Introduction

Much has been said about the Mary the virgin. This is not a debate I wish to enter now, except to state that today’s advent meditation on Mary invites us to be virgins. We are all invited to be spiritual virgins because the incarnation is a universal principle, not a one-off event. The incarnation is a universal principle because when God became Jesus, God said “yes” to physicality, “yes” to matter. God is always coming into the world, moment by moment, through each of us virgins birthing divinity into materiality.

Mary is a symbol of humankind’s acceptance of God

It is said that Jesus is how God offers the holiness of God’s divinity to humanity, how God is available to humankind. Mary is how humankind offers the holiness of humanity to God’s divinity, a symbol of humankind saying yes to the presence of God. In other words, If Jesus is a living symbol of how God totally gives Godself to creation, then Mary is living symbol of how humanity gratefully and fully receives the gift of God. That is why for some Anglo Catholics there is a devotion to Mary, she represents all of us. When we like Mary are able to say “Let it be,” then we are truly spiritual virgins, and have arrived at Christmas fully prepared and ready.

What does it mean to be a spiritual virgin?

A virgin is one without history, likewise a spiritual virgin discontinues the God of history and gives birth to the God of eternity.

 

The moment when we teach about God, the moment when we preach about God, the moment when we draw a picture of God, we are at that moment continuing the God of history, the God of the history of the church, the God of the history of religions, and the God of human history.

 

The moment when we experience God in the secret cave of the heart, the moment when we find God deep within ourselves as our truest selves, that present experience of God is the experience of the God of eternity, and at that moment we have become spiritual virgins.

 

The God of history is a “second-hand” experience of God offered through liturgy, hymns, preaching and teaching, it is the faith of our Sunday school teachers. The God of eternity is the firsthand experience of God when one is fully present to the present.

 

What is being described today, needs to be said. Some will intrinsically and immediately understand. Some may be confused and wonder what I am talking about. That is okay, one day the experience will become clear and you will know immediately within your own experience what it means to be a spiritual virgin.

 

It is okay to not fully understand because Moses also did not understand. Moses, a shepherd, looks after his father-in-law’s sheep in the deserts of Midianite territory. Moses would have spent hours in silence and solitude, caring for sheep in the wilderness areas. One day he passes vegetation that he passes nearly every day for the last 40 years, but this time the vegetation seems to be aflame with the presence of God. Moses has a mystical experience when he  encounters the presence of God at “a burning bush”. He says “Who are you God”. God says: “I am who I am.” In other words, the God of eternity. Moses says: ‘I don’t have a clue what that means.” It was difficult for Moses to relate to that eternal aspect of God. God says, okay, “ I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob.” In other words, the God of history.

 

The God of history desires continuity; divides human beings and demands loyalty. The God of history lies at the heart of religious wars and denominational conflict. God desires that human beings be free from this God of history and authority. The Virgin Mary was chosen by God to discontinue the God of history, (the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob) and give birth to God of ‘I am who I am’. This child, born of a virgin, is not identified with the past but with eternity. This child is not called son of Mary or Joseph, but the Child of God.

 

“Le point vierge”

How do we become spiritual virgins? E become spiritual virgins by living from the eternal centre of our beings.  Thomas Merton describes a “le point vierge” [a virgin point] at the centre of his being:

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God …. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is so to speak His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely ... I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is every- where.

 

Thomas Merton says he cannot define le point vierge so he describes his sudden “realization” while on the corner of 4th and Walnut in Louisville. While shopping Thomas gazes across the many other shoppers and is enraptured:

Then it was as if I saw the secret beauty in their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes.”

 

This is the le point vierge – the virgin point. At the moment of this experience Thomas Merton has discovered that he is a spiritual virgin.

 

The point of being a spiritual virgin means that we give birth to or we manifest the divine attributes of love and compassion in our human relationships. We are all meant to be mothers of God, as the Swiss Hans von Balthaser says:

We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not take place within myself? And, what good it is to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of Man is begotten in us (von Balthasar, Love Alone Is Credible, trans. D. C. Schindler, 2005, p. 42).

 

Richard Rohr responds to this quote:

As a man who has taken a vow of celibacy, I will never know what it is like to physically give birth, nor have I ever held the hand of a woman I love in labour—neither sister nor friend. However, I have experienced the birth of Christ in the world many times throughout my life—in big ways and small, sometimes through grand gestures, but more often through simple acts of patience, love, and mercy. To incarnate the Christ is to live out the Gospel with our lives, as faithfully and fearlessly as a woman in labor who holds nothing back in order to bring new life into the world. Center for Action and Contemplation 2020. : https://cac.org/becoming-icons-of-christ-2020-12-11.

We gestate God into the world through every act of love, kindness, gentleness, empathy, and compassion. Sister Illia Delio describes birthing divinity into the world on macro and micro levels:

We can read the history of our 13.7-billion-year-old universe as the rising up of Divine Love incarnate, which bursts forth in the person of Jesus, who reveals love’s urge toward wholeness through reconciliation, mercy, peace, and forgiveness. Jesus is the love of God incarnate, the wholemaker who shows the way of evolution toward unity in love. In Jesus, God breaks through and points us in a new direction; not one of chance or blindness but one of ever-deepening wholeness in love. In Jesus, God comes to us from the future to be our future. Those who follow Jesus are to become wholemakers, uniting what is scattered, creating a deeper unity in love. Christian life is a commitment to love, to give birth to God in one’s own life and to become midwives of divinity in this evolving cosmos. We are to be wholemakers of love in a world of change (in Oneing 1.1 page 22)

 

In this final week of advent, we are all invited to be mothers of God, birthing the divine attributes of love, compassion, empathy and kindness into the world. Mary’s story is one that we treasure. Kathleen Norris writes that she treasures the icon of Mary because it confronts her with a powerful question: When the mystery of God’s love breaks through into my consciousness, do I run from it? . . . Or am I virgin enough to respond from my deepest, truest self, and say something new, a “yes” that will change me forever? [2]

Sources

·          Delio, Ilia. 2013.  Love at the Heart of the Universe in The Perennial Tradition. Oneing: vol. 1, no. 1. Note: This edition of  Oneing is out of print.

·          Norris, Kathleen . 1999. Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith. (New York: Riverhead Books). Pages 74-77.

·          Rohr, Richard. 2020. Giving Birth to Christ: Becoming Icons of Christ.
Center for Action and Contemplation on Friday, December 11, 2020. Accessed from: https://cac.org/becoming-icons-of-christ-2020-12-11.

von Balthasar, Hans Urs. 2005. Love Alone Is Credible. trans. Schindler, D C. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press). First edition. Note: this quote is wrongly attributed to Meister Eckhardt.