My own experience growing up in the Church – and learning of the experiences of thousands of other Catholics around the world in my lectures and travels – has taught me that many Catholics have what I call a “hyper-spiritual” idea of the Blessed Virgin.
In my previous column, we spoke about the great “spousal mystery” of Christmas. This is based on the idea – flowing from Scripture and so often spoken of by the saints and mystics – that God wants to “marry” us. He wants to live with us forever in an eternal union of love that the Bible compares to a marriage. And, even more, God wants to fill his Bride (the Church) with divine life.
As the Catechism states, “The spousal character of the human vocation in relation to God is fulfilled perfectly in Mary’s virginal motherhood” (505). And that is what we celebrate in the Christmas season. God has espoused himself to us forever by sending his Son, born of this woman.
My own experience growing up in the Church – and learning of the experiences of thousands of other Catholics around the world in my lectures and travels – has taught me that many Catholics have what I call a “hyper-spiritual” idea of the Blessed Virgin.
It’s as if the title “virgin” itself leads us to believe that Mary is somehow opposed to bodily realities, or that her immaculate purity makes her a prudish or even “a-sexual” being. But such impressions of Mary can only stem from projecting our own fallen humanity on to her.
First of all, purity doesn’t annihilate our sexuality – it perfects it. Far from being “a-sexual,” Mary is the only woman who ever experienced God’s original plan for sexuality in its fullness. Sexuality is not to be equated with sexual behaviour. Mary remained a virgin. But virginity is not to be equated with “a-sexuality.”
Virginity, from the Christian perspective, is not the negation of sexuality, but an embracing of the ultimate purpose and meaning of sexuality – to point us to union with God. God made us male and female and called the two to become “one flesh” as a sacramental sign of a much, much greater reality – the marriage of Christ and the Church (see Eph 5:31-32).
This is the original and fundamental meaning of human sexuality and this is how Mary must have experienced her womanhood, her sexuality – as a burning desire for union with God. Through the gift of redemption, we can begin to reclaim this original truth, but even for the holiest among us it remains muddled by our fallen condition.
To recognise Mary as the “Immaculate One” is to recognize that her sexuality was never muddled by our fallen condition. For she experienced the fullness of redemption right from the first moment of her conception.
This would mean that Mary’s purity allowed her to experience her sexuality in its fullness – as a deep yearning for total communion with God in Christ. This is why she didn’t have sexual relations with Joseph: not because marital union is “unholy,” but because she was already living the union beyond sexual union – union with God.
This is not to knock Joseph, but earthly, sexual union with him would have been for Mary a step backwards. Instead, Mary took Joseph forward with her into the fulfillment of all desire.
And she wants to take us forward with her as well, into the fullness of union with God. But this journey demands that we face all of our diseased images and ideas about our bodies and our sexuality.
For union with God passes by way of sexual healing and redemption. And there is no detour. Here Mary, too, serves as a perfect guide and help.
As Father Donald Calloway expresses: “Mary shows us how to accept the gift of our embodiedness, and this includes the God-given sex of the body.
In this it is important to note that Mary’s exemplarity of what it means to accept the gift of one’s body means that the body is not an obstacle to overcome but, rather, a gift to be lived. Mary delights in her body, especially in its God-given sex: femininity.
It is precisely in her gift of being a woman that Mary was fashioned and called by God to be the Theotokos [God-bearer]. The gift of her body is exactly what helps her to become the Theotokos.
Just think of what would have happened if Mary had rebelled against the gift of her feminine body! We would be in a very different situation today. (Mary and the Theology of the Body, pp. 55-56).
Mary, all pure Mother of God, show us the beauty of your femininity and teach us, in turn, to embrace the beauty of our own humanity as men and women made in the image of God.