Living the Evangelical Counsels
September 8, 2007

Readings for the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Reading 1: Hos. 2:16, 21–22

Responsorial Psalm: Ps. 40:2 and 4ab, 7–12

Reading 2: 1 Pet. 1:3–9

Gospel: Mt. 25:1–13

By Father Ray Ryland, Ph.D., J.D.

I speak of Sister Mary James of the Meek Lamb of God and Sister John Mary of Laudem Gloriae. Today’s psalm response gives voice to the prayer in their hearts: "Here I am, Lord: I come to do your will."

For a few moments, let’s ponder a bit of what the Church teaches us about consecrated virginity. Think about this exalted state upon which Sr. Mary James and Sr. John Mary are about to enter.

But first a personal note. I was raised in a small, thoroughly Protestant, town in Oklahoma. As a child, the first time I heard the word "Catholic" was when in a neighboring town I first saw some religious. I asked my mother who were those ladies so strangely dressed. She simply said, "They’re Catholic nuns," and turned to other subjects. In the years that followed I often saw religious in other towns: they were always a puzzle to me.

Especially in the summer, when the temperature sometimes soared well above 100 degrees. There they were in those heavy long black "costumes" (that’s what I called them) and looking as though they were enjoying spring weather. I couldn’t help staring at their faces when I met them. The calm, serene looks on their faces always impressed me. Very frequently when I met them on the street the same thought came to me. "These women look like they’re really serious about their religion! They even express it in their clothes."

But now back to consecrated virginity.

The Church has often stressed the complementarity of the religious life and married life. Indeed, it was in the context of his teaching about marriage that our Lord first proclaimed the calling to the religious life. (Matt. 19:3–12)

Pharisees asked Jesus whether He agreed with the Mosaic law’s allowing for easy divorce—easy, that is, for the husband. Jesus "said to them, ‘for your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so’" (Mt. 19:8). Then Jesus declared that a valid marriage cannot be dissolved—except, of course, by the death of one of the spouses.

His disciples were aghast. "If that’s true," they said, "it’s better not to get married!" Yet the Jewish religion regarded marrying as almost a religious duty. Those who did not marry were regarded—and spoken of—as "eunuchs."

Using that terminology, Jesus said, "‘. . . there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it" (Mt. 19:12).

To put Jesus’s words simply, some are from birth incapable of marriage, some somehow have been made incapable, but some choose continence "for the sake of the kingdom of heaven" (Mt. 19:12). The latter, in other words, are those who answer God’s call to the religious life.

The fact is, Our Lord’s Blessed Mother had already responded to the call to consecrated virginity. At the Annunciation she had declared her virginity, as she wondered how she could become the mother of the Son of God.

In his encyclical on "Holy Virginity," Pope Pius XII quoted several Church Fathers who testified that virginity owes its origin to Mary. St. Augustine, for example, wrote, "The dignity of virginity began with the Mother of the Lord." For St. Ambrose, the Virgin "is the image of virginity. For such was Mary that her life alone suffices for the instruction of all" (no. 65).

John Paul II, in his theology of the body, noted that in Mary’s divine motherhood, God has given us "a superabundant revelation of that fruitfulness in the Holy Spirit" which comes to one who "freely chooses continence . . . . ‘for the kingdom of heaven’" (Man and Woman He Created Them, 321).

For generations to come, the Church will be exploring and meditating on Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body. His starting point is that the human person "cannot fully find himself except through the gift of self." He insists

that the nature of both married love and the virgin’s love for her Bridegroom is truly spousal. The reason is, in both instances, that love is expressed through a gift of self. Spousal love between husband and wife finds its maturity in physical fatherhood and motherhood. In an analogous way, spousal love expressed in continence for the sake of the kingdom of heaven finds its maturity in spiritual fatherhood and motherhood.

In his encyclical, Pope Pius XII denied that in renouncing marriage, consecrated virgins are thereby somehow "diminished." On the contrary, he taught, "They receive from the Giver of heavenly gifts something spiritual which far exceeds that ‘mutual help’ which husband and wife confer on each other. They consecrate themselves to Him Who is their source, and Who shares with them His divine life, and thus personality suffers no loss, but gains immensely. For who, more than the virgin, can apply to himself that marvelous phrase of the Apostle Paul: ‘I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me’" (no. 39).

In that same encyclical, Pope Pius quotes a number of Church Fathers who characterize consecrated virginity as "spiritual marriage." St. Athanasius writes that the Church ordinarily refers to consecrated virgins as spouses of Christ. St. Ambrose speaks of consecrated virgins in these words: "She is a virgin who is married to God’" (no. 17).

Pius XII also quotes Fathers who regard the religious life as a crucified life. St. John Chrysostom wrote that "the root, and the flower, too, of virginity is a crucified life." St. Ambrose regarded virginity as a sacrificial offering. St. Methodius compares virgins to martyrs. St. Gregory the Great stated that perfect chastity substitutes for martyrdom (no. 49).

On the lighter side, St. Cyprian said that virginity is an angelic virtue. Writing to virgins, he declared, "What we are to be, you have already commenced to be. You already possess in this world the glory of the resurrection; you pass through the world without suffering its contagion. In preserving virgin chastity, you are the equals of the angels of God" (no. 29).

St. Cyprian’s words, "you already possess in this world the glory of the resurrection," lead us to the Church’s ultimate statement about the religious life.

Start with the fact that no non-Catholic tradition, no non-Christian religion, holds as high, as exalted, a view of marriage as does the Catholic Church. Yet the Church has defined as dogma that the charism of the religious life is the highest of all callings, higher even than that of marriage. This, of course, does not mean that the religious in themselves are therefore better Christians than married people. After all, the only gauge of sanctity for all of us is the depth of our love for, and devotion to, Jesus Christ. But the Church does teach that the religious’ calling is itself a higher calling than that of marriage. It is the highest of all human callings.

In section 44 of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium), the fathers of Vatican II summed up reasons why the Church teaches the superiority of living the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The first reason given is that the religious is better able to focus entirely on Christ by being freed from the everyday responsibilities of ordinary life.

Next, and a very important reason, the religious is an eschatological sign: that is, a sign of the kind of life we shall live in heaven. Recall the Sadducees’ trick question they brought to Jesus. They gave the case of seven brothers who successively married the same woman and all died before she did. They asked Jesus, whose wife will she be in heaven? Jesus’ answer was "‘. . . in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven" (Mt. 22:30).

In Man and Woman He Created Them (412), Pope John Paul explained the meaning of Jesus’ words about life in heaven. There is no marrying in heaven because the redeemed will be brought into a life far richer than any married state. In heaven, he said, persons will enter into a "glorification" of their "whole psychosomatic being in the eternal union with God." There they will find "the fullness of personal giving" and of deep communion of persons. (Remember St. Cyprian’s words addressed to the virgins of his diocese: "What we are to be, you have already commenced to be.")

Furthermore, the life of a religious more closely imitates and manifests in the Church the poverty, the chastity, the obedience Jesus Christ lived in the this world.

Finally, the life of the religious state uniquely testifies to the transcendence of God’s kingdom over all earthly concerns.

So today we honor Sister Mary James of the Meek Lamb of God and Sister John Mary of Laudem Gloriae. We thank God for their loving response to the highest of all callings.

Father Ray Ryland is CUF's spiritual advisor.

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