the very real duties of being a Christian, and even more so a Christian man.

Some amount of solitude is needed so that you can hear God’s voice, spend time with Him and develop more intimacy with Him. For those called to the religious life in particular, solitude becomes an essential necessity that needs to be prioritized.

But for those of us who won’t be monks or hermits, beyond the necessary silence that solitude provides, it’s wise to remain vigilant against becoming overly attached to it, because loneliness can distract us from the selfless service that Christianity demands.

Loneliness becomes escapism when you use it as an excuse to avoid the Christian call to sacrifice. When you’re alone, you don’t have to care about anyone else and you can do whatever you like. This provides a sort of “freedom” that is very enticing, but oftentimes incompatible with a life oriented towards service.

Solitude, then, promises a peace that is really just freedom from the discomforts of self-denial for the sake of others. And that can be incredibly alluring.

When you’re tired, irritable, and emotionally spent, it’s tempting to retreat, ignore everyone else, and just be alone for a while. And sometimes that is absolutely necessary. But if you get too used to it, if you become accustomed to retreating into yourself every time you feel a bit tired or uncomfortable, you’ll slowly create the habit of solitude, becoming increasingly incapable of functioning without it. This builds a habit of always prioritizing yourself, even at the expense of others who might need you.

That’s when solitude becomes problematic: when it becomes a reason not to serve, a reason not to be present in the lives of others who might need your company or advice.

Solitude becomes a problem when it starts going against the Christian call to service and becoming a selfish excuse to prioritize yourself over those you love.

It’s also unrealistic to expect a life in which you can choose to spend some time alone whenever you wish. If you’re called to marriage (which most of us will be), it’ll become increasingly difficult to find the precious solitude that we have become so attached to. Kids will come, your spouse will need you, and you will necessarily have to develop the sacrificial love founded on self-denial that makes a marriage work.

Attaching yourself too strongly to solitude will not train you for the constant acts of self-giving that having a healthy family will demand.

Give Yourself Completely

Christian life is a life of service, of sacrifice, of bringing light to the world and offering the best parts of you to the people you share this journey with. And that often means that you’ll have to sacrifice your own plans to play that role better.

You are called to give yourself completely out of love. To love God first and foremost, and then let Him love others through you, by being there, by being present, by sacrificing your own comfort for the sake of those who need you.

The most beautiful thing is that it’s only this life of service that will bring you the peace that loneliness promises. Maybe you’ll be physically and mentally exhausted more often than you’d like, but deep down you’ll find rest in the knowledge that you are doing God’s will, using your life in a way that pleases Him, and doing your very best to become an example of His selfless love.

May we all, like Christ, lose our lives in service to others, and may we detach from the selfish solitude that only serves to bring us fleeting rest, so that we can find the lasting peace that only comes when we carry the Cross of sacrifice faithfully.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

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All of these are things that are unfit for a man of God.

Let’s get right into it then: here are 15 things that a masculine man never does.

15. Lose their heads when trouble comes: A big part of being a man is being able to maintain a cool head to make wise decisions when the stakes are highest. A man who breaks down under pressure or when things are going south is unreliable and unfit to lead.

14. Put down those who are struggling: A masculine man doesn’t mock or humiliate those who are behind him. Instead, he looks at them with charity and sincerely attempts to help them out, understanding that whatever talents and blessings he has have been given to him by God, and it’s his duty to give back to those less fortunate than him.

13. Make decisions based solely on profits: Money is important, yes, but it can’t be the main driving force behind your decisions. That’s a fast track pass to idolatry and materialism. As always, reason must govern. Make wise financial choices, of course, but never at the expense of your values.

12. Idolize celebrities, athletes, or politicians: A big cause of the epidemic of immaturity plaguing the world today is that many young men have made idols out of celebrities, athletes, politicians, or other public figures. It’s difficult to develop and mature properly as a man when your entire life revolves around a celebrity which you’ve chosen to try and imitate. A masculine man of God has no idols and worships no one but God.

11. Consume what degrades their soul: Masculine men guard their eyes, ears, and heart. They understand that the music they listen to, the movies they watch, and the people they talk to all have an effect on who they are, and so they stay vigilant and avoid degenerate things.

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Falling into sin can be absolutely crushing. Once you’ve seen the ugliness of sin and experienced the love and mercy of God, it’s impossible to not feel guilty and ashamed after we betray Him again.

Every sin is a lash in Christ’s back. Every betrayal a hammer blow on the nails that pierce His precious hands.

We participate in His passion willingly, every time we fall.

Maybe initially we did this out of ignorance, failing to see the hellish darkness of sin, and thus we could avoid all feelings of guilt after every commission.

But now it’s different. Now we know what we are doing. Now, the Holy Spirit has shown us both the pain our sin begets, and the unending love and mercy of the Savior whom we so readily betray.

We have seen the contrast between heaven and hell, and we can’t avoid feeling pain and guilt after all those times we’re too weak to choose the difficult light over the alluring darkness.

We can’t avoid feeling dirty and ashamed when we wake up to realize we’ve chosen to stab God in the back, again and again, even after all this time, even after we promised —once more— to be faithful to Him forever.

And while a measure of guilt is prudent, for it means that we love God more than we love our sin, and it shows a sincere heart that wants to be purified, we would be wise to remember that sin, while evil, dark and ugly, is not the final enemy.

The final enemy is despair. The final enemy is hopelessness.

The final enemy is believing your sin cannot be overcome.

Christ solved the problem of sin. He gave Himself up so we wouldn’t be slaves to it. All we need to do is believe that, because when we do, we’ll return to Him after we sin, when we sin, before we sin.

We will look at His cross and ask Him to turn our temptations into grace.

As long as you keep hoping and keep trusting God’s mercy, you’ll come back to Him and He’ll welcome you with open arms. But when you lose all hope, when you think your efforts are worthless, when you believe and accept in your heart that you are too wretched to be forgiven, that’s when you’ll quit the race and condemn yourself.

The great sinner who hopes, who perseveres, who repents, and who stubbornly returns to Christ will find salvation.

God’s mercy is always bigger than your sin.

Please don’t give up. Please don’t stop trying. Please don’t lose hope.

Persevere until the end.

God is with you, and He wants nothing more than for you to join Him in eternity.

Prayer

Lord, thank You for Your infinite mercy. Thank You for loving me, forgiving me, and strengthening me at the hour of temptation.

I’m sorry for my failures.
I’m sorry for my sins.

I surrender my heart to You, purify and soften it, free it from the disordered attachments that I’ve learnt to love more than You.

Please grant me the graces required to keep hoping after I have failed, to keep trying when I think my efforts are futile, to keep returning to You when guilt tries to get me to hide.

Make me a testimony of the transformative power of Your love,

Amen

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The book of Job is one of the most widely discussed and cited books of the entire Bible, mostly because it presents us with a striking example of undeserved suffering that necessarily challenges our own sense of justice.

Most of us are familiar with Job’s story: a righteous man loses everything for seemingly no reason other than God allowing the devil to test him.

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. The Lord said to Satan, “From where have you come?” Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.” And the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?”

Then Satan answered the Lord and said, “Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” And the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.” So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.
— Job 1:6-12

After God allows Satan to attack Job, the blameless man loses everything. His children die, his property is destroyed, and even his livestock and his servants die. In one day, Job’s blessed life becomes a life marked by deep suffering, and yet, he refuses to speak against God:

Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
— Job 1:20

Job's story perfectly depicts the seemingly unjust suffering we all face at some point. Maybe you feel like Job when negative circumstances pile up without any apparent reason: losing your job, losing a loved one or facing illness. God, in His wisdom, knows too well that at some point in our lives (and possibly more than once), we’ll raise our arms up to the heavens and demand an answer to the ever painful question: “What did I do to deserve this?”

The book of Job gives us an answer.

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Undeserved Suffering

The remarkable part about Job’s story is not so much the suffering he faces, but the fact that it’s one of the only cases in the Bible in which said suffering is clearly undeserved. There are tons of stories of great sinners facing pain and struggle as a consequence of their disobedience, but almost no stories —beyond Job’s— of righteous men facing terrible consequences after having committed no sin.

A big part of what makes Job’s story so relatable is that we see in it the lack of answers from God that we often feel in our own lives. As the readers, we know what’s happening and we know that Job is being tested (chapters 1-2 reveal Satan’s test with God’s permission). But Job has no idea. And his ignorance is reminiscent of our very own confusion when suffering comes without us doing anything to deserve it.

Precisely because suffering is such a common experience between all of us who walk this valley of tears, I want to take a look at Job’s story from a different angle and try to offer some comfort to anyone who might be suffering and failing to find an explanation for his tribulations.

Bear in mind, the answers we find in the book of Job are comforting, but they are not what, in the midst of our pain, we might expect or desire.

The Prosperity Gospel and Its Consequences

When trying times come, we usually think like Job’s friends’: we assume that suffering is a sort of karmic, direct punishment for personal sin, and thus conclude that if we are suffering, it has to be because we’ve done something wrong. The theology of Job’s friends, who supposedly come to comfort him, is a version of the “prosperity Gospel”, so popular over the last decades, that seeks to minimize our faith to the following equation:

Good behavior = blessing, bad behavior = punishment.

This is a sort of theology that feels right because it makes the world predictable and controllable, and it plays on our need to feel secure: if suffering is simply a response to bad actions, then it’s in our power to avoid it completely. Many Christians unconsciously believe this, and Job’s friends certainly did:

• Eliphaz claims that he must be guilty because “innocent people don’t suffer like this”

• Bildad takes it one step further and blames him for the death of his children: “Your children died because they sinned”

• Zophar, unsatisfied with the poor man’s suffering decides to tell him, “you deserve worse”

The “comforting” words of Job’s friends end up adding insult to injury. Not only is Job suffering, but he’s now also —they claim— fully deserving of it.

Once again, we can see how this reflects our real life. Or is it not true that very often, in suffering, not only are we forced to bear the weight of pain, but also the crushing weight of loneliness and criticism from those who think we deserve what we are getting?

Job finally cracks, and rebukes his “friends: “Miserable comforters are you all!” (16:2). At this point, his faith reaches a breaking point, and he demands answers from above: “Why are You doing this to me?” (Chapters 3-31)

God hears his cry, and His response is a strong proclamation of sovereignty.

When God’s Answer Explains Nothing

When God finally shows up, He provides an answer that, on the surface, offers no comfort. It’s not even an answer. He doesn’t offer an explanation. Instead, He asks Job over seventy questions simply to show Him that there are some things he isn’t supposed to understand:

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?”

“Have you commanded the morning?”

“Can you control Behemoth or Leviathan?”

God isn’t saying all of this to beat Job down and “show him who’s boss.” No, He’s making a broader point:

“If you can’t understand how I run the physical world, why think you can understand My purposes?”

God never says why He allowed Job to suffer, or explains that His tribulations were a test to prove his faith, nor does He even mention Satan.

His answer is simply a striking proof of His greatness, and showcases the difference in wisdom and knowledge between all of us, represented in Job, and Him, who’s sovereign, and infinite.

Job’s response further proves the sheer virtue of the man:

I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.
— Job 42:5-7

Imagine that. After suffering greatly, facing the death of his family, the criticism of his friends, and the loss of everything he has, Job accepts his fate and repents, even though he didn’t get the answers that he wanted. What he got, though, was God’s presence. And that was enough for him.

Job’s book is full of meaningful lessons and reassurance for those of us who are under the burden of suffering. Mainly, there are 5 points we can extract from Job’s story, that will help us face the trials and struggles that feel unjust without breaking down, and that will help us endure them gracefully and faithfully.

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I‘ve given lots of talks on chastity to youth groups over the past few years, and it’s always interesting to realize how many misunderstandings there are about chastity. The main one is that most people view chastity as a restrictive rule that is all about what you shouldn’t do:

Don’t have sex before marriage. Don’t watch porn. Don’t lust. Don’t, don’t, don’t.

But this framing is completely backwards. Chastity is an active virtue, which isn’t even primarily about restriction, but about transformation and about properly ordering your sexuality. This ordering of your desires makes you more like God intended you to be, and it clears your intellect, your will, and your soul from the cloudiness that sin causes.

Chastity goes beyond the spiritual realm. Of course it’s absolutely necessary to save your soul (and yes, unrepented mortal sexual sin can be enough to separate you from God’s grace). But even if that weren’t true, the practical benefits alone—which most people don’t even know exist—would be more than enough reason to pursue this virtue.

I didn’t always live chastely, but thanks to God’s grace, I do now, and in this article I want to share with you all the things that change for the better when you commit to pursuing purity.

How Chastity Transforms Your Entire Life

#1: Chastity transforms your relationships

Unchastity trains you to use people for your own pleasure. Porn, hookup culture, uncontested lust, all of it conditions you to see others (especially women) as objects for your gratification. Chastity fixes this:

• With women: You stop filtering every interaction with a woman through the lens of sexuality. As you start to purify your heart by pursuing chastity, you stop seeing women as things to be possessed and you start seeing them as God made them.

• With men: Your friendships naturally deepen because you’re not enslaved to comparison, competition over women, or superficial sexual talk. Most of the conversations in groups of men nowadays are about sex and women. When you practice chastity, you make space for more elevated topics of conversation and for your friendships to deepen through the common pursuit of virtue.

The most important transformation that occurs in your relationships is that you stop seeing people through the lens of disordered sexuality and see them as integrated humans with dignity, made in the image of God. For example, those who watch pornography frequently slowly allow it to convince them that every relationship, every conversation, every interaction has a sexual component to it, when that is obviously not the case. It’s really crazy to notice just how much unchastity poisons your relationships, but this only becomes clear when you’ve practiced chastity and seen the difference for yourself.

The main point is this: When you stop seeing people through the lens of 'what can I get from them,' you can finally, truly love them. Real love: willing their good, not using them for pleasure and gratification.

#2: Chastity transforms your self-worth

Sexual incontinence destroys your self-respect. Every time you fall for the lies of the enemy and pursue disordered sexual acts, you are making yourself less human and giving into your animal nature. Slowly, you start to accept (unwillingly and subtly), that you can’t control yourself, that your desires rule over you, and that you are not good enough to have the ordered sexuality God calls you to have.

Chastity helps you rebuild your subconscious sense of dignity and agency. When you prove to yourself that you can say no to impulses, and sacrifice empty, immediate pleasure for the sake of a higher good, you develop a deep confidence that carries over into every area of your life.

Your integrity and sense of identity also change:

• You become a man of your word to yourself and God. You stop living a secret life, and become coherent in what you preach and what you practice.

• Your worth and your identity stop being tied to sexual conquests or female attention/validation. You start rooting your identity on God and not on any external factors.

A man enslaved to sexual impurity, on a deep, sometimes even subconscious level, stops respecting himself, as he knows he’s controlled by his appetites and would betray his principles when temptation comes. The chaste man, on the other hand, walks with his head held high because he knows where his identity comes from, he knows God has strengthened his self-control, and knows he’s not hiding any skeletons in his closet. Bear in mind, this confidence isn’t pride, but the healthy self-respect that appears when you know you’re doing the right thing and living coherently.

#3: Chastity transforms your masculinity

In a world in which maintaining chastity is so difficult (because the enemy has made sure that we encounter temptation at every step), the man who manages to develop the self-control needed to live a chaste life immediately stands out.

Masculinity is built by doing challenging things for the sake of a higher good, and living chastely is one of the hardest challenges to overcome in the modern era. But that just means it’ll make you a much stronger, more virtuous man.

True masculinity requires self-governance, sacrifice, and the ability to delay gratification, and chastity builds all of those at once. I recommend you read this article where I dive deep into how chastity builds true masculinity:

#4: Chastity purifies your intellect

Lust clouds your judgment. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that “the flesh acts on the intellective faculties, not by altering them, but by impeding their operation in the aforesaid manner.” 1 In other words, sexual sin prevents you from using your brain capacity properly.

Think about that for a second: Sins of the flesh make you more stupid. When you understand that, you realize why so many people seem to have lost all common sense in the modern world: their flesh is clouding their intellect.

Chastity purifies your mind, making you sharper, more focused, and more capable of pursuing truth. The specific transformations that occur are:

• Mental clarity: Porn addiction and other forms of sexual disorder create brain fog. Chastity clears it. You can focus on difficult tasks, think through complex problems, and pursue intellectual work without constant distraction.

• Moral reasoning: Sexual sin requires rationalization in the form of constant mental gymnastics to justify behavior you know—deep down—is wrong. This corrupts your ability to reason morally in all areas. Chastity restores intellectual honesty and allows you to think and act coherently with the moral law written in your heart.

• Creativity and energy: Sexual energy redirected becomes creative energy. The great saints, artists, philosophers, and builders channeled their sexual drive into their work. You have finite energy, and when you stop wasting it on shallow pursuits, you become free to use that energy to contemplate, create beauty, pray, and develop virtue.

Chastity acts in your intellect by removing your brain fog and allowing you to see things more clearly. The man who lives chastely is able to reason better, to pursue truth more honestly, and to understand his reality more objectively. The mental gymnastics that sexual immorality forces confuse you and mislead you, whereas chastity allows you to see the world with purer, more honest eyes.

How to Live Chastely

When people understand the profound importance of the virtue of chastity, they are usually convinced that it’s a virtue worth pursuing —at least that’s been my experience in the talks I’ve given.

The question that arises naturally then is “but how?”

How can we live chastely in a world that tries so hard to ensure we don’t?

What follows is my best answer plus some battle-tested resources that will help you finally overcome sexual immorality.

Sacramental Life is the Key

The very first thing I want to make clear is that this battle will be futile if you attempt to defeat the foe of lust by relying on your own strength. You need Christ to be victorious. Only He can strengthen you and purify you. You cannot go into battle thinking that you’re strong enough to do this on your own. You are not.

But Christ is.

Learn to rely on Him and to invite Him into this battle, to ask for His grace and strength and call out to Him for help.

That’s the foundation of victory. You can’t white-knuckle your way to chastity. You need grace. The sacraments are the means by which God wants to dispense grace. So use them!

Go to confession often. Beyond helping you stay accountable, confession helps remove power from the sin, by allowing you to experience God’s mercy firsthand. Additionally, when you speak your sins out loud, they also lose some of their power over you. On a more practical note, the examination of conscience required for confession helps you understand your triggers and be more mindful of them. Of course, the most important aspect of the sacrament of confession is the grace that you receive, which is a supernatural help from God Himself. Confession is a non-negotiable if you actually want to change.

Go to mass as often as possible (Sunday Mass is the bare minimum), and receive the Eucharist (if you’re not in a state of mortal sin). Go to adoration and spend some time with Christ sacramented. Look at Him and let Him look at you. Give your struggles to Him and cry out for His help.

Practical Resources to Help You Quit

You also need to surround yourself with likeminded men who are fighting this battle, you need to pray often, read your Bible, and as we said, go to confession, and strive to remain in a state of Grace. That needs to be the foundation upon which you strive to build the virtue of chastity and get rid of this vice once and for all. But it’s also necessary to take practical, decisive actions in order to finally get rid of the vice of pornography addiction and other forms of sexual immorality.

One resource I’ve found helpful is Relay, a Christian app designed specifically for overcoming pornography and sexual sin. It provides structured accountability, evidence-based protocols, and a community of men fighting the same battle.

There’s a ton of positive testimonies of men who have found freedom from pornography addiction, masturbation, and other forms of sexual immorality with the help of the structured, evidence-based protocol that Relay offers. Many men (even some close friends) have also told me personally it made the difference after other methods failed.

If you have been trying other methods and they haven’t worked, I recommend you give this one a try and see if it helps you. You can get a 7-day free trial with the code AETERNUM:

Try Relay for free here

Additionally, and because this article is getting long enough, if you have some questions about Relay or would like me to recommend some other articles/resources, feel free to shoot me a DM or leave a comment on this article. I’ll be more than happy to share whatever I can with you.

One final piece of advice: try to eliminate all triggers from your environment. Social media is designed to show you semi-nude women. Mark every provocative post as “not interested.” Unfollow accounts (even “friends”) who post provocative content. This might sound extreme. But your soul is worth it.

Don’t just clean up your digital environment. Clean up your actual environment too. Throw away movies, magazines, or even books that serve as triggers. Stop going to degenerate parties. Stop hanging out with people who lead you to temptation and sin.

Everything around you can either aid you in your pursuit of virtue, or hinder you. Again, extreme measures are in order here. It’s 100% worth losing those “friends” who constantly cause you to sin. Make sure that your environment fosters purity and beauty instead of lust, temptation and sin.

I hope this article helps you. Stick to the advice, try out Relay, and let me know how it goes. Remember, also, that the only way to fail is to give up, and that all that Christ asks from you is the perseverance to return to Him if you fail.

God is with you, you are in my prayers, and surely too in the prayers of all the men who fight this battle alongside you.

Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
— 1 Corinthians 6:18-20

May God bless you and keep you.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

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Here are my top 15 pieces of advice that I wish I’d heard when I was younger, which would’ve saved me a whole lot of pain, trouble, and wasted time and effort.

15. Only invest in things you understand. Otherwise you are just gambling. Don’t let shiny objects and fear of missing out guide your financial decisions.

14. Don’t watch the news. The news have a clear incentive to push sensationalism, drama, and negativity. Being “informed” about things that have no direct effect on your life is not a valid enough reason to flood your mind with negativity, death, and pain. You’ll forget the beauty of life too quickly if all you see daily is everything that’s wrong with the world.

13. Stop drinking completely. Not only because alcohol will hold you back from whatever worthy goal you have, but because you probably use it as a cop-out to avoid developing the courage you know you need. Going a whole year without alcohol will show you how dependent you are on it for socializing, talking to women, and feeling comfortable among other people. You need to learn to do all those things without alcohol or you’ll forever be dependent on it.

12. Eliminate all sexual immorality. Casual sex isn’t worth it, and the praise you’ll get from other lost, desperate men won’t ever compensate the damage you are doing to your own soul. Porn destroys your mind and soul, and it will get you used to being a spectator instead of the main character of your life. Masturbation shows a lack of self-control and makes you subject to your most base, lowest desires. Defeating sexual immorality will build your character like nothing else.

11. Don’t idolize any man. All men are flawed, and while you can learn something from everyone, be wary of gurus and false messiahs, and make sure you never make an idol out of them. There is only one man you should try to imitate and that is Jesus Christ. From all other men, learn what you can and ignore the rest.

10. Don’t watch soft movies and series. Too much movie make your heart weak.

No further explanation needed.

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After five years of writing about masculinity, I've come to understand its essence in one word: sacrifice.

Most of the insights I discover in this journey of trying to provide men with an ideal to strive towards are not new at all, but rather personal realizations of truths that much greater men have grasped way before me.

This particular truth —of sacrifice as the essence of manhood— isn't a new revelation, for Scripture and the saints have taught this for two millennia. But in the postmodern world, it's a truth that's been buried under mountains of counterfeit versions of “masculinity”, which is why it’s worth stating it openly and clearly, and explaining the philosophical foundation of the claim that to be a man is to live and die for others.

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Removing the Foundation

I find it quite interesting how masculinity has become such a mainstream topic over the last couple of years. Before the woke boom, it was completely unthinkable to even try and discuss how men should behave and what masculinity entails, as the entire culture was plagued by a relentless —and at the time unchallenged— wave of feminism which sought to undermine men as a whole, making the prospect of masculine development a grave offense.

Now, however, more and more people are starting to enter the cultural arena to offer their very own definitions of masculinity, trying to guide men towards what they consider to be the optimal, morally superior standards of behavior. A few schools of thought have become widespread and strong, like the Nietzschean idea of the Superman or the materialistic idea of improvement as a masturbatory and self-glorifying pursuit. We see the latter among gurus like Andrew Tate, who promote a version of masculinity that is all about the self, all about rising so that you can accumulate power and pleasure. Ironically, the self-glorifying “masculinity” they propose is the complete opposite of real manhood: a childish ideal fit for men who never learnt to deny themselves in favor of the ultimate good.

All standards or ideas of masculinity that fail to take into account the transcendent, the spiritual and the eternal are flawed at best and destructive at worst. From a philosophical standpoint, if the concept of masculinity —as an ideal to strive towards— rests on the subjective definition of any fallible man, it will always fall short in describing the perfection we should be aiming towards.

What this means is that to define what masculinity is, we must look beyond the material world, beyond the humans that inhabit it, beyond the gurus and their empty promises, and towards the one man who’s both fully human and fully God: Jesus Christ.

The Truth

The “masculinity” that pursues the prideful glorification of the self is diametrically opposed to the ideal of masculinity that Christ —the Way, the Truth, and the Life— embodies, and is thus everything but masculinity.

Masculinity, in its purest sense, is the virtue that makes a man more like he was created to be. And a man was created to be in communion with God, by seeking to imitate Him, by surrendering his heart to Him, and by dying daily to allow Christ to live in him.

That means that every time we pursue a different goal, we are becoming less masculine. Every time we follow the standards of masculinity that aim towards gratification of our base desires instead of towards heaven, we become less Christlike, and thus, less masculine.

If Christ is to be our guiding light, we must then ask ourselves what characterizes Him and what makes Him such a unique figure, and the answer stares at us from the Cross through which He redeemed the world: sacrifice.

Christ is what makes Christianity different from all other religions and from all other attempts at defining how a man should be. Christ, hanging from the Cross, shows us the standard for masculinity: death for the sake of others. Death for love.

This is the virtue that is exemplified in the father who sacrifices his comfort to discipline his children when discipline is difficult, the husband who sacrifices career advancement to be present for his family's formation, or the friend who does something as simple as sacrifice his Saturday to help a struggling brother move, or fix his car, or help him through his breakup.

Thats the sacrificial masculinity that we should pursue: active, costly love that prioritizes the good of others over the comfort of self. Christ calls us to that:

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
— Matthew 16:24-25

Did you think that was just a metaphor? Did you think that simply meant to bear the burdens of modern life without complaint? Did you think the cross Christ mentioned was the petty discomforts and sufferings we have become so unaccustomed to?

No, to take up your cross means to be ready to die for Him. To commit to living a life of sacrifice, in which your whims and wishes go last, in which you answer the call of all of those who need your help, and serve God and your neighbor out of love.

But this love does not manifest itself as passive acceptance or as weakness. We are not called to tolerate sin or become doormats using “sacrifice” as a comfortable excuse. Once again, we can look at the example of Christ, and see that He sacrificed Himself for our good, not for our comfort. He didn't sacrifice truth or justice, but His comfort, His glory, and ultimately, His life for our salvation.

This is a teaching that is unique to Christianity, and it’s uniqueness is the very reason why it’s so hard to find men of character, grit, and sacrificial love outside the boundaries of our faith. It’s not like it’s easy to find them within them, not at all. We must admit that the enemy has been successful at emasculating even those of us who should exemplify the strength and courage of the Savior we seek to imitate and rejoin in Heaven.

But the truth is that this ideal of masculinity —the only real kind of manliness— is only found in the proper expression of the faith that gave birth to it. It only makes sense to live for something higher if you believe that something higher exists. It only makes sense to give up your life for the sake of others if you believe there is a higher good to be won by doing so.

If your ultimate objective isn’t heaven but the artificial prolongation of your life or hoarding as much gold as possible before death calls your name, sacrifice will be a pestering, senseless concept.

But for those of us who have our gaze set firmly on eternity, sacrifice and a life of service are the essential tools that will keep our path straight when surrounded by the shiny objects and the temptations that seek to lead us astray.

The small, seemingly meaningless sacrifices we make in our daily lives will be what trains us for the heavier crosses that might come: persecution, alienation, and if God wills it, martyrdom. A man who can’t say no to the selfish desires of his flesh or forgo his plans to help a friend will deny and betray Christ under pressure. A man who can’t engage in the little sacrifices that life calls him to will choose himself over others when the stakes are highest, cowardly running away from the duty to lay down his own life out of love.

The Lord calls us towards Him, but we are not to go to Him empty-handed.

It would be shameful for a man to arrive at His presence without a worthy cross to present to Him. It would be an insult to see His sacrifice and assume that it means we don’t need to carry our load.

Learn to die so you can live eternally, and learn to love the weight of sacrifice so you can walk with Christ towards the transformation of your heart and soul.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

Thank you for reading!

If you enjoyed this post and could leave a like or comment it would be greatly appreciated, as it will help my work reach more people.

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Last week, one of my close friends approached me after our Jiu-Jitsu class and asked me for some advice regarding the correct way to properly prepare mentally and spiritually for the Paschal Triduum and Easter. His question motivated me to write this article not just to provide him with a clear, structured answer (I will send him this article), but also so that I can reflect on the upcoming days myself and provide those of you who might be wondering the same thing with some guidance.

It’s particularly relevant to consider the proper approach to Easter in a day and age when most use this holiday to relax and decompress, or travel and party. As someone who never really took Easter seriously until my conversion, I can understand those who —perhaps because of cultural pressures— haven’t really taken the time to reflect on the significance of the upcoming days. For them, I hope this article serves as a valuable countercultural suggestion, so they can experience this Holy Week in the correct spirit, and avoid missing out on a time that can be of significant spiritual transformation when approached properly.

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What Easter is Not About

First off, we need to remember what this week is not about. In a world dominated by Easter Bunny prevalence (which has non-Christian folk origins, though sometimes blended with Christian customs), it’s easy to forget that these days are not about the eggs and the colors, or a vacation to be spent doing whatever we desire.

It can be very tempting to use these “free days” to travel with your friends or family, or to simply rest and recharge from what has surely been an intense first quarter of the year.

And even if it’s certainly not wrong to do those things (provided these aren’t “spring break” type trips), the fact is that Easter isn’t really about relaxing or traveling. You could, of course, do all those things, but only if they do not distract you from the real purpose of this week: to contemplate and accompany Christ crucified and resurrected.

How to Prepare for Easter

Holy Week officially started last Sunday (Palm Sunday), with a distinct liturgy in which we remember Christ’s triumphant entrance into Jerusalem riding a donkey. Those attending the Mass receive palms, as a reminder of John 12:13, in which we are told that people welcomed Jesus by waving palm branches upon His entry into Jerusalem. During the Mass on Palm Sunday, it’s also the first time we hear the reading of the Lord’s Passion (in full) according to the liturgical cycle (Matthew in Year A, Mark in B, Luke in C).

After Palm Sunday come Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of Holy Week. These three days are a good opportunity to meditate and reflect on the sacrifice of Our Lord. A good way to do this is by going to confession and attending daily Mass, while also reading the Scripture passages corresponding to the Passion of Our Lord, and meditating silently on them.

Then come the most important days in the whole year, during which we remember both the solemnity and suffering that Christianity demands and the joy that following the Lord gives us access to.

Holy Thursday:

Holy Thursday commemorates the Last Supper (the institution of the Eucharist), and the washing of the feet. In the Holy Thursday Mass, there is a moment during the service in which the priest washes the feet of 12 parishioners, emulating Christ’s servant leadership.

At the end of Mass, the consecrated hosts are left on the altar and the priest, donning a humeral veil, takes the Blessed Sacrament and processes out of the church to a chapel or other area for Eucharistic adoration, known as the altar of repose, inviting adoration until midnight.

Good Friday:

Good Friday is possibly the most solemn day of the entire year for Catholics. On this day, we remember Jesus’ betrayal, passion, and crucifixion. It’s the only day in the entire year in which Mass is not celebrated, and it’s a sad day in which we are called to fast and abstain as required by Church precept (ages 18-59 for fasting, 14+ for abstinence from meat), to unite our suffering with Christ’s and to remember the role of our own sin in the pain He bore for us.

It’s common on Good Friday to do Station of the Cross devotions and processions, where large crosses are carried (usually in a community), to remember the Via Crucis. There is a reading of the Passion and the Eucharist, which was consecrated on Thursday, is distributed.

On this day, it’s important to maintain a spirit of solemnity and contemplation, to focus and meditate on Christ’s sacrifice and on the ugliness of our sin that made His suffering necessary.

Holy Saturday:

On Saturday, possibly the greatest and most joyful Mass of the whole year takes place: the Easter Vigil. It’s a unique service that can only begin once the sun has set, and it begins with the lighting of the Paschal candle outside of the Church. The fire is then shared from this candle to the other individual candles of the parishioners. Afterwards, for the Liturgy of the Word (normally consisting of 2-3 readings), up to nine readings are read: seven from the Old Testament (at least three), one Epistle, and the Gospel.

These readings show the connection between the Old and New Testaments and how Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of Scripture and achieved salvation for us all.

This is a joyous celebration filled with rich songs and uplifted spirits. On this day we celebrate Christ’s triumph over death and sin, and the spirit with which we approach it is diametrically opposed to the solemnity of Good Friday.

Before the Easter Vigil, Saturday is a good opportunity to draw closer to the Holy Virgin Mary, as we remember too her pain and loneliness during the time between Christ’s death and resurrection.

Easter Sunday:

Easter Sunday Masses are usually more similar to the Masses that occur during the ordinary time, the main difference being that the celebratory atmosphere continues from Holy Saturday.

On this day, we continue to celebrate the triumphant resurrection of Our Lord and we look with hope towards the future, knowing that Christ awaits us in eternity.

Some final recommendations for these days are to spend them intentionally, and to truly place God at the very center of your life —every day, but even more so this week.

You can do this by taking part in a retreat, doing missionary or charity work, or spending them in a spirit of silence and prayer at home. If you have some down time, you could watch the movie The Passion of the Christ, to remember just how much Our Lord suffered for us. I would recommend you avoid traveling unless for the aforementioned purposes and that if you do travel, you make the effort to participate in the Holy Week services and processions and to remember throughout it all that the spirit of this week is not one of rest and mundane enjoyment but of spiritual transformation.

May this Holy Week be an opportunity for change and repentance, and may you draw much closer to God in the upcoming days, as we are united in the Easter proclamation that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

Thank you for reading!

If you enjoyed this post and could leave a like or comment it would be greatly appreciated, as it will help my work reach more people.

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