By JAMES MONTI
Advent is a season we journey though in the company of our Lady. For her sacred pregnancy was indeed the first Advent, an Advent of nine months that culminated in the first Christmas.
The Advent Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe testifies to this association, for the miraculous image of Guadalupe, revealed on December 12 during Advent of 1531, possesses details that show the Blessed Virgin in a late stage of pregnancy.
The universally observed Advent Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception takes us back to the very first moment of Mary’s existence, when she came forth from the hands of God already fashioned for her future mission as the Mother of God. While this latter feast celebrates our Lady’s freedom from all sin, original and actual, it also serves to remind us of one particular dimension of her sinlessness — her virginal purity.
This aspect of Mary’s mission runs like a thread through the beginning of the Church’s liturgical year. In her celebration of the seasons of Advent and Christmas, the Church recounts the sacred mystery of the virginal conception and birth of our Savior. Our Lady’s firm intention of remaining a virgin is obvious from the question she asks the Angel Gabriel: “How can this be, since I have no husband?” (Luke 1:34).
Mary was already betrothed to St. Joseph; their marriage would not be long in coming, so there would have been no reason to ask this unless she intended to live her marriage in perpetual continence.
In a July 1996 general audience, Pope St. John Paul II (1920-2005) stressed that the virginal conception of Christ in the womb of Mary is a teaching not only drawn from Church Tradition but also expressly affirmed by the Scriptures. He categorically rejected the attempts of certain modern biblical scholars to deny or explain away the scriptural testimony in this regard:
“The structure of the Lucan text (cf. Luke 1:26-38; 2:19, 51) resists any reductive interpretation. Its coherence does not validly support any mutilation of the terms or expressions which affirm the virginal conception brought about by the Holy Spirit” (general audience, July 10, 1996, L’Osservatore Romano, July 17, 1996, n. 1, p. 11).
By bringing about our salvation through the instrumentality of a perpetual virgin, our Lord teaches us the importance of chastity in all its forms, in every state of life — the importance of purity. Our Lady herself, by her unique vocation, stands as an exemplar of chastity for both the unmarried and the married, for she was at one and the same time a perpetual virgin and a wife and mother.
This essential virtue of purity is a veritable gateway to the spiritual life, as it was for our Lady: “Mary wanted a virginal life, because she was motivated by the desire to give her whole heart to God” (Pope St. John Paul II, ibid., n. 5).
It was in His Sermon on the Mount that our Lord proclaimed the virtue of purity: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8).
In his work In Defense of Purity, Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1977) describes purity as a “surrender” to “the splendour which attaches to everything united indissolubly with God the Holy of Holies.” The pure man gazes “unswervingly” upon this splendour: “His countenance is turned to God, and he rejects everything which would compel him to fly from His face, everything whose nature is in any way incompatible with this splendour and cannot endure the divine gaze” (In Defense of Purity, Sheed and Ward, 1935, p. 66).
In the state of perpetual virginity, or celibacy, we find purity in its highest, most perfect form. It is a total and permanent giving of oneself for the Kingdom of God. Those consecrated to God in this manner bring down torrents of grace upon the Church and in a singular manner make straight the way of the Lord in their own lives and in the life of the universal Church. The childlike manner with which St. Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897) expressed her “Little Way” that has captivated so many is but the fruit of the virginal innocence of her consecrated soul.
Chaste souls foster the virtue of purity in those who come in contact with them. One of the French missionary priests who personally knew the Mohawk maiden St. Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680) said of her, “Virginity, continency, chastity were the balm she spread everywhere” (Fr. Claude Chauchetiere, SJ, in The Positio of the Historical Section of the Sacred Congregation of Rites on the Introduction of the Cause for Beatification and Canonization and on the Virtues of the Servant of God Katharine Tekakwitha, Fordham University Press, 2002, document 8, p. 189).
Several of those who knew the Irish maiden Venerable Edel Mary Quinn (1907-1944) speak of her purity as radiating from her to the point that her very presence precluded any thoughts against chastity in those around her.
Conjugal chastity, temperance in the exercise of the conjugal privileges of matrimony, has been praised by the Church from the beginning. In his encyclical on matrimony Casti Connubii, Pope Pius XI (1857-1939) affirms: “…matrimonial faith demands that husband and wife be joined in an especially holy and pure love, not as adulterers love each other, but as Christ loved the Church” (Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930, n. 23, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Vatican online text).
There are references to conjugal chastity even in the Old Testament, most notably in the prayer that the young Tobias offers together with his bride Sarah on their wedding night: “And now, O Lord, I am not taking this sister of mine because of lust, but with sincerity. Grant that I may find mercy and may grow old together with her” (Tobit 8:7).
The fact that the greatest and happiest of marriages, that of our Lady and St. Joseph, was lived in perfect and perpetual continence attests the importance of conjugal chastity in every marriage.
We live in a culture where children can lose their innocence at a shockingly early age. Conjugal chastity provides a healthy atmosphere for a couple’s children that serves to protect their innocence. For the sake of the Lord, and for the sake of their children, couples need to exercise conjugal chastity not only in their actions but also in their words, in how they speak of marriage and procreation.
There is no excuse whatsoever for raunchy humor. There is something particularly insidious about such humor in that it desensitizes the heart and mind to sin. Parents have both the duty and the right to be the guardians of their children’s innocence.
Courtship, that unique form of human friendship between a young man and a young woman that gradually, almost imperceptibly, ripens into a mutually perceived call to matrimony, is ennobled and made beautiful when all its expressions and manifestations are chaste.
In a poem about matrimony St. Paulinus of Nola (+431) eloquently describes marriage as the bringing together of those who have kept themselves pure, writing, “Harmonious souls are united in chaste love, a celibate young man of Christ, a virginal young woman of God” (Poem 25; Latin text in W. Von Hartel, ed., Sancti Pontii Meropii Paulini Nolani: Camina, Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1999, p. 238).
The courtship of Saints Louis and Zelie Martin (+1894 and +1877 respectively), the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux, began with an innocent glance that the two exchanged when providentially they happened to pass each other on a bridge.
The beauty of courtship is poisoned and destroyed by the sin of “living together” before marriage. Compassion for those who have fallen in this regard must never be allowed to desensitize us to the reality that fornication and adultery are grave moral evils that ruin people’s lives. But by the mercy of God, thankfully, the Sacrament of Confession can and does undo that ruin: “…though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18).
Purity requires vigilance in guarding what we see or hear, and what we refuse to see or hear, in governing our thoughts, our words, and our actions. Christian modesty in clothing is essential to preserving this virtue. Martyrs like St. Maria Goretti (1890-1902) remind us that there is no price too high to pay for the preservation of one’s purity.
Adore The Christ Child
From the doctrine of the virginal birth, that our Lady did not lose her physical virginity even in giving birth to the Lord, it follows that she did not experience the physical labor pains of childbirth, a conclusion held from the Patristic Era onward. Thus our Lady’s virginity becomes part of the “peace on earth” that the angels proclaimed to the shepherds (cf. Luke 2:14), for her giving birth was completely peaceful — truly a “Silent Night.”
Indeed, across the centuries, the virtue of purity has brought “peace on earth.” By bridling the passions, it gives the soul the peace needed to hear the voice of God, to know His holy will. By contrast, impurity brings wild disorder to the heart and mind — it blinds the soul from perceiving the face of God.
Purity is not some dreamy ideal that only a few exceptional souls can aspire to. Rather, it is part of the universal call to discipleship, the universal call to holiness, that our Lord proclaimed in the Beatitudes.
At this time of year when Christmas festivities so readily bring to mind the pure innocence of childhood, let us all turn to the sacraments to fortify us in the virtue of holy purity. And let us imitate the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph in adoring the Christ Child with chaste hearts.
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