No, really, what does it mean to be a virgin?

Our society is so focused on the deflowered that one might wag that no one today really knows. Over the years, the definition has changed somewhat to reflect, er, usage. More recent dictionaries like the Oxford Collegiate state the definition as “a person who has not had sexual intercourse,” whereas my 1973 Webster’s dictionary defines it colloquially: “free of impurity or stain”. In 1828, Webster was more direct: “a woman without carnal knowledge of a man.”

One thing seems obvious. The definition of virginity is completely anchored in the reality of sexual intercourse. And, therefore, our understanding of sex will have an impact upon our appraisal of virginity. If sex is only a physical act, then virginity is also just a physical reality, or more accurately, a physical non-reality.  Virginity only has meaning in a universe where there is a sexual act to NOT undertake.

What is the opposite of virginity, then? Promiscuity? Profligate breeding? Suburban-mom-in-minivan-slurping-Starbucks-daycare-dropoff? We point to the Virgin Mary and celebrate that she is both Virgin and Mother, but it is hard to understand how that “dichotomy” can be united in one woman. Even she was not sure how she could be a mother. (Lk 1:31, 34)

In the story of Genesis, we remember that homo sapiens are created in the image and likeness of God. This divine creative spark means that all of our human actions are mirrors of a divine reality. So, to speak of physical, human virginity is to imply that there is also a state of virginity that is pure, undefiled, and ready to bring forth God’s love upon the earth.

In Reed of God, Caryll Houselander compares this element of the Virgin Mary’s psyche to a reed that becomes a flute. As it is being carved, it makes no noise, much less music. Any wind blown through it will be only an approximation of the potential of the music to come. Mary is full of the potential of God to love us, and to bring us to redemption.

So, the definition of virgin is related to this potential. And, in imitation of Mary, women do take on motherly roles, even outside of the physical act of becoming a mother. They take the potential given by God, and they nurture the human spirit. This is called spiritual maternity. Women are created to bring forth new life, even in situations that seem most hopeless and deeply burdened by sin and discouragement. It’s how we are wired – to bring forth life.

A woman is created to “receive” the seed of the man. She becomes pregnant through an action of the man. Her motherhood may be received, but it is through her active emotional and creative nurturing of the gift given to her by nature and grace that she truly becomes a mother.  It is by this means that all mothers embody their motherhood, most notably when a mother adopts a child. In caring for the child, we become intimately familiar with the possibilities, and limitations, of the child. We encourage, cajole, and even nag so that the child begins to feel his potential as well.

All Mary has to do in order to exercise her amazing, strange, unbelievable motherhood is to be that mother. The child is the gift. Her virginal womb brings Him forth, and He becomes our Messiah. But she does not stop being the Blessed Virgin because she is the Blessed Mother. She is both. And women, created in the image and likeness of God, always hold that potential within them, no less than the Virgin Mary herself. God is the one who brings forth life, the Giver of the gift of motherhood.

So, the opposite of mother and the opposite of virgin might be the same – being indifferent to the possibilities inherent in the gift of God in another human soul. If one is closed to the possibilities, one is neither mother nor virgin, at least judged by Christians. Mary is not a paradox, but a model for all women, a universal symbol of the meaning of human love in freedom. To the extent that women keep their minds and hearts pure before God in loving witness to the Gift of the Messiah, their virginal potential grows, expands and is made flesh.

So, when John Paul II talks about virginity for the sake of the Kingdom, he shows that those who unite themselves to the Lord and renounce earthly motherhood are not weird, or hiding from the demands of modern life. They are bearing witness to the potential of woman to find and nurture the highest virtues of the human soul. We really can be just like Mary, the Virgin Mother of God. Potentially.

[This reflection is part 6 of an occasional series of reflections on Pope John Paul II’s encyclical, On the Dignity and Vocation of Woman. Reprints of the first five installments can be found in the “Past Issues” tab.]