Vigils Reading – Memorial of the BVM

A reading from “The Seat of Wisdom” by

FR LOUIS BOUYER

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Virginity consecrated to God in Christ has its justification in that it is a

means for engendering offspring without number; and therein lies the real

nature of its sacrifice. This is the supreme truth revealed to us by Mary’s virginal

motherhood, and, at the same time, its supreme justification. By her

renunciation in a spirit of perfect faith, of the very possibility of generation on

the earthly plane, that of the first creation, she lent herself to be used to generate

the human body of the Son of God. And, since he is, in himself, not only the

origin but the whole of the new creation, she also brought this to birth in bearing

him.

The sacrifice inherent in her chosen virginity was fulfilled in that the

“Holy One” born of her was the Son of God, since this made him, the fruit of her

own life, the absolute Stranger to her. though belonging wholly to her as to no

one else, Christ could not but be the one who was apart from her from the very

moment of his birth, more so than any other child from its parents. At the same

time, her virginity was justified in that it made a birth of the kind possible. And

all the hopes of renewal that this birth held out to mankind, in the state it then

was in, justified the seeming refusal of human love by the one most worthy of

loving and being loved that had been seen on earth since Eve.

The counterpart of this is that it is by their participation in Mary’s destiny

that, henceforth, those vowed to virginity will see and fulfill the purpose of their

own sacrifice. They renounce all possibility of prolonging and continuing the

present order of creation in order to dedicate themselves wholly to engendering

the new order which is to redeem the old. Such entire devotion to bringing about

the new birth of a humanity regenerated in Christ makes of their virginity, not a

negation of love, but an act of love of the most exalted kind.