In Defense of Purity

by Dietrich von Hildebrand

  It is therefore essential to consecrated virginity that it should be an answer to the call of Jesus. Not only must it be freely chosen out of love for God with the intention of belonging more closely to Him; it must also be the answer to the mysterious invitation that Jesus addresses to the soul.6 It is this call which makes it something altogether supernatural. This truth finds expression in the sublime Preface for the profession of nuns. “Look down, O Lord, on these thy handmaidens who place the profession of their continence in Thy hands and bring to Thee the oblation whose purpose Thyself hast inspired. For how should the spirit enmeshed in mortal flesh overcome the law of nature, the craving of sense to take its freedom, the power of custom, and the sting of youth, if Thou, O God, didst not in Thy clemency enflame their free wills with this love of virginity, if in Thy loving kindness Thou didst not nourish this desire in their hearts, and if Thou didst not bestow the needful strength for its achievement?”

  It is now clear that virginity, as that renunciation of marriage whose motive is religion in the sense explained above, involves at the same time the renunciation of a great help on the way to God and therefore requires a special intention which transforms the renunciation into a transference of this function of marriage; it must be accompanied by special care to avoid all compensation from below, and before all else must be rooted in the conviction of an objective call from Jesus. We must keep all these factors well in mind when we now return to our problem, what it is that makes consecrated virginity in a peculiar sense a marriage with Christ.

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  1. I refer the reader to my book Marriage (New York: Longmans, Green, 1931). Consult further J. Mausbach’s important writings on this subject—also on points discussed earlier.

  2. Of course, by “apathy” we do not here mean the psychological exhaustion which, as a purely nervous reaction, follows a severe blow.

  3. We may here recall what St. Ambrose demands from a consecrated virgin: “The virgin’s purity consists in the integrity of her entire nature. The words that come from her lips, free from all bitterness, and full of sweetness and charm, are her virginal children” (De Virginibus, Bk. I, chap. 8). And again: “Thou must know thoroughly Him whom thou lovest—the entire secret of His being” (ibid., chap. 9). Tauler also: “In festo sanctorum omnium: The bride of Christ therefore must always be so minded that in nothing does she wish to please any one save God, if she will truly be called and be His bride.”

  4. Obviously the natural effect of the renunciation depends to a very large extent upon the intention with which consecrated virginity is chosen. But the most decisive factor will only become clear to us when we have learned what it is that constitutes the distinctive secret of that virginity.

  5. St. Anselm touches indirectly upon the decisive part played by vocation in the choice of virginity when he writes: “But every man hath his own gift from God, one thus, that is to say, that he should live in complete continence, but another thus, that wedded to one wife he should have connection with no other woman. The text is sufficient proof that not only continence is God’s gift, but also the chastity of the wedded. Since, therefore, both have been shown to be God’s gifts, we know from whom to ask them, if we have them not, and to whom our thanks are due, if we have them” (On 1 Cor. 7).

  6. Wherein this call of Jesus consists is another question. A miraculous intervention, as in the case of St. Paul, is obviously not required. The well-grounded conviction that we have been “called” may be reached in all sorts of ways. But an enthusiastic admiration of the religious life is never sufficient. The individual conviction that one is “called” is not, however, the important consideration. Greater weight must be attached on the one hand to Jesus’s general call embodied in His commendation of this state of life to everyone “who can receive it”; on the other to the external confirmation of the subjective belief by the spiritual director, and by the head of the order when a novice is admitted to profession. It is precisely by this external confirmation that the objective reality of a vocation, as opposed to a merely subjective enthusiasm, is expressed and guaranteed.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Virginity as an External Form of Life and the Outward Sign That All Things Are Forsaken for Jesus’s Sake

  WE HAVE ALREADY seen that, from the standpoint of asceticism and undividedness alike, the state of perfection represents a special way of belonging to God and constitutes a closer bond with Christ than other forms of the Christian life. We must point out, in the first place, that this is equally true from quite another point of view. We have considered hitherto how the religious life produces in practice a closer bond with God, is a path to that ultimate union with Him, enjoyed by the bride of our allegory, a means of purification and a guarantee against division. But it is also in itself an external expression of the life that is specifically for God. To stand before God naked, the world renounced for Jesus’s sake, to abandon the life of the world in order, as it were, to dwell in the presence of God (in conspectu Dei), to die to the world and self and live only with the life of Jesus, is distinctive of the religious state as a form of life, even quite apart from its psychological results for the individual. Just as marriage as a state of life is the external expression of unity between two human beings, apart from the union between the spouses which is a psychological effect of marriage as this unique community of life, “religion” as a form of life expresses life for God, unreserved appurtenance to Him. For in it the truth that “one thing is necessary” has assumed a concrete shape, its very existence is a witness to this word of eternal life. It embodies in visible form a preference of God to all His creatures. It therefore possesses in itself an objective value and significance, in itself it glorifies God, quite apart from the ascetic progress and the avoidance of division which may be its consequences. Normally, no doubt, these consequences ensue, and in turn by their psychological operation effect a closer union with God. But it obviously possesses this significance and value only when consecrated to God in the sense already explained, in other words, when it is truly an embodiment of love for Him.

  But apart from the fact that life in poverty, obedience, and chastity bears the external stamp of life for God, and is the adequate external expression of that interior attitude toward Him which distinguishes the mystical bride, this point of view discloses a new and characteristic motive for which the religious life is chosen. “Religion” is not only a way to closer union with God, it is also its result. Not only does the state of perfection as a form of life reflect outwardly the attitude of a bride; the choice of it is also an actual consequence, an organic embodiment of this fundamental union with Jesus. Love impels us to express the self-surrender it involves, to give it an external shape. It takes delight in sacrifice for the beloved, desires to show him that he is loved before and beyond everything else. The earthly bride leaves her parents’ house, breaks away from her life with those whose love has hitherto been her environment and to whom she belonged, in order to follow the man whom her love has chosen. Likewise the soul that is inebriated with the love of Jesus desires to forsake everything for His love, to stand before Him naked, listen for His voice alone, draw His glance into her heart, and with loins girt and lamp burning await the Bridegroom. Thus to forsake all things, to renounce the most precious treasures which in this life God’s goodness bestows upon us, to surrender every possession to Him, “the fairest of the sons of men,” to break away, the moment His call is heard, though surrounded by the most pressing obligations and bound by the closest ties, and to let go everything which was, so to speak, within our grasp, that henceforward our gaze may be fixed unswervingly upon Him and our arms outstretched in His worship—this constitutes a specific embodiment of this unmeasured and adoring love.

  It is impossible in this connection to consider the many points of view from which the excess of her love for Jesus drives the soul along this heroic road of total renunciation. Not only does “religion” perpetuate, as it were, the soul’s reply to Jesus’s call
to forsake all things for His sake, a reply which constitutes a peculiar organic expression and embodiment of love; it also appeals to the soul’s love for the Crucified, as a way of the Cross, a way of suffering and self-denial. The soul chooses suffering, to be conformed to Him who took upon Himself the suffering of the world, and to carry the Cross with Him; she will suffer that she may bathe in Jesus’s wounds and in her suffering be wedded to Him in a unique way; she will suffer because to suffer is to die, and to die for Christ, to lay down life for His sake, is the supreme expression of love and life in Him. The entire secret of the supernatural love in which the life of the saint consists, expressed in St. Paul’s words: “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain,” here dawns upon our vision.

  Even without attempting to distinguish the different factors (their strength continuously increased by their combination) which impel love to choose a life of poverty, obedience, and chastity, it is plain that we have to do here with an entirely new standpoint, wholly distinct from the ascetic or from that of undividedness, which enables us to understand why the state of perfection denotes a close form of appurtenance to God, or, in other words, is the appropriate external embodiment of man’s highest love for Jesus. Not only does the love which finds its expression in the forsaking of all things for Jesus’s sake, its fulfillment in the choice of suffering and a life of sacrifice for Him, represent, simply as such, a special bond with God inasmuch as it is the principle of the bride’s life, the solemn act in which that love issues; the choice of a life in poverty, chastity, and obedience signifies the conclusion of a bond with God, closer than that possessed by every living member of Christ’s mystical body. This deed of love constitutes a close form of appurtenance to God. Not every deed motived by a supreme love of God creates as such a bond of this kind. The mere fact that it is inspired by such a love is not enough. If, for example, a man from love of this kind vowed to fast for the rest of his life on bread and water, his vow would not in the same way produce a state of close union with God. The radical abandonment of the world, the standing before God naked, the renunciation of the highest earthly goods, the choice of the Cross, the death, which are effected by poverty, obedience, and chastity and by these alone, constitute not simply one among many possible results of a supreme love of Jesus, which could express itself equally well in some other vow, but the intrinsic and organic expression of that love, its objective embodiment. This, of course, does not mean that this supreme love and the intimacy with Jesus it involves is confined to those who choose the state of perfection. St. Elizabeth, St. Catherine of Genoa, St. Frances of Rome, St. Louis, and a host of other names bear witness that the soul’s inner relation to God is independent of her external state of life. But it remains true that the state of perfection as such, as a visible organic embodiment of this sovereign love, is the form in which a special appurtenance to God finds expression.

  The three different points of view from which the state of perfection constitutes a close form of possession by God, asceticism, undividedness, and the forsaking of all things for love, are obviously not disconnected. On the contrary, they are united by a close intrinsic bond, and, moreover, the higher point of view includes in a certain sense the lower. He who is truly undivided must already have been purified, or, at any rate, must will to be so, and he whose love is such that he will forsake all things because Jesus calls, and will follow Him on His way of the Cross, is already undivided and purified, or at least, has the will to be so. Ideally, indeed, when the world is renounced to live for Jesus alone in poverty, obedience, and chastity, one single act of supreme love of Jesus and of self-surrender to Him unites all these factors in an organic whole.

  It is therefore not only as a means of purification and of attaining undividedness that virginity constitutes a special form of possession by God, but also inasmuch as the state of consecrated virginity is the external embodiment of the choice to forsake all things for Jesus’s sake. The renunciation of marriage as the highest earthly good embodies that choice in an even more expressive form than the renunciation of property or freedom to be one’s own master.

  “Lo, we have forsaken all and followed Thee; what then shall we have? And Jesus said unto them, Truly I say unto you, that ye who have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His glory, also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone that hath left houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father or mother, or children, or lands, for my Name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold and shall inherit eternal life.” Is this possibly the clue to the secret which makes the virgin the bride of Christ in a sense so much stricter than is applicable to any other soul, and which invests virginity with so exquisite and heavenly a fragrance? Does it, perhaps, consist in the fact that the choice of virginity is the distinctive deed of that love which forsakes all for Jesus’s sake, inasmuch as the renunciation of the partnership of life and love constituted by marriage is the greatest and most profound renunciation, and because the dearest, the noblest, and the greatest thing in the whole world is given up? Is this the secret of which Our Lord said, “Who can receive it, let him receive it”? It is not. The man who leaves his wife for Jesus’s sake makes the same choice with the same irrevocable determination. But in this latter case the element of integrity, a specific factor of the special bond with God, is wanting. No doubt, virginity is a typical case of forsaking all things, but it is not the only one. The decision to forsake everything on the spot, to wrench oneself from the dearest ties at the call of Jesus, is also typically accomplished by those who, like several apostles, leave their wives.

  But the most conclusive proof that the clue is not to be found here is the fact that, so far as this function is concerned, virginity does not differ essentially from poverty and obedience. Like these, virginity represents, though in an even higher degree, the forsaking of all things, and thereby effects as they do, if in a greater measure, that close union with God which from this standpoint expresses in a particularly characteristic form the attitude of the bride in our allegory; but in this respect it involves no completely new element as compared with poverty and obedience. We must therefore look for yet another factor, a factor peculiar to virginity alone, which will explain why the consecrated virgin is the bride of Christ in a far more literal sense than the person who is wedded to Christ only in the sense of our parable.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Secret of Virginity as Wedlock with Christ

  TO DETECT that unique and mysterious factor of virginity on which the wedding with Christ is based we must recall that natural mystery we discovered in sex. We saw that in a certain sense sex is the secret of every human being and that the disclosure of this secret to another creature and the delivery of it to that other in wedlock constitutes a self-surrender and self-donation of a wholly unique kind. Even the supreme and most complete surrender of the soul to some other human being who is dearer than life itself and in whose soul we plunge our own by a profound mutual discovery and understanding in Jesus, is, nevertheless, not equivalent to that mysterious external self-delivery which takes place in the act of marriage. This may seem a hard saying, since the surrender of the heart to another is something higher and more valuable than the surrender of the body. But just because the surrender inherent in love as such is in itself something higher and nobler, its content is far more inexhaustible; it is, indeed, in the last resort a participation in the infinite love of Jesus. Unlike the latter it belongs to eternity; not only surviving beyond the grave, but only then attaining its most perfect fulfillment and a completeness which corresponds to its lofty rank as a quality. While still confined by the limitations of his earthly life man is unable to surrender himself in love of this kind so decisively, so entirely, so objectively, and so irrevocably. On earth it is not in our power without the cooperation of the body to give our heart to another creature in the same way as when the body plays its part. In eternity alone will it be possible. The sacrifice of one
’s life denotes a somewhat similar surrender, inasmuch as in that sacrifice already here on earth a human being surrenders himself as this numerical individual, this complete whole. There can be no doubt that many saints who were not martyrs, St. Francis, for example, have possessed a love far greater than is necessary for a man to shed his blood for God. But the martyr’s death is, notwithstanding, a unique gift of the entire self.1 Similarly, the self-surrender of sexual union, in which we lay bare to another the secret of our own person and share in that of another person, finds no analogy among any other relationships between creatures. By the sexual union and by it alone can that donation of self be made in which the entire man is given as a complete unit, and which constitutes between the partners a nuptial bond, a union of a wholly unique kind.2