VIRGIN AND MOTHER

VIRGIN AND MOTHER 

            A woman who holds virginity and motherhood in balance demonstrates the sanctifying power of differentiation. She is both apart from and part of the human condition. The virgin is the reserved figure who does not design herself in terms of her relationships with men. The virgin is barren through choice or misfortune. Her energy is inner directed. The mother is fecund. She is creative of live and ongoing nurture. By an exceptional providence that leaves nature wondering, Mary was virgin yet fruitful.

            The Gospel presents Jesus’ conception as the unexpected manifestation of God’s creative power and as an aspect of the mystery of the divine and human in Jesus. The Gospel, as we know, was the distillate of the community’s belief and teaching. Mathew and Luke wrote their accounts (around AD 80) to express a faith they already had in the virginal conception. It is to the virginal conception rather than to a natural one that Elizabeth refers when she declares to Mary, “Blessed is she who believed that the Lord’s word to her would find fulfilment.” No belief would really be required if Mary were to conceive as any young girl would conceive. Mary’s human difficulty – “I have no relations with a man” – was creatively overcome without loss of virginity through “the power of the Most High”, with the result that Jesus was only the “supposed (not genetic) son” of Joseph. And if Joseph were the natural father of Jesus, it would be impossible to explain the dominant emphasis on Mary in the infancy narrative.

            Both the evangelists, Mathew and Luke, agree that the Annunciation came after the “betrothal” of Mary and Joseph but before Mary had come to live in Joseph’s home, so that Mary was a virgin at the time of the Annunciation. In both Mathew and Luke the angelic message states that Mary will give birth through the Holy Spirit’s action. This is most extraordinary, and could not have been invented by the Christian narrators. If they drew on the Old Testament for parallels and precedents they would only have stories suggesting the obstacles of sterility and barrenness. There was nothing in the Old Testament that would have suggested the obstacles of a virgin (approximately aged 14 years) who was not to have marital relations with her husband.

We may contemplate the spiritual value of Mary’s virginity. Virginity normally excludes motherhood; but it does it indirectly, as far as it directly excludes the marital act. Mary’s virginity finds in her motherhood the full realisation of its purpose of total consecration to God, her Son. Her motherly love is exclusively at the service of Jesus in his work as Saviour. Thus Mary witnesses to the supernatural fruitfulness of virginal love in the Church. The Catholic Church is active witness to Mary’s virginity through the thousands of her children who free themselves by the vow of chastity for a life of selfless service to all humanity.

In the late Pope Paul VI’s exhortation, “Marialis Cultus”, he noted “a certain disaffection for the cult of Mary and a difficulty in taking her as a model for today” because of the changed circumstances. Modern women do not live in the same world as women of the Middle East in the time of Christ. To this Pope Paul replies that Our Lady is proposed as a model not for her particular cultural life-style but for her faith. So Mary is the type (model) of the disciple, and as such for all men as well as women.