The act which places this sexual secret in the hands of Jesus inviolate and sealed forever denotes a self-surrender to Him and marriage with Him which corresponds with the matrimonial self-surrender to a creature.3 Since Jesus is a heavenly bridegroom, marriage with Him must be completely different from earthly wedlock, a purely spiritual union. Nevertheless, there is a fundamental feature really common to both. That supreme self-surrender of the entire person—analogous to the surrender of life for another—which can be given to a fellow creature by marriage alone, is here made to Jesus by the vow never to disclose this secret to anyone, by the radical and final renunciation for His love of all exercise of sex, and by cutting oneself off from the world to live for Him alone. Only those who have grasped the utterly central position occupied by sex, its depth, and the mystery that invests it, of which we have attempted an investigation earlier in this book, are in a position to grasp the mysterious factor which makes consecrated virginity wedlock with Christ, and explains its unique sublimity, its soft and heavenly radiance, its bittersweet perfume. The final renunciation of the exercise of sex made by the consecrated virgin shifts her psychological center of gravity in an altogether unparalleled fashion. By that renunciation she dies to the world and partakes of something that otherwise would be possible only in eternity. A center within herself is in a sense set “free,” which she discloses to Christ alone and whose surrender to a fellow creature is indissolubly bound up with the disclosure of sex. The zone of our personality which constitutes, so to speak, the point of insertion in our nature for Jesus’s love and whence in turn proceed the acts which He accepts, in other words the place where He knits up a fellowship with us and entertains with us a mysterious converse, is different from the psychological plane of contact with creatures.4 By the solemn and final renunciation for Jesus’s sake of that unique gift of self to a creature in which marriage consists, by the determination to keep one’s secret perpetually hidden, indeed, to surrender that secret inviolate into the hands of Jesus, sex is in a sense abolished and the center of gravity in that person raised to the level specifically in contact with Him. In this case and in this case alone is a radical transcendence of sex effected. Take the case of a girl who, for love of a man whom for some reason or other she is unable to wed, solemnly promises for his sake to remain a virgin for life. Because of her love for him she will never give herself to another. A promise of this kind constitutes, no doubt, a close bond with the beloved, and, above all, prevents the separation which marriage with another would involve. But she is not thereby married to the man, and still less does she, in the fashion just mentioned, leave sex as such behind her.5 Altogether unlike the virgin who simply accepts with resignation the non-exercise of sex or whose virginity belongs to any of those other types we have discussed and is not consecrated to God, the person of the consecrated virgin really transcends sex, and that most profound and intimate region that in all other human beings is inextricably bound up with sex is, as it were, absorbed in the purely spiritual zone which is the field fertilized by the dew of Jesus’s love. By this act of surrender the consecrated virgin gives her secret to Jesus and marries him in a fashion really analogous to earthly wedlock, though her marriage is purely spiritual and involves no sort of qualitative realization of sex. At the same time that peculiar spiritualization is effected which stamps her entire life as a victory over the world and invests it with a fragrance redolent of eternity.6 Even here on earth the bride of Christ lives, not only a pure life, but a life like that of heaven, where “they neither marry nor are given in marriage.” Though the physical fact of sex does not cease to exist, nor are temptations to impurity excluded, Christ’s bride, in virtue of her wedlock with Him, objectively transcends sex, and beyond and above it her soul shines clear and bright before God. “‘A garden enclosed art thou, my sister, my bride; a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed.’ Such is the praise which Christ pronounces on those who have attained the goal of virginity, and He sums all up in the single word ‘bride.’ For the bride must be espoused to her Bridegroom and bear His name; she must abide spotless and inviolate, like a sealed garden, wherein every scent of heavenly perfume is shed abroad, where Christ alone may enter and gather what grows therein of incorporeal seed. For the love of the Word is not for the body, seeing that His nature is not such that it can take hold of corruptible hands, feet, or countenance. Only incorporeal and spiritual beauty attracts His desire, and in it alone does He take pleasure; the body’s beauty touches Him not.”7
We must now have at least an inkling of the reason why consecrated virginity, and it alone, constitutes a marriage with Christ, totally different from the bond created by poverty and obedience. The vow here is not simply the solemn promise of something to God, but a betrothal (desponsatio) in which the vower is herself the subject of her vow—in fact, a genuine marriage. It is possible to be a bride of Christ in the interior subjective sense of our allegory without being wedded to Christ in this objective fashion, just as we can feel wedded love toward a fellow creature without being actually married to that person. Marriage is the specific external embodiment of this love, inasmuch as it completes the supreme interior communion of hearts by an exterior and formal union, and creates an objective indissoluble bond whose worth and validity are guaranteed against caprice and which is as such independent of love’s ebb and flow. In like manner the vow of the consecrated virgin is the organic expression of her love and the means by which the interior bond is projected into the external sphere; it creates, in fact, a new tie between the virgin and God, objective, irrevocable, and of a peculiar intimacy.8 “No creature can surrender itself more completely to God than the virgin who thus weds her Lord. For, like the holy city in Scripture whose ‘foundations are upon the holy hill’ this union, knit as it is by a vow for eternity, has its birth outside the realm of mortal things, and is not exposed to their hazards, not even to the possibility of regret. Not one of the many states of union with God is comparable with the hallowed contact that, in the presence and under the protection of that powerful witness, the Church, weds to Jesus Christ the soul that dedicates herself to chastity. In so exceptional a degree do such souls become His brides that in the ordinary language of Christians the title is specially attributed, if not altogether reserved, to them. It is theirs to understand in full measure what to others is spoken only in parables; theirs to enter the King’s palace; theirs, and theirs alone, to ‘follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth’ and sing to Him the anthem whose music is known only to themselves.”9
Moreover, the mystery which the sacrament of marriage signifies—the nuptials between Christ and His Church—is expressed even more directly by consecrated virginity, since the virgin and the Church are wedded to the same husband, Christ.10 Nowhere else do we find the secret of consecrated virginity as the mystery of supernatural love, a nuptial relationship to Christ and a marriage with Him, stated in language at once so sublime and so expressive as throughout the entire office for the profession of nuns. “Thou hast in every generation poured forth Thy graces upon all peoples under heaven and hast made them, in multitude like unto the unnumbered stars, the heirs of Thy new covenant; but among all the presents which Thou hast bestowed upon Thine own—who are born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, but of Thy Holy Spirit—certain souls have received from the wellspring of Thy fullness a special gift. Without detracting by Thy ban from the honour of wedlock, and Thy nuptial blessing resting still upon the holy state of matrimony. Thou yet hast willed that chosen souls of loftier purpose should reject the bodily intercourse of men and women, but attain the secret that it comprehends; who do not copy what marriage does, but devote their entire love to the mystery which it signifies. Blessed virginity has recognised its author, and envying the integrity of the angels, consecrates itself to the bride-chamber of Him who is at once the bridegroom and the son of perpetual virginity.”11
We have already seen that the state of perfection presupposes a special call from God. This is preeminentl
y true of the specific wedlock with Christ which results from consecrated virginity. Here Jesus’s secret call to the soul plays an even more central and more indispensable part. That call is not simply “follow me”, but “Come, my beloved, and be wed. The winter is past, the voice of the turtle dove invites—the vines in flower give forth their fragrance.” He alone can invite a soul to that marriage with Himself which, as a source of grace, infinitely exceeds every aid the soul can receive from other goods. If the pure man needs a special knowledge of God’s approval before he lifts the veil in marriage from the mystery of sex, how much more will the soul require a direct call from Christ the heavenly bridegroom to enter into wedlock with Him and renounce forever the voluntary disclosure of that secret. So sublime is this state and so great its demands that no man could presume to choose it, unless by the invitation of Jesus Himself.
“When Thou didst look upon me Thine eyes impressed on me Thy grace.
For which Thou didst love me,
And by which mine eyes deserved to worship what they beheld in Thee.”
ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS
* * *
1. The existence of a mysterious analogy between martyrdom and virginity has been felt from the beginning. See St. Cyprian, De Habitu Virginum, Chap. 2; or Venantius Fortunatus, De Laude Virginum, Lib. 8. “Amidst the ranks of apostles and holy prophets the virgin receives the highest rewards after the martyrs.” (Inter Apostolicas acies, sacrosque Prophetas; proximo. Martyribus praemia Virgo tenet.)
2. It is from this standpoint alone that the strict exclusiveness of the bond created by the partnership of marriage can be understood. Here also lies the explanation of the fact that this exclusiveness, arising out of the nature of wedlock as such, ceases with the death of either partner, whereas the bond of love and the merely relative exclusivity based upon it, in other words, fidelity to the beloved, is in no way affected by death.
3. “From the time thou didst dedicate thyself to perpetual virginity thine own has been no longer thine own.” St. Jerome, Ep. 8. Ad Demetriadem.
4. If the act of marriage when accomplished in the highest way destroys a certain stiff self-containedness which tends to harden the heart, blunt the susceptibilities, and produce a self-important prig, this peculiar self-containedness is destroyed by marriage with Christ in a far more complete and radical fashion, since in this case also the secret of the self is surrendered, but the distinctive escape from self is accomplished in an entirely different, and at the same time far more profound, manner. That is to say, whereas in marriage the release is, as it were, the natural counterpart of the self-imprisonment, wedlock with Christ lifts the person altogether above the sphere of sex and thereby effects on a higher plane everything and more than everything which the mere release effected on the lower.
5. The heathen virgin, the Vestal, represents in its grossest form the mere transference as opposed to the transcendence of sex. Her renunciation of sex simply transfers its possessor from a human being to a divinity anthropomorphically conceived, in the same way as it might be preserved for a man. Her state of life, therefore, does not in any way involve a transcendence of sex. It must now be perfectly clear why this heathen virginity is to be regarded as wholly sexual in its conception.
6. That consecrated virginity contains a mystery far exceeding the mortification of the flesh and, so to speak, descending upon the virgin from above, when she accomplishes this unique surrender of herself to Christ, is beautifully expressed by the words of Pope Liberius which St. Ambrose quotes in his De Virginibus (Bk. III, chap. 1): “In thee who hast long been a foe to the corruptible pleasures of the natural man, He (Christ) will implant the sublime secret of virginity.”
7. Methodius of Olympus, Banquet of the Ten Virgins, or Chastity, quoted by Fr. Athanasius Wintersig, op. cit.
8. Our analogy must certainly not be pressed too literally, since in relation to God every interior state or event is always a fuller and more objective reality than it is in relation to creatures.
9. Charles Gay, loc. cit.
10. On the other hand, from another point of view the consecrated virgin remains betrothed so long as her earthly life lasts, the final union being reserved for eternity, that union of which marriage between creatures is but a type. We are, however, fully justified in calling virginity a marriage with Christ, since the self-surrender presents a close analogy with physical wedlock.
11. Quoted from Fr. Athanasius Wintersig, op. cit.
CONCLUSION
Consecrated Virginity as a State of Love
ONCE AGAIN we must insist: The holiness of individuals gives God far greater glory than the state of consecrated virginity as such. Holiness is the one supreme goal common to all alike, by which we mean the real and complete transformation of a man in and by the power of Christ, the light and reflection of Jesus whose likeness shines out from us when “we no longer live, but Christ in us.” Interior wedlock with Jesus, the highest measure of supernatural love for Him and for all creatures in Him, henceforward our life-principle, the undisputed sovereignty of that Divine Life imparted to us in baptism—these are the essential aims set before all men without exception, the mission of every human being, whose accomplishment gives God greater glory than any state of life, however exalted, or the act of heroism by which that state is chosen. “This is the will of God, your sanctification.” For holiness alone is full membership in Christ’s mystical body; the holier we are, the more does our entire personality share in the Divine Life of Christ and with and in Him glorify God.
However exalted the rank of consecrated virginity, what St. Paul says of the gift of prophecy and the faith which removes mountains is still applicable—the man who possesses it without love is nothing. Here, in fact, where the state as such is the external embodiment of the life which in the fullest measure is a life for Jesus, and as a marriage with Christ demands that supreme nuptial love, the object for which it was chosen is attained only if Christ’s bride is distinguished among all others by her love for Him. Everything forces us to the conclusion that the moral significance and value of consecrated virginity, as opposed even to the most perfect purity, consists wholly in this wedlock with Christ, this mystery of supernatural love. The consecrated virgin is therefore a true bride of Christ, realizes what her exalted state of life objectively signifies, and lives as Christ’s bride, only when her life represents a greater love than that demanded by the state of matrimony.1
It is easy to see why this point cannot be overemphasized. This sublime state of life, renouncing, as it does, the highest earthly partnership of love and necessarily demanding an unremitting watchfulness in all relations with others, especially with the opposite sex, involves the danger that the heart may grow hard and torpid, the soul be dulled and deadened.2 Like the danger of relapsing into earthly passions, this peril also can be escaped only by the grace which flows from wedlock with Christ. Indeed, this hardening of the heart is as much an interior return to the world as the positive indulgence in earthly joys. Both alike are an infidelity to the heavenly bridegroom, a turning away from Him. For to His bride also Jesus says: “I came to cast fire upon the earth, and what will I but that it be kindled?”
A greater love, then, is what the life of Christ’s bride must represent, a greater love of Jesus, the source of love, but also a greater share in Jesus’s love for all creatures. The love of the consecrated virgin must embrace creatures also, and not only her “neighbors” in general, but particular persons whom she must love in their concrete individuality. Nor need she love all men equally, for her Lord Himself wept over Lazarus’s tomb and felt a special love for St. John and the Magdalene. Nor is there any limit to the degree and depth of love which Christ’s bride may possess for particular creatures. It is only the kind of love that is restricted. She may love only in Jesus, with Jesus, and through Jesus. But for that very reason her love is far purer and deeper, as it is also greater, than all other—merely natural—love, because it is in a greater degree a participation
in the love of Jesus, the God-man, for His creatures. It is this holy, yet entire personal love of individuals that we find in St. Bernard—himself an exemplar of the soul that is Christ’s bride and the theologian of her nuptial love—when he writes in the following terms to Duchess Ermangard of Brittany: “Would that I could open out my soul to you, as I do this paper! Could you but read in my heart the love toward you which God’s hand has written there. You would then understand that no tongue or pen could express what the spirit of God has impressed so intimately upon my soul. And though, indeed, I am now present with you in spirit, though absent in body, you cannot see me as I am. Yet there is a way by which if you cannot know my meaning in full you may conjecture something of it. Enter your heart and there behold mine, and attribute to me at least as much love for you as you feel in yourself for me. . . . You will now understand how you have kept me with you. I (to confess the truth) go nowhere away from you without you. . . . I have received news that delights my heart, the news that you have found peace. I am delighted, because you inform me of your happiness, and the knowledge of your joy is medicine to my spirit.”
The virgin’s heart must be far more generous in its love than even the heart of the married; it must be inebriated by that supernatural love which destroys all selfishness, and must contain supereminently all genuine love and actual surrender to creatures. The closer a soul is united with God, Who is Love, the more it loves. Surely the bride of Christ, the Son of the Eternal Father, wedded as she is to Love incarnate, must exceed all in love. We know now why consecrated virginity represents the most exalted state on earth: because it is the objective embodiment of love’s supreme mystery, so far as it is immediately communicable to a creature; because it involves a marriage in the strictest sense with Christ; and because it is not only the state of greatest purity, but the state of greatest love. The vocation of Christ’s bride is simple—to love. St. Theresa of the Child Jesus discovered this secret; and what is perhaps the sublimest poem ever wrought by the spirit of man speaks as follows of His bride:
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