On Holy Virginity 22–37

Now let it appear more clearly, from the most evident testimonies of the divine Scriptures that we have been able to recall within the small measure of our memory, that perpetual continence is to be chosen not for the sake of the present life of this world but for the sake of the future life that is promised in the kingdom of heaven. Who does not notice this in what the same apostle says a little later: “He who is without a wife thinks about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but he who is joined in marriage thinks about the things of the world, how he may please his wife. And the unmarried woman and the virgin are divided: she who is unmarried is anxious about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit; but she who is married is anxious about the things of the world, how she may please her husband”? He certainly does not say, “thinks about the things that make for security in this world, so as to pass the time without heavier troubles”; nor does he say that the unmarried woman and the virgin are divided—that is, distinguished and separated—from the married woman so that the unmarried woman may be secure in this life by avoiding temporal troubles, which the married woman does not escape; but he says, “thinks about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord,” and, “is anxious about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit.” Unless perhaps someone is so foolishly contentious as to try to assert that we wish to please the Lord not for the sake of the kingdom of heaven but for the sake of the present world, or that they are holy both in body and in spirit for the sake of this life, not the eternal one. What is believing this but being more miserable than all men? For so the apostle says: “If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are more miserable than all men.” Or is he who breaks his bread for the hungry a fool if he does it only for this life, and will he be prudent who chastises his body to the point of a continence by which he is not united even in marriage, if it will profit him nothing in the kingdom of heaven?

Finally, let us hear the Lord himself bringing forth a most evident statement on this. For when he had spoken divinely and fearsomely about spouses not being separated except for the cause of sexual immorality, his disciples said to him: “If such is the case with a wife, it is not expedient to marry.” He said to them: “Not all receive this word. For there are eunuchs who were born so; and there are others who were made so by men; and there are eunuchs who have castrated themselves for the kingdom of heaven. He who can receive it, let him receive it.” What could have been said more truly, what more clearly? Christ says it, the Truth says it, the Power and Wisdom of God says it: that those who with devout purpose have refrained from taking a wife castrate themselves for the kingdom of heaven. And against this, human vanity contends with impious rashness that those who do this avoid only the present necessity of marital troubles, but have nothing more than the rest in the kingdom of heaven!

Of what eunuchs, then, does God speak through the prophet Isaiah, to whom he says he will give in his house and within his wall a named place, much better than that of sons and daughters, if not of those who castrate themselves for the kingdom of heaven? For those whose male member itself is disabled, so that they cannot beget—such as the eunuchs of the rich and of kings—it is surely enough, when they become Christians and keep God's commandments, while being of such a mind that they would have had wives if they could, to be made equal in the house of God to the other married believers, who nourish offspring lawfully and chastely received in the fear of God, teaching their children to put their hope in God; but not to receive a better place than that of sons and daughters. For they do not take wives not by virtue of mind but by necessity of flesh. Let anyone who wishes contend that the prophet foretold this of eunuchs cut in body; this error too supports the cause we have undertaken. For God did not prefer those eunuchs to those who have no place in his house, but surely to those who keep the merit of married life in begetting children. For when he says, “I will give them a place much better,” he shows that a place is given to the married too, but a much lower one. Grant, then, that the eunuchs in the flesh mentioned by the prophet were to be in the house of God—eunuchs who were not in the people of Israel, since we see that they too, though they do not become Jews, still become Christians—and that the prophet did not speak of those who, not seeking marriage by a purpose of continence, castrate themselves for the kingdom of heaven. Is anyone so madly opposed to the truth as to believe that eunuchs made in the flesh have a better place in the house of God than the married, and yet to contend that those who are continent with devout purpose—chastising the body to the point of despising marriage, castrating themselves not in the body but in the very root of concupiscence, meditating the heavenly and angelic life in earthly mortality—are equal to the merits of the married? And would a Christian contradict Christ when he praises those who castrated themselves not for this world but for the kingdom of heaven, asserting that this is useful for the present life, not the future? What remains for these people but to assert that the kingdom of heaven itself belongs to this temporal life in which we now are? For why should blind presumption not advance even to this madness? And what is more frenzied than this assertion? For even if the church as it is at this time is sometimes called the kingdom of heaven, it is surely so called because it is being gathered for the future and eternal life. So although it has the promise of the present life and of the future, yet in all its good works it looks not to the things that are seen but to the things that are not seen. For the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal.

Nor indeed has the Holy Spirit kept silent about what would be clear and unshakable against these most shamelessly and madly obstinate people, and would drive back their beastly onslaught from his sheepfold with an impregnable defense. For when he had said of the eunuchs, “I will give them in my house and within my wall a named place, much better than that of sons and daughters,” lest anyone too carnal should think that something temporal was to be hoped for in these words, he at once added: “I will give them an eternal name, and it will never fail”—as if to say: Why do you shuffle, impious blindness? Why do you shuffle? Why do you pour the clouds of your perversity over the clear sky of truth? Why, in such light of the Scriptures, do you seek darkness from which to lie in ambush? Why do you promise the holy continent only temporal advantage? “I will give them an eternal name.” Why do you try to refer to earthly comfort those who are free from all intercourse and who, by that very abstaining, think about the things of the Lord, how they may please the Lord? “I will give them an eternal name.” Why do you contend that the kingdom of heaven, for which the holy eunuchs castrated themselves, is to be understood only in this life? “I will give them an eternal name.” And if perhaps you try to take “eternal” here as “long-lasting,” I add, I heap up, I drive it home: “and it will never fail.” What more do you seek? What more do you say? This eternal name, whatever it is, for God's eunuchs, which surely signifies a certain special and excellent glory, will not be common to many, even though they are placed in the same kingdom and the same house. For perhaps it is called a name for this reason, that it distinguishes those to whom it is given from the rest.

“What, then,” they say, “does that denarius mean, which, when the work of the vineyard is finished, is paid equally to all, both to those who worked from the first hour and to those who worked one hour?” What indeed, but that it signifies something that all will have in common, such as eternal life itself, the kingdom of heaven itself, where all will be whom God predestined, called, justified, glorified? “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality.” This is that denarius, the wage of all; yet “star differs from star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead.” These are the different merits of the saints. For if heaven were signified by that denarius, is not being in heaven common to all the heavenly bodies? And yet “one is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the moon, another of the stars.” If that denarius stood for health of body, is not health common when we are well in all our members, and, if it lasts until death, present in all alike and equally? And yet God has placed the members, each of them in the body, as he willed, so that the whole is not an eye, nor the whole hearing, nor the whole smell; and whatever else there is has its own property, though it has health equally with all. So, because eternal life itself will be alike for all the saints, an equal denarius is assigned to all; but because in that eternal life the lights of merits will shine distinctly, there are many mansions with the Father. And so in the denarius, which is not unequal, one will not live longer than another; but in the many mansions one is honored more brightly than another.

Go on, then, saints of God, boys and girls, men and women, celibate and unmarried; go on perseveringly to the end. Praise the Lord more sweetly, whom you think of more richly; hope more happily in him whom you serve more earnestly; love more ardently him whom you please more attentively. With loins girded and lamps burning, await the Lord when he comes from the wedding. You will bring to the wedding of the Lamb a new song, which you will sing on your harps—not such as the whole earth sings, to which it is said, “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth,” but such as no one will be able to utter but you. For so you were seen in the Apocalypse by one loved by the Lamb above the others, who used to recline on his breast, and who drank in and poured forth the Word of God, wonderful beyond heavenly things. He saw you, twelve times twelve thousand holy harpers, of unblemished virginity in body, of inviolate truth in heart; and because you follow the Lamb wherever he goes, he wrote of you. Where do we think this Lamb goes, where no one dares or is able to follow him but you? Where do we think he goes? Into what glades and meadows? Where, I believe, the grasses are joys—not the empty joys of this world, lying madnesses, nor such joys as there will be in the kingdom of God itself for the others who are not virgins, but joys set apart from the lot of all others: the joys of the virgins of Christ, from Christ, in Christ, with Christ, after Christ, through Christ, for Christ. The joys proper to the virgins of Christ are not the same as those of non-virgins, even though they too are Christ's; for there are different joys for different people, but for none such joys as these. Go into these, follow the Lamb, for the flesh of the Lamb too is surely virgin. For he kept in himself when grown what, when conceived and born, he did not take from his mother. Rightly do you follow him, in virginity of heart and flesh, wherever he goes. For what is following but imitating? For “Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example,” as the apostle Peter says, “that we should follow in his steps.” Each follows him in that in which he imitates him: not insofar as he is the only Son of God, through whom all things were made, but insofar as, being the Son of Man, he offered in himself what it was fitting for us to imitate. And many things in him are set forth for all to imitate, but virginity of the flesh not for all; for those in whom it has already come about that they are not virgins have nothing they can do to become virgins.

Let the rest of the faithful, then, who have lost virginity of body, follow the Lamb, not wherever he goes, but as far as they can. And they can everywhere, except when he walks in the glory of virginity. “Blessed are the poor in spirit”: imitate him who for your sake became poor, though he was rich. “Blessed are the meek”: imitate him who said, “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” “Blessed are those who mourn”: imitate him who wept over Jerusalem. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”: imitate him who said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me.” “Blessed are the merciful”: imitate him who came to the help of the man wounded by robbers and lying on the road, half-dead and despaired of. “Blessed are the pure in heart”: imitate him who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth. “Blessed are the peacemakers”: imitate him who said for his persecutors, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” “Blessed are those who suffer persecution for righteousness' sake”: imitate him who suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you may follow in his steps. Those who imitate these things follow the Lamb in them. But certainly the married too can walk in these footsteps, even if not setting their foot perfectly in the same print, yet walking in the same paths.

But see, that Lamb walks on a virginal way. How will those go after him who have lost what they can in no way recover? You, then, you go after him, his virgins; go after him there too, for it is on account of this one thing that you follow him wherever he goes. For we can exhort the married to any other gift of holiness by which to follow him, except this which they have irreparably lost. You, then, follow him by holding perseveringly what you have vowed ardently. Act while you can, so that the good of virginity may not perish from you, for you can do nothing to make it return. The rest of the multitude of the faithful, which cannot follow the Lamb in this, will see you; it will see you and will not envy you; and by rejoicing with you, what it does not have in itself it will have in you. For that new song, which is your own, it will not be able to sing; but it will be able to hear it and to delight in so excellent a good of yours. But you, who will both sing and hear it—since you will hear from yourselves what you sing—will exult more happily and reign more joyfully. Yet there will be no grief over your greater joy for those who lack it. For the Lamb, whom you follow wherever he goes, will not desert those who cannot follow him where you can. We speak of an almighty Lamb. He will go before you and will not go away from them, when God will be all in all. And those who have less will not recoil from you. For where there is no envy, difference is shared. Take courage, then, trust, be strong, persevere, you who vow and pay to the Lord your God vows of perpetual continence, not for the sake of the present world, but for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

You too who have not yet vowed this, you who can receive it, receive it; run perseveringly, so that you may obtain it. Take each of you your offerings and enter into the courts of the Lord, not under necessity, but having power over your own will. For it cannot be said, “You shall not marry,” as it is said, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not kill.” Those are required; these are offered. If these are done, they are praised; if those are not done, they are condemned. In those the Lord commands you what is owed; but in these, whatever more you spend beyond, he will repay you on his return. Think, whatever it is, of a named place within his wall, much better than that of sons and daughters; think of an eternal name there. Who can explain what kind of name it will be? Yet whatever it will be, it will be eternal. By believing and hoping and loving this you have been able not to avoid marriage as forbidden but to fly over it as permitted.

Hence, the more excellent and divine the greatness of this gift—to the taking up of which we have exhorted as well as we could—the more it warns our concern to say something not only about most glorious chastity but also about most safe humility. When, then, those who profess perpetual continence compare themselves with the married and find, according to the Scriptures, that the married are below them in work and wage, in vow and reward, let them at once call to mind what is written: “The greater you are, the more humble yourself in all things, and you will find grace before God.” The measure of humility is given to each from the measure of his greatness; for pride is dangerous to greatness, and lies in wait all the more for the greater. Envy follows it, like a daughter in attendance; for pride at once gives birth to it and is never without such offspring and companion. By these two evils, that is, pride and envy, the devil is the devil. So against pride, the mother of envy, the whole of Christian discipline fights most of all. For it teaches humility, by which to acquire and to guard love. When it had been said of love, “Love is not jealous,” as if we were asking the reason why it is not jealous, he at once added, “it is not puffed up,” as if to say: it has no envy because it has no pride either. So Christ, the teacher of humility, first emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men and found in appearance as a man; he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. And as for his teaching itself, how attentively it instills humility and how vehemently it insists on commanding it—who could easily explain this and gather all the testimonies to demonstrate it? Let anyone try to do this, or do it, who wishes to write separately on humility. But this work has another purpose; and since it has been undertaken on so great a subject, it must above all beware of pride.

So I recall a few testimonies about humility from the teaching of Christ, which the Lord deigns to bring to mind, and which perhaps suffice for my purpose. His discourse, the first longer one he held with his disciples, began thus: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”—whom beyond dispute we understand to be the humble. He especially praised the faith of that centurion, and said that he had not found such faith in Israel, because he believed so humbly as to say, “I am not worthy that you should come under my roof.” That is why Matthew said he came to Jesus—though Luke shows quite plainly that he did not come to him himself but sent his friends—for no other reason than that by most faithful humility he himself came closer than those he sent. Hence also that prophetic word: “The Lord is high and looks upon the lowly; but the lofty he knows from afar”—as not coming near, that is. Hence too he says to that Canaanite woman, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish,” whom earlier he had called a dog, answering that the children's bread should not be thrown to her. Receiving this humbly, she had said, “Yes, Lord; for even the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.” And so what she did not obtain by constant crying out, she earned by humble confession. Hence those two are set before us praying in the temple, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector, for the sake of those who seem righteous to themselves and despise others; and the confession of sins is preferred to the enumeration of merits. And certainly the Pharisee was thanking God for the things in which he greatly pleased himself. “I thank you,” he says, “that I am not like other men, unjust, robbers, adulterers, as also this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.” But the tax collector stood far off and did not dare to raise his eyes to heaven, but struck his breast, saying, “Be merciful to me, a sinner.” The divine verdict follows: “Truly I say to you, the tax collector went down from the temple justified rather than that Pharisee.” Then the reason is shown why this is just: “For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” It can happen, then, that someone both avoids real evils and considers real goods in himself and gives thanks for them to the Father of lights, from whom comes down every best gift and every perfect gift, and yet is rejected for the fault of pride, if he proudly insults other sinners—especially those confessing their sins in prayer—even by thought alone, which is before God; to them is owed not reproach with self-inflation but compassion without despair. What of this, that when his disciples were asking among themselves which of them was the greatest, he set a little child before their eyes, saying, “Unless you become like this child, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven”? Did he not commend humility above all and place in it the merit of greatness? Or when he answered the sons of Zebedee, who coveted the places at his sides on lofty thrones, in such a way that they should think rather of drinking the cup of his passion, in which he humbled himself to death, even death on a cross, than ask with proud appetite to be preferred to the rest—what did he show but that he would give loftiness to those who first followed him as the teacher of humility? And now, when he was about to go out to his passion, he washed his disciples' feet and admonished them most plainly to do for their fellow disciples and fellow servants what their Master and Lord had done for them. How much he commended humility! And to commend it he even chose that time when they were looking at him with great longing as one about to die, since they would surely keep especially in memory what the Master they were to imitate had shown them last. And he did this at that time, though he could certainly have done it on other days before, when he was living with them; had it been done then, the same thing would indeed have been handed on, but certainly it would not have been received in the same way.

Since, then, humility must be kept by all Christians—for they are called Christians from Christ, and no one studies his gospel carefully without finding him the teacher of humility—it is especially fitting that those should be followers and keepers of this virtue who stand out above the rest by some great good, so that they take great care of what I set down at first: “The greater you are, the more humble yourself in all things, and you will find grace before God.” Therefore, since perpetual continence, and virginity above all, is a great good in the saints of God, one must be most vigilantly on guard lest it be corrupted by pride.

The apostle Paul censures unmarried women who are inquisitive and talkative, and says that this fault comes from idleness. “At the same time,” he says, “they also learn to be idle, going about from house to house; and not only idle, but also inquisitive and talkative, saying what they should not.” Of these he had said above: “But avoid the younger widows; for when they have grown wanton against Christ, they wish to marry, incurring condemnation, because they have made void their first pledge”—that is, they did not stand by what they had first vowed. Yet he does not say, “they marry,” but “they wish to marry.” For many of them are held back from marrying not by love of their noble purpose but by fear of open disgrace, which itself comes from pride, by which one fears to displease men more than God. These, then, who wish to marry and do not marry only because they cannot do so with impunity—who would do better to marry than to burn, that is, than to be laid waste in their very concupiscence by its hidden flame—who regret their profession and are ashamed of their confession, unless they direct their heart, once corrected, and by the fear of God conquer lust again, are to be counted among the dead, whether they live in pleasures—whence the apostle says, “But she who lives in pleasures is dead while she lives”—or in labors and fasts, which are useless without any correction of the heart and serve display rather than amendment. I do not press any great care for humility on such women, in whom pride itself is confounded and bloodied by the wound of conscience. Nor do I impose this great concern for devout humility on drunkards or the greedy, or those lying in any other kind of damnable disease, who, while they have the profession of bodily continence, are out of tune with their name by perverse conduct—unless perhaps they will dare to show off even in these evils, those for whom it is not enough that their punishments are postponed. Nor am I dealing with those in whom there is a certain desire to please, whether by more elegant clothing than the necessity of so great a profession demands, or by a conspicuous head-band, whether by swelling knots of hair or by coverings so fine that the net beneath them shows: to these precepts must first be given not about humility but about chastity itself, the integrity of modesty. Give me one who professes perpetual continence and is free from all these and similar faults and blemishes of conduct: for her I fear pride; for so great a good in her I dread the swelling of self-exaltation. The more there is in her in which she may please herself, the more I fear that by pleasing herself she may displease him who resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.

Certainly the foremost teaching and example of virginal integrity is to be seen in Christ himself. What more, then, shall I command the continent about humility than what he says to all: “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart”? When he had first spoken of his greatness, wishing to show this very thing—how great he is and how small he became for our sake—he says: “I confess to you, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to little ones. Yes, Father, for so it was pleasing before you. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” He to whom the Father has handed over all things, whom no one knows but the Father, who alone knows the Father, and anyone to whom he chooses to reveal him, does not say, “Learn from me to fashion the world or to raise the dead,” but, “for I am meek and humble of heart.” O saving teaching! O Master and Lord of mortals, to whom death was served and poured out in the cup of pride! He would not teach what he himself was not; he would not command what he himself did not do. I see you, good Jesus, with the eyes of faith that you have opened for me, crying out as in an assembly of the human race and saying, “Come to me and learn from me.” What, I beg you, Son of God, through whom all things were made, and likewise Son of Man, who were made among all things—what are we to learn from you, that we come to you? “For I am meek,” he says, “and humble of heart.” Is it to this that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in you come down, that we should learn from you as a great thing that you are meek and humble of heart? Is it so great a thing to be small that it could not be learned at all unless it were done by you, who are so great? Plainly so. For rest for the soul is not found except by dispersing the restless swelling by which it was great to itself when it was not healthy to you.

Let them hear you and come to you and learn from you to be meek and humble, those who seek your mercy and truth by living for you—for you, not for themselves. Let him hear this who labors and is burdened, pressed by such a load that he does not dare to raise his eyes to heaven, that sinner who strikes his breast and draws near from afar; let the centurion hear, not worthy that you should come under his roof; let Zacchaeus hear, chief of the tax collectors, restoring fourfold the gains of damnable sins; let the woman who was a sinner in the city hear, the more tearful at your feet the more estranged she had been from your footsteps; let the harlots and tax collectors hear, who go before the scribes and Pharisees into the kingdom of heaven; let every kind of sick person hear, with whom sharing meals was cast up to you as a crime—as though by the healthy, who did not seek a physician—though you came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. All these, when they turn to you, easily grow meek and are humbled before you, mindful of their most wicked life and your most indulgent mercy; for where sin abounded, grace abounded more.

But look at the ranks of virgins, of holy boys and girls: this kind has been trained in your church; there it sprang up for you from the mother's breasts, loosed its tongue to speak your name, sucked your name poured in like the milk of its infancy. No one of this number can say, “I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and insolent, but I obtained mercy, because I acted ignorantly in unbelief.” Rather, even what you did not command, but only set before those willing to seize it, saying, “He who can receive it, let him receive it,” they seized, they vowed, and they castrated themselves for the kingdom of heaven, not because you threatened but because you exhorted. Cry out to these; let these hear you, that you are meek and humble of heart. Let these, the greater they are, humble themselves the more in all things, that they may find grace before you. They are righteous; but are they like you, who justify the ungodly? They are chaste; but their mothers nourished them in sins in the womb. They are holy; but you are the Holy of Holies. They are virgins; but they were not also born of virgins. They are intact in both spirit and flesh; but they are not the Word made flesh. And yet let them learn, not from those whose sins you forgive, but from you yourself, the Lamb of God who take away the sins of the world, that you are meek and humble of heart.