The following reflection will be intuitively obvious to the Catholic (and Orthodox and Coptic) imagination which is sacramental, iconic, enchanted, analogical and ontological. It will be at best incoherent, at worst ridiculous and obscene, to the progressive, contemporary mentality insofar as it is reductive, atomistic, mechanical, disenchanted, univocal, nominalist, secular and individualist.
We contemplate Mary, our ever virginal mother, as the quintessential woman: perfect!
We need to consider these terms: virgin and mother. On the biological, natural level they are mutually exclusive and contradictory: a virgin cannot be a mother; a mother is no longer a virgin. On the purely physical level a virgin-mother is nonsense, a contradiction, an irrationality.
In the Catholic cosmos, however, the natural is suffused with, oriented to, surrounded by the heavenly. The single defining fact of Reality: the Incarnation of God as man. Intrinsic to this Event: the perpetual virginity of Mother Mary. The radiance of Mary, virgin mother and maternal virgin, is the apex of Creation. Its luminosity reaches to every single woman: enlightening, purifying, enflaming with the fire of the Holy Spirit.
Virginity in the narrow physical sense is a privation: lack of sexual intercourse. In contemporary usage, this meaning can be extended to other domains to indicate lack of experience, naivete, incompetence. So, for example a virgin pilot or politician would be a newcomer, deficient in experience, knowledge and competence.
In our tradition, over the centuries, it has an entirely different, organic meaning. A farmer contemplates a "virgin field." What he sees: a fertile, promising field that is innocent, unspoiled, pregnant with promise. "Virgin" here indicates not privation but value, worth, promise, freedom from corruption. And so "virginity" means: freshness, new life, novelty, promise, innocence, fecundity, freedom from abuse and decadence, serendipity, innate worth, preciousness, virtue, the expression, in flesh, of the True, the Good and the Beautiful.
Maternity is the specifically feminine capacity to conceive new life, bear it, give birth to it, and intimately nurture and protect it. It implies already the bridal reception of the father's seed in the event of conception. It is an analogical reality which occurs at various levels of reality: animal, human, spiritual. We speak of Mother Earth, Alma Mater, Motherland. Clearly it goes well beyond the merely physical to include moral, spiritual, physical, national, and every dimension of Reality.
Maternity is, then, not the loss or contradiction of virginity. Rather, virginity is the capacity or potentiality to welcome the life-giving seed from the Groom, conceive new life, carry, give birth, an nurture. Virginity and maternity mutually define each other; they structure each other as potential to actual.
Catholics accept the perpetual virginity, literal and figurative, of Mary even after she birthed her son Jesus and went on to live, in chaste abstinence, with Joseph and later John the beloved apostle. However, this supernatural miracle allows us to view, in every woman, the co-inherence of virginity and maternity.
Every girl and woman is inherently precious, life-giving, generous, delightful, and of infinite value. At the heart of this worth is the capacity to give life: biologically, emotionally, socially, intellectually, spiritually and in myriad ways.
The surrender to spousal intercourse is not the "loss," but the fulfillment or consummation of virginity. Maternity, in spousal communion, is the goal, the purpose, the finality of the woman's nature, longing, body and spirit.
Motherhood, biological and otherwise, is not a deprivation, just as virginity is not a privation. Rather, maternity is the flowering and fructifying of femininity. The mother does not lose innocence, rather she matures into a deeper, fuller, more vigorous form of virtue. Her innocence and freshness is preserved, but becomes generous, fruitful, even sacrificial.
The consecrated virgin retains a literal, physical innocence, but herself surrenders, as pure, to Christ the Bridegroom. This abandonment preserves a natural value even as it brings a supernatural depth, a mystical intimacy, a quite literal anticipation of the beatific union we all look forward to in heaven. And so, the religious virgin becomes "mother" in so many splendid ways: we refer to Mother Teresa, Mother Angelia and so many holy women.
What do we make of women who are neither virgin nor mother, biologically? Women, married and otherwise, who suffer infertility, can be receptive of the graces of virginity/maternity in all manner of ways.
Those who have lost chastity through sin, on the other hand, can with St. Mary Magdalen, St. Mary of Egypt, and saintly women through the centuries enjoy "recovered" or "redeemed" virginity and maternity through the merciful pardon and intimate embrace of Christ the Groom. We have the word of Christ himself that those who are forgiven more also love more. So, we revere Mary Magdalen, who stood at the foot of the cross and was the very first to know of the Resurrection.
In our contemporary economy/society, women are in almost all domains the equivalent of men in consumption and production. Actually, they are increasingly outperforming men, due to intrinsic superiorities, in crucial areas of society including: academic achievement, medicine, education, law, and areas of management/administration that require skill in communication, attention, teamwork, empathy, and emotional intelligence.
In all these arenas, the "womanly genius" brings a rich, distinctive contribution, as John Paul II, Edith Stein and others have seen so clearly.
The feminine identity and vocation is complemented by the masculine. Paternity is close to but not identical with maternity. Likewise, the masculine enactment of purity of heart and chastity differs from that of the feminine and is not identical to the virginity of the woman. So, physically and spiritually, we more often refer to the chastity or celibacy of the man. He lacks, physically and psychologically, that specific feminine integrity. But his erotic energies, intrinsically wild and aggressive, when channeled by grace and virtue, become iconic of the holy, heroic, fecund virility of Christ the Bridegroom.
Conclusion.
Woman is first, of course, daughter of our heavenly Father and of the Church. She is sister and partner to her spouse and others in a universe of purposes. And to all these she brings her distinctive charism as virgin and mother.
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