CHAPTER 14 Virginity and Love
Anyone who knows the real philosophy of love should not be confused at such a noble loving. There are three stages of love, and few there are who ever arrive at the third stage. The first love is digestive love, the second is democratic love, and the third is sacrificial love. Digestive love centers in the person whom one loves. It assimilates persons, as the stomach assimilates food, using them as means to either its own pleasure or utility. Mere physical or sex love is digestive; it flatters the other person for his possession, as the farmer fattens livestock for the market. Its proffered gifts are only "baits," used as Trojan horses to win the other person over at the moment of its devouring. Those marriages which last only a few years, and end in divorce and remarriage, are founded on a love which is purely organic and glandular. Such love is a Moloch which devours its victims. If the partners survive digestion, it is only the carcass which is dismissed with the melancholy words: "We are no longer in love, but we are still good friends."
Above digestive love is democratic love, in which there is a reciprocal devotion founded on natural honor, justice, common likes, and a sense of decency. Here the other person is treated with becoming respect and dignity. This stage deserves the name of love, which the first does not.
Over and above this is what might be called sacral or sacrificial love, in which the lover sacrifices himself for the beloved, counts himself most free when he is a "slave" to the object of his love, and desires even to immolate self that the other might be glorified. Gustave Thibon beautifully describes these three loves. He calls them Indifference, Attachment, Detachment.
Indifference. As far as I am concerned, you do not exist.
Attachment. You exist, but this existence is based on our reciprocal relations. You exist in the measure that I possess you, and the moment I dispossess you, you no longer exist.
Detachment. You exist for me absolutely, quite independent of my personal relations with you, and beyond anything you could do for me. I adore you as a reflection of the Divinity which can never be taken from me. And I have no need to possess in order that you have existence for me.
Consecrated virginity is the highest form of sacral or sacrificial love; it seeks nothing for itself, but only the will of the beloved. Pagans reverenced virginity, but they regarded it as almost the exclusive power of woman, for purity was seen only in its mechanical and physical effects. Christianity, on the contrary, looks upon virginity as a surrender of sex and of human love for God.
The world makes the mistake of assuming that virginity is opposed to love, as poverty is opposed to wealth. Rather, virginity is related to love, as a university education is related to a grammar-school education. Virginity is the mountain peak of love, as marriage is its hill. Simply because virginity is often associated with asceticism and penance, it is thought to mean only the giving up of something. The true picture is that asceticism is only the fence around the garden of virginity. A guard must always be stationed around the Crown Jewels of England, not because England loves soldiers, but because it needs them to protect the jewels. So, the more precious the love, the greater the precautions to guard it. Since no love is more precious than that of the soul in love with God, the soul must ever be on the watch against lions who would overrun its green pastures. The grating in a Carmelite monastery is not to keep the sisters in, but to keep the world out.
Married love, too, has its moments of renouncement, whether they be dictated by nature or by the absence of the beloved. If nature imposes sacrifices and asceticism on married love by force, why should not grace freely suggest a virgin love? What one does out of the exigencies of time, the other does out of the exigencies of eternity. Every act of love is an engagement for the future, but the virgin's vow centers more on eternity than on time.
As virginity is not the opposite of love, neither is it the opposite of generation. The Christian blessing on virginity did not abrogate the order of Genesis to "increase and multiply," for virginity, also, has its generation. Mary's consecration of virginity was unique in that it resulted in a physical generation - the Word made flesh. But it also set the pattern of spiritual generation, for she begot the Christ-life. In like manner, virgin love must not be barren but, like Paul, must say: "I have begotten you as most dear children in Christ." When the woman in the crowd praised the Mother of Our Lord, He turned the praise to spiritual motherhood, and said that she who did the will of His Father in heaven was His mother. Relationship was here lifted from the level of the flesh to the spirit. To beget a body is blessed; to save a soul is more blessed, for such is the Father's Will. An idea thus can transform a vital function, not by condemning it to sterility, but by elevating it to a new fecundity of the spirit. There would, therefore, seem to be implied in all virginity the necessity of apostleship and the begetting of souls for Christ. God, Who hated the man who buried his talent in the ground, will certainly despise those who pledge themselves to be in love with Him, and yet show no new life - converts or souls saved through contemplation. Birth control, whether undertaken by husband and wife, or by a virgin dedicated to Christ, is reprehensible. On Judgment Day, God will ask all the married and all virgins the same question: "Where are your children?" "Where are the fruits of your love, the torches that should be kindled by the fires of your passion?" Virginity is meant for generation as much as married love is; otherwise the Model-Virgin would not have been the Mother of Christ, giving an example to others to be the mothers and fathers of Christians. It is only love that can gain victory over love; only the soul in love with God can overcome the body-soul in love with another body-soul.
There is an intrinsic relation between virginity and intelligence. There is no doubt that, as St. Paul says, "The flesh militates against the spirit." The sex-mad individual is always under psychological necessity to "rationalize" his conduct which is so obviously contrary to the dictates of conscience. But this psychic tendency to "justify oneself" by making a creed to suit one's immoral behavior necessarily destroys reason. Furthermore, passion harms reason, even when it does not quote Freud to justify adultery. By its very nature, the concentration of vital energies in the centrality of the flesh necessarily implies a diminution of those energies in the higher realms of the spirit. In a more positive way, we may say that the purer the love, the less the disturbances of the mind. But since there can be no greater love than that of the soul in union with the Infinite, it follows that the mind free from anxieties and fear should have the greatest clearness of intellectual insights. The concentration on spiritual fecundity should by its very nature produce a high degree of intellectual fecundity. Here one speaks not of knowledge about things, for that depends on effort, but of judgment, counsel, decision which are the marks of a keen intelligence. One finds a suggestion of this in Mary, whose virginity is associated with wisdom in the highest degree, not only because she owned it in her new right, but also because she begot Intelligence Itself in her flesh.