January 21 is the feast of St. Agnes. Agnes is one of several women—most of them virgins—mentioned by name in the Roman Canon, the First Eucharistic Prayer. She died in A.D. 304, either beheaded or stabbed through the neck, in Rome during the short-lived but intense Diocletian persecution. She had been put on trial because she came from a noble Roman family and had various suitors, none of whom she would marry—and that clearly indicated she belonged to that weird, anti-sexual cult called the “Christians.”
The Church has always valued virginity, both in its intentional and physical dimensions. Intentionally, it involves a commitment to abstain from sexual intercourse in order to preserve the virtue of chastity. In the case of a woman, this commitment also finds expression in physical integrity, which is probably why virginity is more frequently associated with women.
Why did—and does—the Church attach such value to virginity, so much that virginal names have been mentioned by the Church in the Mass almost every day for seventeen centuries? And what is it about our times that may impede appreciating what the Church values?
We need to begin with an understanding that virginity and chastity are not so much “no!” as “yes!” Karol Wojtyła (St. John Paul II) recognized this back in 1960, when he wrote Love and Responsibility: people think of chastity as something negative, a refusal. It does entail a refusal, but only because it more importantly encompasses a huge “yes.”
Sex and sexual intercourse, at their best, are profound acts of self-giving, of self-donation. One gives one’s self to another in a deep, personal, intimate, and (as traditionally understood) permanent way.
One gives one’s self. The human self is an embodied self: a soul and a body that, together, constitute one human person. So one impediment to this appreciation may be the modern attempt to divorce body and soul, reducing the “person” to a state of mind with a (maybe the “wrong”) body attached as a tool.
Plain human experience denies this dualism. If I were unexpectedly to slap you in the face, you’d probably ask, “Why did you do that?” If I told you, “Because I love you,” you’d know I was either crazy or making fun of you, because (a) hitting my face means hitting me and (b) body and mind are not so separable as to make that explanation credible.
So sex at its best is a sign of self-donation. And, yes, because we are bodily beings, sensory experiences leave marks that are almost always deep, direct, and lasting. That’s especially true for women, who, unlike men, tend not to compartmentalize sensory experience, thoughts, feelings, and wants. But for both sexes, one’s “first love” leaves a permanent mark: in mind; in feelings; and, particularly in women, in body.
That is why chastity is not just an option, but a moral requirement for everybody outside marriage. I know that many people don’t honor that norm, but the frequency of its violation doesn’t change its nature. We are all, after all, sinners. That universality does not make sin non-sin.
But it’s not just a question of negativity. Because sex is meant to be such a profound act of self-giving, it cannot be profligate: love seeks unity. People seek their “one true love,” their “soulmate.”
If sexual intercourse is an act of “self-giving,” then one wants to give one’s self to one’s “one true love.” That gift is not a “test.” It’s not bestowed with a thirty-day exchange-or-return policy. The dynamic of love says, “I want this, and I want this forever.”
That’s why chastity asks for that gift to be kept for that “one true love.” For most people, that one true love is found in marriage. That is also why the Church speaks of sexual intercourse as reserved to marriage: because that is the one situation in which all the conditions that gift seeks—oneness, permanence, totality, unreservedness, exclusivity, fruitfulness—are objectively present. Anything else is selling that gift out for something less.
But although most people find that “one true love” in marriage, there are those for whom that one true love seeks to go beyond this world, to be united to God and his service. That is why consecrated virginity—the decision to abstain from sexual intercourse—is so valued. Not because the Church is “anti-sex,” but because this woman has decided that the “one true love” to whom she wants to give herself completely is . . . God. But God is spirit (John 4:24); the woman is not. Through consecrated virginity, she seeks to give herself completely to God, which means that the way typically available for human beings to do this—with other human beings through the reality of embodiment—does not come into play in her situation. She foregoes sexual intercourse not because sex is “bad” or “dirty,” but because the meaning of this act with another human being would be dishonest, since she has given herself to another: God.
So if our modern world does not understand virginity or even chastity, it’s not because the Church’s teaching is antiquated or morals have “slipped.” It rather suggests that the modern world first of all—despite all its talk about it—does not understand love. It does not understand love and the total gift to another that true love envisions and needs. It settles for sensory experience and stimulation over a deep, profound, and abiding commitment, selling both our selves and our love short.
Agnes did not want to do that. That is why, despite family and social pressures as well as civil persecution, she chose to die rather than give up her virginity. The same was true in the ancient world of Agatha, Lucy, and Cecilia. In our own day, it was true of Maria Goretti, Karolina Kózka, Anna Kolesárová, and Isabel Cristina Campos.
It is true because love is timeless. All these women paid the ultimate price for their love and their self-donation: they were all martyrs. There can be no greater proof of their love.