Feast of Presentation of Mary in the Temple
Yesterday’s feast of the Presentation of Mary in the Temple and today’s remembrance of virgin-martyr St. Cecelia prompt a reflection on virginity.

The story of Mary being presented in the temple is probably a legend (from non-canonical Gospel of James of the 2nd century) since Judaism had no such custom of consecration for maidens. The temple was a fiercely masculine environment: male priests doing animal sacrifice with most heavy flow of sacrificial blood. Nevertheless, the feast captures a sure spiritual reality: that Mary at some point intentionally consecrated herself to God and God alone in a virginal, physical dimension.

Virginity in the Early Church
Consecrated virginity was virtually unknown to ancient (and historical) Judaism and rare in the ancient world. (The six vestal virgins who tended the sacred fire for Rome are a prominent exception.) But the phenomenon of female virginity for Christ was an early, vigorous and distinctive mark of Christianity. It could only have been a spontaneous and charismatic mimesis of the virginity of Mary and the chastity/celibacy of Jesus himself. It was a form of intimacy with and imitation of Christ and was immediately recognized as a distinctive “ordo” within the primitive Church. Many of our early saints are virgin-martyrs and thus gave themselves physically to their Bridegroom, in both senses of giving their fertility and their mortal lives through a bloody death. Interestingly, virginity in paganism often is associated with violence: virgins would be sacrificed to avert calamities and a vestal virgin who violated her vow would be buried alive. Also in ancient Rome, the six vestal virgins enjoyed a degree of freedom and privilege otherwise unknown to women in patriarchal society. This was a premonition of the freedom in Christ exercised by women who spontaneously dedicated themselves to Christ and thereby transcended normal limitations of domestic life and the fear of death. Jesus in today’s gospel makes the same association and earns the respect even of the Sadducees: “…those deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise.” (Luke 20) Holy virginity and bloody martyrdom both express, in the body, a freedom from the very limitations of the body, experienced most poignantly and intimately in sexuality and physical death. This is a distinctively Catholic intuition, opaque to Judaism, Protestantism, and Islam and entirely ridiculous to Secularism.

Virginity as Feminine
Intuitively we know that men are not virginal, although they can choose celibacy and can become chaste. Virginity is a feminine endowment that can be lost or given away but does not have to be earned; celibacy is a lifetime commitment associated with priesthood and religious life; chastity is purity of heart, mind and body and is a lifelong task for the male. The male body lacks a physical container or expression of virginity and the male psyche is so hormonally and concupiscentially disordered that it is the rare, privileged and saintly male that is a “virgin” in any real, interior sense. Virginity, a most precious physical gift a woman can give to her spouse or her Lord, has a physical base but its deepest meaning is spiritual and connotes: innocence, fertility, purity, generosity, and luminous goodness. And yet, in Mary as virgin-mother we see that virginity and maternity are not inherently contradictory of each other; rather they relate as potential to actual, as desire to fulfillment. Maternity is the fulfillment of virginal fertility. Mary is at once the perfect virgin and the perfect mother; in her we contemplate femininity in its perfection, as the very masterpiece of God’s creation.

Mary’s presentation in the temple is full of meaning since she completely fulfills the Old Testament longing of God, not for bloody sacrifice, but for obedience, faithfulness and trust. She is the new Temple of the Holy Spirit. She marks the end of the sacrifice of violence and the initiation of sacrifice as purity and as joyous self-gift. She is at once the epitome of the Old Covenant and is herself the temple prepared by the Spirit for the New Covenant.


Pope Benedict and the “Memores Domini”How interesting that Pope Benedict’s household is composed of his two clerical secretaries and three female members of the Memores Domini (“Memory of the Lord”), the group of maidenly women within Communion and Liberation who live poverty, chastity and obedience. These women care for the needs of the pontiff (meals, laundry), celebrate Eucharist and share meals with the three prelates.

Thus, we see within the papal household, an image of the original Church: Mary and John at the foot of the cross, receiving the gift of each other from their dying Lord. “Woman, behold…..” We see here an image of the Church in her Petrine and Marian dimensions, male and female. In his practical and theological wisdom, Benedict realized that Papa needs the close and steady influence of the feminine, specifically in its dimension as virginal: prayerful, trusting, pure, and generously donated to God.

Virginity Today Tyra Banks is upset that the average age at which her survey respondents report losing their virginity is fifteen. She is right: so many today do not value and reverence themselves in their femininity, innocence and virginity.

By strongest contrast, we celebrate on the feast of the Presentation the consecrated vocation of those cloistered for a life of solitude and intensive prayer. It is consoling to think of these, men and women, anonymous and hidden, praying for us and for the entire Church on earth.

We men, if our masculinity is to become pure, healthy, life-giving and strong, need the influence of the virginal, the innocent, and the maternal at its life-giving and liberating best. I recall, for example, my remarkable and effortless recovery from cancer surgery over two years ago: I was surrounded at the time by feminine faith and love. My wife, daughters, mother and sisters all dropped everything to be at my bedside during my days of recovery. I attribute its speed to their influence. For the last six years I have spent my days with almost two hundred maidens: the Felician sisters and our adolescent students, all of whom emanate, in their distinctive ways, a delicate and tender innocence, generosity and fecundity. They all make me “want to be a better man” (as the Jack Nicholson character told Helen Hunt in “As Good as it Gets.”) I consider myself to be “blessed among women.”

The legend of St. Cecelia is that her pagan husband was inspired by her virginity and specifically by a vision of her guardian angel to the degree that he courageously died a brutal martyr’s death. So, on these beautiful feast days, may we men emulate this receptivity to holy, feminine influence and be inspired to similar courage!