VIRGIN AND MOTHER. NO APOLOGIES NEEDED.
by Kristen West McGuire
If we let Hollywood tell the tale, virginity is really odd. Scores of television shows and movies heap contempt on virgins. Comedians stack laughlines on the premise that virginity is a situation in need of a remedy. Negative stereotypes are everywhere. Social media and TMI videos only normalize the crass and banal attacks on persons who refuse to treat their sexuality like a recreational sport.
Virgins were often killed in the early Church for refusing to marry. In Biblical and medieval times, the virginity of brides was a legal concept. Until marriage, she was the property of her father. When a man deflowered a virgin, she automatically became his property and his wife. (See Deuteronomy 22:28-29)
Women gained incredible new freedoms in the 20th century—the right to vote, to have a bank account, to take on a loan, to run a business, even to divorce for just causes, such as personal safety. Women are no longer legally the property of fathers or husbands. Thank God!
Fear of childbirth is a realistic fear. Yet, childbirth is drastically safer today, than in 1900, when 850 women died out of 100,000 births in America. (Today it’s 10-20.) So why would our society disparage both virginity and motherhood?
Today, both the virgin AND the mother have become objects of scorn.
A growing number of women ages 18-49 choose not to have children. Some women experience the cross of infertility, but that is not the case for the majority of childless women. According to the Pew Research Center (2023), they simply don’t want children. Motherhood is seen as a barrier to other life goals.
Widespread contraceptive use has severed the connection between sex and motherhood. Both become one choice among many options. But what if both motherhood and virginity are not lifestyle choices, but vocations? How do you decide what the ideal woman’s life looks like?
Part VI of Mulieris Dignitatem presents our ideal woman: Mary. Saint John Paul II points out that virginity and motherhood are not polar opposites. Nor are they simply earthly realities. Both virginity and motherhood provide a spiritual model of the Church that leads the entire world to Jesus.
Virginity and motherhood are two distinctive and complete paths for women to find and live out their God-given dignity by making a personal gift of self.
The path to sanctity for Christians is through both virginity and motherhood. Perhaps some women will be virgins first and physical mothers later. Perhaps some may become consecrated virgins and offer spiritual motherhood to the world. Perhaps others may experience sexual relations and later embrace chastity and spiritual maternity as an evangelical counsel. All women—indeed, all Christians—are called to sacrifice our lives to the service of God. (Romans 12:1)
Each vocation exists to inform and illuminate the others. There are great sacrifices in marriage, pregnancy and childbirth. Raising the children often takes all the energy and creativity a woman can offer. Simply being a women in a body that has potential to give birth is a challenge in and of itself.
To renounce motherhood is not to take the easier path, for both virginity and motherhood have challenges. Spiritual motherhood requires prudence and perseverance. Such virtues fully change the mind, body, and soul of the woman. The Holy Spirit becomes her closest companion, and the author of the creative way that she takes up her cross and follows our Lord to Calvary.
The dignity and vocation of a woman is to be a living sign of the Kingdom, a gift of self for the sake of our Beloved Messiah, Jesus Christ. And a gift of self is by definition not easily made, but rather full of sacrifices.
We are the Brides, the attendants of the Queen Mother, Mary. It sounds so noble, but in reality, it is lived out in a rather mundane daily existence. The work is always hard, be it in the home or the office. This is not heaven.
And each vocation, no matter which one, begins with the emptiness of Advent. It begins with an open receptivity to Our Lord, an emptiness that only He can fill. And, it begins with a deep awareness that God has created each one of us with a specific purpose. Virginity and motherhood exist as both physical and spiritual potential.
Women are called to create safe havens for the people entrusted to them. When a woman is receptive to her vocation, she will often find to her surprise that seeds blossom into new life all around her.
Our periods of longing and emptiness are also fruitful in God’s plan.
The prophet Isaiah foretold it: “Behold I do new things, and now they shall spring forth, verily you shall know them: I will make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah 43:19) By making room in our troubled hearts and lives for the Messiah, we open ourselves to our purpose.
