And You Are Christ's: The Charism of Virginity and the Celibate Life

By Thomas Dubay

Father Thomas Dubay, one of the foremost authorities on the religious life, discusses one of the most important but not fully appreciated or understood charisms of the consecrated life, the charism of virginity. Although the idea of virginity is unpopular and even despised in modern society, Dubay emphasizes that the importance of evangelical virginity is rooted in its Biblical foundation, both in the Old and New Testaments.

Examining in detail what the call to virginity is and how it is integrated into the whole of consecrated life, Dubay presents his study in such a way as to be of importance to men as well. Noting that a woman, because of her feminine nature and traits, can image and live the Church's wedded relationship to Christ more realistically, Dubay points out that men with the celibate charism are also members of the virgin Church that is wedded to Christ, just as in the Old Testament the People of God was a virgin bride wedded to Yahweh. The common and distinct elements of male and female consecrated love are fully captured in these pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ignatius Press
• Release date: Jun 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9781681490373

Thomas Dubay

Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M., is a retreat master and spiritual director for religious communities around the country, as well as a highly regarded speaker at conferences and retreats for lay people in North America. He has hosted five different 13-part television series on the topics of spirituality and prayer, and is the best-selling author of such acclaimed spiritual works as Fire Within, Prayer Primer and Happy Are You Poor.

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PREFACE

The idea of virginity is not popular in the worldly world. What was formerly referred to as a woman’s honor has in the erotomania of our day become almost a dishonor. It is often considered as a deprivation at best, an illness at worst. Nonetheless we shall in these pages retain the biblical word virginity with not the least apology for it. Because this term designates a primal, unspoiled, total readiness for one Beloved, there is no reason why we should allow the secular mind to co-opt a beautiful reality, reduce it to a mere physical condition, and then proceed to denigrate what it does not understand.

Evangelical virginity is always a consecrated freshness, a complete self-gift to the divine Beloved. It is also an ecclesial charism, for the individual virgin is a woman who lives in a calm but intense manner what the whole Church is, a virgin bride married to one Husband, Christ the Lord (2 Cor 11:2). She is a woman whose whole attention is focused on him, just as the Church has no other raison d’être than a profound love covenant and communion with the Word and his Father through their Holy Spirit.

A Word to Men

This biblical revelation posed a problem to me when at the outset I had to decide on the precise audience this book should address. On the one hand virginity is not considered in our society as a trait of men, even chaste men. For us a virgin is a young woman who has preserved her chastity. On the other hand there is no good reason why one half of our population should be excluded from what the New Testament and our theology have to say about the positive grandeur of a complete chastity given to the Lord and to his people.

It is of course true that because of her feminine nature and its typical traits the woman can image and live the Church’s wedded relationship to Christ more realistically and more attractively than can a man. But it is also true that the whole Church, women and men alike, is a virgin wedded to Christ, just as in the Old Testament the people of God was a virgin bride wedded to Yahweh.

Just as on the natural plane women and men differ widely in their outlook on reality, so too do they vary in their attraction to the life of consecrated celibacy. Normal women are readily drawn to the Pauline imagery of the Church as the beautiful bride married to Christ. A woman’s whole bent is toward persons and love. Drawn naturally to the male and his characteristics, a woman with the virginal charism and responding fully to its implications of a total, burning love for God, easily sees herself as given in a heavenly marriage to the eternal Word of God become man. She has no problem in seeing her life, not as an impersonal career—a job to be done—but as Saint Paul describes it, giving her undivided and chaste attention to one Beloved.

A man sees consecrated celibacy somewhat differently. His attraction centers on the towering and virile figure of Christ as one normal man is drawn, with not the least erotic overtones, to another extraordinary man—but immeasurably more so, for this extraordinary man is also the very Son of God. When the male responds fully to his celibate gift and thus begins to grow in a total, burning love for Christ, he sees himself not, obviously, as a bride, but as an intimate friend and brother. Such actually is another way Jesus addresses himself to his chosen intimates: I shall not call you servants any more . . . I call you friends [beloved ones] (Jn 15:15).

Yet men with the celibate charism need to be reminded that they, along with all men and women, are members of the virgin Church wedded to one husband. Before God each person is receptive, feminine. As a young man rejoices in his bride, so the Lord rejoices in his people (Is 62:5). And this bride-people, bedecked with her jewels, in turn rejoices with all her heart in her God (Is 61:10). Virile Paul not only speaks of the whole Corinthian church as a virgin wedded to the one husband, Christ Jesus, but also speaks of himself as being in labor as he begets them by proclaiming the good news (2 Cor 11:2; 1 Cor 4:15). The virgin Church is also Mother Church, and all of us are her members.

These pages therefore do envision celibate men who have dedicated their whole beings to God alone in and through the Church. Most of what we have to say applies equally to women and to men, and even in those sections that are best seen in the former proper applications will not be difficult for the latter.

While we are speaking specifically to men, it may be well to address a word to the allegation often made against the Church’s requirement of celibacy for priests in her Latin rite. It is said that celibacy should be a free choice, a fully willed commitment. True indeed. It is also added that it ought not to be exacted or imposed as a price for the sacerdotal office. True again. It is further said that men should not be forced to forego marriage when they desire to serve God’s people through the sacrament of orders. This argument appears persuasive to some people, but actually it has no substance. No one is forced to priesthood or to celibacy. In the first century we already read in the pastoral letters that the infant Church was aware that it could choose its leaders according to their marital status, that they be married no more than once (1 Tim 3:2; Titus 1:6). The Church in later centuries, aware of the same authority, has found it beneficial to choose most of its leadership from among those with the celibate charism, that is, from those who are not called to marriage at all. Knowing this decision and the divine authority behind it (whatever you bind on earth. . .) men in the Latin rite are foolish to seek the priesthood if they do not have and gladly accept the celibacy. God does not fight the Church he himself established and authorized to act in his name. When he calls to the priesthood, in the Roman rite he ordinarily extends the call to those to whom he has already given the gift of celibacy. Since no one may claim the priestly office as a right, the Church is well justified in selecting her ordained leaders from those who freely and willingly choose celibate dedication. Nothing is imposed on them.

A Note for Women

Because this volume on its every page clearly envisions the consecrated woman, our comment here is brief. The female virgin enjoys a loftier place in the divine economy of salvation than is commonly supposed. Her feminine gifts and qualities eminently fit her for living concretely and imaging fully what the whole Church is, the virgin bride of Christ. While the ordained ministry of men is directly concerned with service, the virgin’s role is directly pointed to a loving communion with the Lord himself. Her vocation lies at the core reality of the ekklesia, the biblical one thing to gaze on the beauty of the Lord (see Ps 27:4).

All the structures in the Church—offices, laws, institutions, chanceries, and curias—are aimed at fostering this core reality in all her members of both sexes. The consecrated woman’s primary thrust is at the heart, the eternal immersion in the Trinity: It will not be taken from her (Lk 10:42). She has, therefore, a great deal to teach men about essential ecclesial reality, about how to be church, about how to love and nurture life and bring it to everlasting completion. It is disappointing in the extreme to see small, noisy groups of women clamor loudly for mere power, to see them losing something of their femininity as they strive to become like men, in the process neglecting or possibly in some cases despising their own womanly qualities, privileges, and destiny. Speaking of the lofty, Marian role women have in the Church, a role in which even males participate, for the whole ekklesia is feminine, Hans Urs von Balthasar remarks that the woman who would strive for the male role in the Church thus strives for something less and denies the more which she is. This can be overlooked only by a feminism that has lost the sense for the mystery of sexual difference, which has functionalized sexuality and attempts to increase the dignity of woman by bringing about her