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Q. Is it not a great hardship on human nature to be obliged by such a law?



A. By no means; for none are obliged to enter into that state but with their own free consent, and none ought to enter into it but such as "are called by God, as Aaron was." Now, they know the conditions beforehand, they freely accept of them; and, as the law is founded, as we have seen, on the clearest and most evident principle of holy scripture, when God Almighty calls one to that state, he never refuses the necessary helps of his grace to enable him to accomplish all the obligations annexed to it. Continency is, without doubt, a gift of God; for his holy word assures us, that "a man cannot otherwise be continent, except God give it," Wis. viii. 21; and our Savior after enlarging a good deal on this subject, adds, "all men receive not this word, but they to whom it is given," Matth. xix. 11; and St. Paul, after saying, "I would that all men were even with myself," with regard to their leading a single life; he immediately adds, "but every one hath his proper gift from God," 1 Cor. vii. 7.

This grace, then, is given to some; and to whom will God be more ready to give it, than to those whom he calls to that state, to which his Holy Church, from the principles he himself has laid down in the sacred writings, he so solemnly annexed this obligation. And, indeed, nothing more admirably shows the finger of God, than to see such vast numbers as embrace the ecclesiastical state, living in the strictest purity, even amidst the many dangerous occasions to which their necessary communication with the world, in their charge of souls, so frequently exposes them. It is not by the strength of nature or constitution that they live in such purity; nature is incapable, by its own strength, of practicing a virtue which is so opposite to all the most violent inclinations of flesh and blood. It is a grace of Jesus Christ alone which bestows this gift upon them; and the chaste and continent lives they lead is a manifest proof of the interposition of God, and of his divine approbation of the conduct of the Church, in requiring the faithful observance of this virtue from her ministers.




http://www.catholicdoors.com/teaching/book2/2-12.htm

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