The Importance of the Most Pure Mother of God for Us: Through Mary, We Become Sinless
COMMENT: Could you talk about the relationship between Jesus and his Mother in the Church? A teacher of religion in our parish wasn't able to answer the class's question on why it was fitting for Mary to be without sin and a virgin. Could you explain why it was fitting?
If I were giving such a religion class, I would start by getting the class to consider why they ask this question, why it is a problem for them. What would be the point of talking about the virginity and purity of the Holy Virgin Mary when most teenagers today have very little respect for virginity?
Besides theologically you can’t give an explanation of something which is a matter of faith. You believe it because God revealed it. The only explanation you can give is of the fittingness of the truth revealed. If God does something and you ask why He did it, it wouldn't be a matter of faith because faith is the evidence of things unseen. (Heb 11:1) If you asked why God did something, you would be implying that He could be moved by something outside of Himself. You can only explain the fittingness of the Virgin's virginity after the facts, and the facts are what you believe by faith. If God had wanted to he could have used a notorious sinner, but it would be fitting for a virgin to be the Mother of God because there should be a proportion between the integrity of the One Who is brought forth and the one from whom He is brought forth. And since the One Who was brought forth in the Incarnation was the God-Man, it was fitting that there should be perfect integrity in the Virgin Mary, the Mother of the God-Man.
But in explaining something to a class there are two things to consider: 1) what you're explaining and 2) how you explain it.
Maybe a good thing to talk about in the context of the class of teenagers and their disbelief in the Virgin’s purity would be the question: What is so attractive about impurity? Or why are you so attracted it? Or why not if you’re not? Assuming that people here are normal and in one way or another attracted to sex, an interesting question would be why is it so attractive? Don’t you think there is a connection between the attractiveness of sex and the Trinity, between the act of carnal generation and the eternal generation of the Word? Because sex is ordered to the generative act and the Word is generated eternally. It is significant that the Word is generated by the Father and a word is a concept, so the generation of the Word is both intellectual and living. Even the word "conception" is significant, because a conception can be intellectual or organic. Man being rational as well as animal would participate in a generation which is intellectual; an animal participates in a generative act which is merely carnal.
But the shortcoming of intellectual generation, which is more perfect in itself because it is spiritual, is that carnal generation terminates in the living thing while all our concepts are sterile. So the act of generation which terminates in something living is more real and more vital than the most powerful intellectual concept. While animals seek their proper fulfillment in an act of carnal generation, at the same time man would be perverse if he ended up with nothing but an abstract intellectual generation. This would show why man intellectually would be longing for the Word, because God is at once intellectual and living. The fulfillment of man, therefore, would not be in that knowledge of God which we would get by the proof of his existence and the demonstration of his attributes; what we crave is intimate union with Him. We want to be one with the very God Who is the eternal generation of the Word.
You can begin to see that all impurity - which is the infinitizing of the generative act - must be motivated by the desire to attain through the sexual act a fulfillment like the eternal generation of the Word: intimate organic union with the living God who can only be reached spiritually, and intimately possessed only through participation in the divine life itself. The desire for God is natural, but incapable of natural achievement. Without the special help of God, we wouldn't attain it.
The reason why it seems that sex is so attractive is that since God is Eternal Generation and we are made to his image and likeness, we have a desire for eternal generation, so that all impurity is the infinitizing of generation, that is, of carnal generation. The act of carnal generation itself is not impure, but to want to get out of that act what you should be getting from God is impure.
So given the fact that we're made to the likeness of God who is Eternal Generation, and given the fact that we cannot attain that by our natural powers, it would seem that without the faith by which we can attain it, we would be motivated to seek in carnal generation what we cannot obtain spiritually. So without faith there can be no real purity; without faith there would be either neurotics who deny sex or pigs who center their lives around it. In other words, seeing that there is a natural need in all of us for ecstasy and the ecstasy has its fulfillment in God through the vision of God and through mystical experience in this life, if you can't have ecstasy you will look for sex, because sex will seem like the best way to get out of yourself - and it does take you out of yourself better than alcohol or drugs.
This can be the only possible explanation of the problem of impurity in our time. It has been said that more souls are lost through impurity than through any other sins and this is because no one has ever told them what they're looking for and how to get it. I can see a difficulty in this, though, because you might think it sounds like pie in the sky - I mean the ecstasy of the vision of God - and then you would say, what do I do in the meantime, until I get to heaven?
COMMENT: Yes, how do you resolve that, especially when you're tempted to be impure?
It isn't as though you wait to get to heaven to have this experience; the ecstasy of living in God and abandoning yourself to him from one moment to the next is the fulfillment of this desire now, in this life. But when that desire for God is frustrated, then you would seek to get that ecstasy out of sex.
But since the fulfillment of our nature even in this life is in being abandoned to God from one moment to the next, there is this difficulty, which relates to the purity of the Mother of God, that we know instinctively that God can't love anything dirty and we would also know that we are dirty. So unless that problem is resolved, we will still be stuck in ourselves and then you will look for someone else who has the same problem in order to get out of yourselves together. So unless you believe in your own holiness, that ecstasy in God in this life will seem inaccessible to you and you will gravitate toward sexual ecstasy.
But how can you believe in your own holiness when you have all that evidence to the contrary? The only answer is that you know by faith that you're holy in Christ. And this implies, of course, your relationship to His Mother. So the solution of the whole problem of impurity, as with everything else, is to believe in your own holiness, and it is only in her that you have that holiness. "One alone is my love."(Cant 6:8) We're holy because by the grace of God we share in her sinlessness, conformed to the Father as we are reborn in her. So unless you believe in the Mother of God, who is also our Mother, you can’t believe in your own holiness. And it follows that if you don't have that devotion to her you won't be holy; without that ecstasy in God realized in His Mother - "Thy breasts are better than wine” (Cant 1:1) - you'll look for ecstasy in your flesh or else you'll repress it and get neurotic.
The practical resolution has to be existential because the only thing that is real is now. So whatever you're doing, whatever happens at this moment, you can be sure that if you're not peaceful, actually or virtually your genitals will get the upper hand.
COMMENT: I always used to trust my emotions.
Emotions is such a nice word, but what we have to realize is that our weakness is "con-genital". That is the truth that Freud uncovered. Christianity is still in a state of shock about it so pastors quietly send disturbed religious to psychiatrists because they seem to be acquainted with the facts of life. So whenever you're disturbed it is actually or virtually because you think, if I had money, or virtue, or popularity, or something, I would be loved. At the bottom of everything is disbelief: you don't believe you can be loved by God. And the only antidote is that when you're disturbed you should go to God at once, believing that you're holy in Him. Of course, if this makes your whole life out to be a lie, I don't expect you to embrace it with enthusiasm! So you’ll either say, I don't think it's true, or I don't understand it. It would be pretty hard to accept, too, if you thought your whole life had been wasted. That is why we have the good thief on the cross whose whole life had been wasted. So that is the story on our own impurity and the Most Pure Mother of God, the whole story reduced to what really makes you tick.
COMMENT: Could you say something more about our holiness in the Mother of God?
Well, remember the last words of Jesus on the Cross: "Behold thy Mother”(Jn 19:27)? Why would He make a point of telling John, behold thy Mother? As we all know, He wasn't saying it only to John but to the whole Church. The need for purity, the need to be holy in order to be loved by God, is instinctive. That is why we're ashamed of impurity. Well, if you have any ideas about what makes you holy, those are just ideas. What makes you holy is that you're brought forth by the same Mother who brought forth Jesus: that's holiness. So if you're trying to support yourself by some idea you have, it is like trying to generate yourself. In Scripture it says, "Shall a nation be brought forth because Zion is in labor?"(Is 66:8) The Mother of God didn't just bring forth Christ: she brought forth the whole Church. All women are the daughters of Eve and they possess purity only in virtue of Mary. So it is only through faith in her sinlessness that you can believe in your own purity and the purity of women.
It comes down to this, that man has a natural love of God, but it is frustrated without faith. The existential reality of loving God is as we love Him in Jesus and in His Mother. If a person loves purely he might not even be aware of that, but that is what is behind it; in ourselves we wouldn't even seek the love of God because we wouldn't think we could get it. To have faith and to be aware that you have faith isn't always the same thing. People who are really good, whether they know it or not, are motivated by faith. You can prove the existence of God without faith but then you don't posses God; in some way you have Him through an image. So we could intellectually be aware of God but that wouldn't mean that we were united with God through Christ. The only way you can know Jesus Christ and His Mother is by believing in them because God revealed it. The motive is the revelation of God: not your own knowledge. Your own knowledge, in fact, would give you a sense of frustration because you wouldn't be able to get the very thing you want. I think that is how God works, because all people who are simple become aware of a need that they themselves cannot fulfill.
COMMENT: That is very important, to realize you're frustrated when you're not united with God now. It's like a kid being told to wait until Christmas to open his presents.
It is only frustrating if you realize you can't have what you want. But if you set up standards like, I'm going to stop having uncharitable thoughts, He might not take them away. So you can sum it all up by saying this: the question is whether you want to generate yourself or be generated by God out of his Mother. Does that really mean anything to you? But what's behind that indifference is the weakness of faith which leads you to conclude: one thing is sure, I'm my friend even if no one else is. Whereas if you take her as your Mother you have to believe that God is your friend. So if you believe you're the only friend you have, it's pretty hard and pretty hopeless. But what motivates you to turn to Jesus believing that He is your friend is that your sins are nothing relative to one drop of Christ's blood.
COMMENT: So that confrontation is our holiness and our responsibility?
You are responsible but how far is a question. But who cares? If you know you're a mess, go to Jesus. Even that awareness of how responsible you are is good only insofar as it moves you to Jesus. What did the good thief have? If you're always trying to fix yourself up, repressing what you are, or using some other evasion, it's a mark of reprobation.
COMMENT: I get the idea of wanting the euphoria that goes with ecstasy.
The ecstasy is wanting what you have now and believing it is the kiss of God. He is giving Himself to you now and if you start giving him instructions on how to kiss you like a nagging wife, well, you know what that would do to any normal man: he would say, get lost! So what it comes down to is the conviction that you're being kissed by God now. "Let Him (God) kiss me with the Kiss of His Mouth (Jesus) for thy breasts are better than wine."(Cant 1:1) Wine takes you out of yourself and makes an animal out of you but "thy breasts" (the Holy Virgin) take you out of yourself and lift you up to God. By participation, you're equal to God in her, and if you don't believe that you’ll try to convince yourself you deserve to be loved by God by reason of something you did yourself, by your own breasts, so to speak. So the whole life of faith is in those words of the Canticle.
All this about the Holy Virgin is good provided it terminates in the realization that you're loved now. In the Our Father it says, "Give us this day our daily bread." It doesn't say "Give us this day our bread." The "daily" could be our bread for now, the actuality of the present, give me what I need now. If you believe that you're being loved now you’ll believe this way when you die and you’ll go straight to heaven.
If I were giving such a religion class, I would start by getting the class to consider why they ask this question, why it is a problem for them. What would be the point of talking about the virginity and purity of the Holy Virgin Mary when most teenagers today have very little respect for virginity?
Besides theologically you can’t give an explanation of something which is a matter of faith. You believe it because God revealed it. The only explanation you can give is of the fittingness of the truth revealed. If God does something and you ask why He did it, it wouldn't be a matter of faith because faith is the evidence of things unseen. (Heb 11:1) If you asked why God did something, you would be implying that He could be moved by something outside of Himself. You can only explain the fittingness of the Virgin's virginity after the facts, and the facts are what you believe by faith. If God had wanted to he could have used a notorious sinner, but it would be fitting for a virgin to be the Mother of God because there should be a proportion between the integrity of the One Who is brought forth and the one from whom He is brought forth. And since the One Who was brought forth in the Incarnation was the God-Man, it was fitting that there should be perfect integrity in the Virgin Mary, the Mother of the God-Man.
But in explaining something to a class there are two things to consider: 1) what you're explaining and 2) how you explain it.
Maybe a good thing to talk about in the context of the class of teenagers and their disbelief in the Virgin’s purity would be the question: What is so attractive about impurity? Or why are you so attracted it? Or why not if you’re not? Assuming that people here are normal and in one way or another attracted to sex, an interesting question would be why is it so attractive? Don’t you think there is a connection between the attractiveness of sex and the Trinity, between the act of carnal generation and the eternal generation of the Word? Because sex is ordered to the generative act and the Word is generated eternally. It is significant that the Word is generated by the Father and a word is a concept, so the generation of the Word is both intellectual and living. Even the word "conception" is significant, because a conception can be intellectual or organic. Man being rational as well as animal would participate in a generation which is intellectual; an animal participates in a generative act which is merely carnal.
But the shortcoming of intellectual generation, which is more perfect in itself because it is spiritual, is that carnal generation terminates in the living thing while all our concepts are sterile. So the act of generation which terminates in something living is more real and more vital than the most powerful intellectual concept. While animals seek their proper fulfillment in an act of carnal generation, at the same time man would be perverse if he ended up with nothing but an abstract intellectual generation. This would show why man intellectually would be longing for the Word, because God is at once intellectual and living. The fulfillment of man, therefore, would not be in that knowledge of God which we would get by the proof of his existence and the demonstration of his attributes; what we crave is intimate union with Him. We want to be one with the very God Who is the eternal generation of the Word.
You can begin to see that all impurity - which is the infinitizing of the generative act - must be motivated by the desire to attain through the sexual act a fulfillment like the eternal generation of the Word: intimate organic union with the living God who can only be reached spiritually, and intimately possessed only through participation in the divine life itself. The desire for God is natural, but incapable of natural achievement. Without the special help of God, we wouldn't attain it.
The reason why it seems that sex is so attractive is that since God is Eternal Generation and we are made to his image and likeness, we have a desire for eternal generation, so that all impurity is the infinitizing of generation, that is, of carnal generation. The act of carnal generation itself is not impure, but to want to get out of that act what you should be getting from God is impure.
So given the fact that we're made to the likeness of God who is Eternal Generation, and given the fact that we cannot attain that by our natural powers, it would seem that without the faith by which we can attain it, we would be motivated to seek in carnal generation what we cannot obtain spiritually. So without faith there can be no real purity; without faith there would be either neurotics who deny sex or pigs who center their lives around it. In other words, seeing that there is a natural need in all of us for ecstasy and the ecstasy has its fulfillment in God through the vision of God and through mystical experience in this life, if you can't have ecstasy you will look for sex, because sex will seem like the best way to get out of yourself - and it does take you out of yourself better than alcohol or drugs.
This can be the only possible explanation of the problem of impurity in our time. It has been said that more souls are lost through impurity than through any other sins and this is because no one has ever told them what they're looking for and how to get it. I can see a difficulty in this, though, because you might think it sounds like pie in the sky - I mean the ecstasy of the vision of God - and then you would say, what do I do in the meantime, until I get to heaven?
COMMENT: Yes, how do you resolve that, especially when you're tempted to be impure?
It isn't as though you wait to get to heaven to have this experience; the ecstasy of living in God and abandoning yourself to him from one moment to the next is the fulfillment of this desire now, in this life. But when that desire for God is frustrated, then you would seek to get that ecstasy out of sex.
But since the fulfillment of our nature even in this life is in being abandoned to God from one moment to the next, there is this difficulty, which relates to the purity of the Mother of God, that we know instinctively that God can't love anything dirty and we would also know that we are dirty. So unless that problem is resolved, we will still be stuck in ourselves and then you will look for someone else who has the same problem in order to get out of yourselves together. So unless you believe in your own holiness, that ecstasy in God in this life will seem inaccessible to you and you will gravitate toward sexual ecstasy.
But how can you believe in your own holiness when you have all that evidence to the contrary? The only answer is that you know by faith that you're holy in Christ. And this implies, of course, your relationship to His Mother. So the solution of the whole problem of impurity, as with everything else, is to believe in your own holiness, and it is only in her that you have that holiness. "One alone is my love."(Cant 6:8) We're holy because by the grace of God we share in her sinlessness, conformed to the Father as we are reborn in her. So unless you believe in the Mother of God, who is also our Mother, you can’t believe in your own holiness. And it follows that if you don't have that devotion to her you won't be holy; without that ecstasy in God realized in His Mother - "Thy breasts are better than wine” (Cant 1:1) - you'll look for ecstasy in your flesh or else you'll repress it and get neurotic.
The practical resolution has to be existential because the only thing that is real is now. So whatever you're doing, whatever happens at this moment, you can be sure that if you're not peaceful, actually or virtually your genitals will get the upper hand.
COMMENT: I always used to trust my emotions.
Emotions is such a nice word, but what we have to realize is that our weakness is "con-genital". That is the truth that Freud uncovered. Christianity is still in a state of shock about it so pastors quietly send disturbed religious to psychiatrists because they seem to be acquainted with the facts of life. So whenever you're disturbed it is actually or virtually because you think, if I had money, or virtue, or popularity, or something, I would be loved. At the bottom of everything is disbelief: you don't believe you can be loved by God. And the only antidote is that when you're disturbed you should go to God at once, believing that you're holy in Him. Of course, if this makes your whole life out to be a lie, I don't expect you to embrace it with enthusiasm! So you’ll either say, I don't think it's true, or I don't understand it. It would be pretty hard to accept, too, if you thought your whole life had been wasted. That is why we have the good thief on the cross whose whole life had been wasted. So that is the story on our own impurity and the Most Pure Mother of God, the whole story reduced to what really makes you tick.
COMMENT: Could you say something more about our holiness in the Mother of God?
Well, remember the last words of Jesus on the Cross: "Behold thy Mother”(Jn 19:27)? Why would He make a point of telling John, behold thy Mother? As we all know, He wasn't saying it only to John but to the whole Church. The need for purity, the need to be holy in order to be loved by God, is instinctive. That is why we're ashamed of impurity. Well, if you have any ideas about what makes you holy, those are just ideas. What makes you holy is that you're brought forth by the same Mother who brought forth Jesus: that's holiness. So if you're trying to support yourself by some idea you have, it is like trying to generate yourself. In Scripture it says, "Shall a nation be brought forth because Zion is in labor?"(Is 66:8) The Mother of God didn't just bring forth Christ: she brought forth the whole Church. All women are the daughters of Eve and they possess purity only in virtue of Mary. So it is only through faith in her sinlessness that you can believe in your own purity and the purity of women.
It comes down to this, that man has a natural love of God, but it is frustrated without faith. The existential reality of loving God is as we love Him in Jesus and in His Mother. If a person loves purely he might not even be aware of that, but that is what is behind it; in ourselves we wouldn't even seek the love of God because we wouldn't think we could get it. To have faith and to be aware that you have faith isn't always the same thing. People who are really good, whether they know it or not, are motivated by faith. You can prove the existence of God without faith but then you don't posses God; in some way you have Him through an image. So we could intellectually be aware of God but that wouldn't mean that we were united with God through Christ. The only way you can know Jesus Christ and His Mother is by believing in them because God revealed it. The motive is the revelation of God: not your own knowledge. Your own knowledge, in fact, would give you a sense of frustration because you wouldn't be able to get the very thing you want. I think that is how God works, because all people who are simple become aware of a need that they themselves cannot fulfill.
COMMENT: That is very important, to realize you're frustrated when you're not united with God now. It's like a kid being told to wait until Christmas to open his presents.
It is only frustrating if you realize you can't have what you want. But if you set up standards like, I'm going to stop having uncharitable thoughts, He might not take them away. So you can sum it all up by saying this: the question is whether you want to generate yourself or be generated by God out of his Mother. Does that really mean anything to you? But what's behind that indifference is the weakness of faith which leads you to conclude: one thing is sure, I'm my friend even if no one else is. Whereas if you take her as your Mother you have to believe that God is your friend. So if you believe you're the only friend you have, it's pretty hard and pretty hopeless. But what motivates you to turn to Jesus believing that He is your friend is that your sins are nothing relative to one drop of Christ's blood.
COMMENT: So that confrontation is our holiness and our responsibility?
You are responsible but how far is a question. But who cares? If you know you're a mess, go to Jesus. Even that awareness of how responsible you are is good only insofar as it moves you to Jesus. What did the good thief have? If you're always trying to fix yourself up, repressing what you are, or using some other evasion, it's a mark of reprobation.
COMMENT: I get the idea of wanting the euphoria that goes with ecstasy.
The ecstasy is wanting what you have now and believing it is the kiss of God. He is giving Himself to you now and if you start giving him instructions on how to kiss you like a nagging wife, well, you know what that would do to any normal man: he would say, get lost! So what it comes down to is the conviction that you're being kissed by God now. "Let Him (God) kiss me with the Kiss of His Mouth (Jesus) for thy breasts are better than wine."(Cant 1:1) Wine takes you out of yourself and makes an animal out of you but "thy breasts" (the Holy Virgin) take you out of yourself and lift you up to God. By participation, you're equal to God in her, and if you don't believe that you’ll try to convince yourself you deserve to be loved by God by reason of something you did yourself, by your own breasts, so to speak. So the whole life of faith is in those words of the Canticle.
All this about the Holy Virgin is good provided it terminates in the realization that you're loved now. In the Our Father it says, "Give us this day our daily bread." It doesn't say "Give us this day our bread." The "daily" could be our bread for now, the actuality of the present, give me what I need now. If you believe that you're being loved now you’ll believe this way when you die and you’ll go straight to heaven.