The martyrologium states that one Christian from Uganda
was tied up in a flower bed.
Then a shameless harlot approached to tempt him and make him sin.
However, he bit off his tongue with his teeth and spat it in the face of his seductress.
This was an act of internal execration and an act of great internal energy, smothering temptation with pain. We need to ask Our Lady for the virtue of purity and orthodoxy because they are correlated virtues.
Let us speak about this saint from Uganda who made this magnificent gesture when tempted against purity.
You understand what happened, right?
This martyr was tied up among those flowers. They were trying to get him to make an act of internal consent to a most lively sensation that they so maliciously sought to provoke in him.
In other words, he was lying on a flower bed in a circumstance that was conducive to the pleasure of the senses and sensuality.
Tied next to a woman who was tempting him, and he had no other means to react but to bite off his tongue with his teeth and spit it at that woman.
That meant at the same time inflicting upon him a most intense pain and thus smothering the rising temptation through pain. On the other, to make a tremendous act of protest against the evil to which he was being tempted.
In other words, smothering temptation through pain was an act of great internal energy. It was an act of execration of sin, an act that left him mutilated in a horrible fashion for life; but he preferred this suffering to sin.
He spat his tongue upon that harlot and thus gave a magnificent example of integrity and intransigence throughout the ages to mankind. The most beautiful part here, is not only the desire to remain chaste or the heroic way out he found to do so, but his sincerity and consistency in the position that he took.
In other words, he wanted to remain chaste; and when placed before a most violent temptation there was only one thing he could do; and he did it.
How many sophisms and subterfuges could he have found so as not to do what he did. He might not have thought of this act and later he could have said:
“Well, I fell, but it was not my fault, I was placed in a most difficult position trying to keep my purity,
so it was not my fault. I fell but it was an imposition of the circumstances."
In the final analysis, it was God’s fault.
Yet, he saw the problem head on and understood from the outset his entire moral responsibility. He understood everything immediately, and honestly sought to figure out what he could do in a flash of lightning. He found a very difficult solution and did not turn away from it.
On the contrary, he immediately did what he should have done.
There is integrity of soul, coherence, a capacity to arrive at the last consequences, an understanding that you simply do not commit a mortal sin displayed by this attitude, period.
Of course, you commit no venial sin either, but, a fortiori, a mortal sin one simply doesn’t ever commit. Anything is preferable to mortal sin. So he did not hesitate to make that
tremendous sacrifice in order not to commit a mortal sin. There is a grandeur of soul in this that is recorded for all centuries.
It precisely expresses the nobility and integrity of a truly faithful soul.
A pure soul is entirely consistent and this is how an entirely consistent soul behaves. This is the virtue we should
ask Our Lady for.
In other words, that we may practice the virtue of purity and orthodoxy in this way because the two are related.
That we practice them even if we should have to bite off our tongue and spit it out; we would rather do that than fall to
capitulation.
May Our Lady give us the strength to understand this, admire it from the depth of our souls and put it into practice if we are ever placed in that position. It will be a glory for us to maintain our fidelity to Her and to our vocation if the occasion arises.
by Plinio Correa de Oliveira
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