From “Chastity is the Key to Everything” by Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI.

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Too often we identify chastity with a certain sexual purity or with simple celibacy. This, however, is too narrow. To be chaste does not mean that one does not have sex. Nor does it imply that one is in any way a prude.

Chastity is, first and foremost, not even primarily a sexual concept—though, given the power and urgency of sex, faults in chastity often are within the area of sexuality. Chastity has to do with all experiencing. It is about the appropriateness of any experience. Chastity is reverence. Sin, in the end, is irreverence.

To be chaste is to experience people, things, places, sexuality, entertainment, phases of life, and all the opportunities that life offers in a way that does not violate, them nor ourselves. Chastity means to experience things reverently, in such a way that the experience of them leaves both them and ourselves more, not less, integrated.

I am chaste when I relate to others in a way that does not transgress their moral, psychological, emotional, sexual and aesthetic contours. I am chaste when I do not let irreverence or impatience ruin what is gift, when I let life, others, sex, be fully what they are. Conversely, I lack chastity when I cross boundaries prematurely or irreverently, when I violate anything so as to somehow reduce the gift that it is.

Chastity is respect and reverence. Its fruits are integration, gratitude and joy. Lack of chastity is irreverence and violence. Its fruits are disintegration, bitterness and cynicism (infallible signs of the lack of chastity).

Obtained from https://www.ccvichapel.org/post/chastity-la-castidad