Talk:Virginity

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 * Virginity for some women is the only virtue.
 * Gerald Barzan


 * Woman is: finally screwing and your groin and buttocks and thighs ache like hell and you're all wet and maybe bloody and it wasn't like a Hollywood movie at all but Jesus at least you're not a virgin any more but is this what it's all about? And meanwhile, he's asking 'Did you come?'
 * Robin Morgan

Jerome
Formatting needs tidying

Jerome, Letter 22 to Eustochium
As qtd. in "CHURCH FATHERS: Letter 22 (Jerome)", New Advent, translated by W.H. Fremantle, G. Lewis and W.G. Martley. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 6. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1893.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight.
 * See to it that God say not some day of you: The virgin of Israel is fallen and there is none to raise her up. Amos 5:2 I will say it boldly, though God can do all things He cannot raise up a virgin when once she has fallen. He may indeed relieve one who is defiled from the penalty of her sin, but He will not give her a crown. Let us fear lest in us also the prophecy be fulfilled, Good virgins shall faint. Amos 8:13 Notice that it is good virgins who are spoken of, for there are bad ones as well. Whosoever looks on a woman, the Lord says, to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart. Matthew 5:28 So that virginity may be lost even by a thought. Such are evil virgins, virgins in the flesh, not in the spirit; foolish virgins, who, having no oil, are shut out by the Bridegroom.
 * p.5


 * I cannot bring myself to speak of the many virgins who daily fall and are lost to the bosom of the church, their mother: stars over which the proud foe sets up his throne, Isaiah 14:13 and rocks hollowed by the serpent that he may dwell in their fissures. You may see many women widows before wedded, who try to conceal their miserable fall by a lying garb. Unless they are betrayed by swelling wombs or by the crying of their infants, they walk abroad with tripping feet and heads in the air. Some go so far as to take potions, that they may insure barrenness, and thus murder human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when (as often happens) they die with their offspring, they enter the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ but also of suicide and child murder. Yet it is these who say: 'Unto the pure all things are pure;' Titus 1:15 my conscience is sufficient guide for me. A pure heart is what God looks for. Why should I abstain from meats which God has created to be received with thanksgiving? 1 Timothy 4:3 And when they wish to appear agreeable and entertaining they first drench themselves with wine, and then joining the grossest profanity to intoxication, they say Far be it from me to abstain from the blood of Christ. And when they see another pale or sad they call her wretch or Manichæan; quite logically, indeed, for on their principles fasting involves heresy. When they go out they do their best to attract notice, and with nods and winks encourage troops of young fellows to follow them. Of each and all of these the prophet's words are true: You have a whore's forehead; you refuse to be ashamed. Jeremiah 3:3 Their robes have but a narrow purple stripe, it is true; and their head-dress is somewhat loose, so as to leave the hair free. From their shoulders flutters the lilac mantle which they call ma-forte; they have their feet in cheap slippers and their arms tucked up tight-fitting sleeves. Add to these marks of their profession an easy gait, and you have all the virginity that they possess. Such may have eulogizers of their own, and may fetch a higher price in the market of perdition, merely because they are called virgins. But to such virgins as these I prefer to be displeasing.
 * p.13


 * Do not court the company of married ladies or visit the houses of the high-born. Do not look too often on the life which you despised to become a virgin. Women of the world, you know, plume themselves because their husbands are on the bench or in other high positions. And the wife of the emperor always has an eager throng of visitors at her door. Why do you, then, wrong your husband? Why do you, God's bride, hasten to visit the wife of a mere man? Learn in this respect a holy pride; know that you are better than they. And not only must you avoid intercourse with those who are puffed up by their husbands' honors, who are hedged in with troops of eunuchs, and who wear robes inwrought with threads of gold. You must also shun those who are widows from necessity and not from choice. Not that they ought to have desired the death of their husbands; but that they have not welcomed the opportunity of continence when it has come. As it is, they only change their garb; their old self-seeking remains unchanged. To see them in their capacious litters, with red cloaks and plump bodies, a row of eunuchs walking in front of them, you would fancy them not to have lost husbands but to be seeking them. Their houses are filled with flatterers and with guests. The very clergy, who ought to inspire them with respect by their teaching and authority, kiss these ladies on the forehead, and putting forth their hands (so that, if you knew no better, you might suppose them in the act of blessing), take wages for their visits. They, meanwhile, seeing that priests cannot do without them, are lifted up into pride; and as, having had experience of both, they prefer the license of widowhood to the restraints of marriage, they call themselves chaste livers and nuns. After an immoderate supper they retire to rest to dream of the apostles.
 * p.16


 * [S]hould we not weep and groan when the serpent invites us, as he invited our first parents, to eat forbidden fruit, and when after expelling us from the paradise of virginity he desires to clothe us with mantles of skins such as that which Elijah, on his return to paradise, left behind him on earth?
 * p.18


 * When God says to Eve, In pain and in sorrow you shall bring forth children, say to yourself, That is a law for a married woman, not for me. And when He continues, Your desire shall be to your husband, Genesis 3:16 say again: Let her desire be to her husband who has not Christ for her spouse. And when, last of all, He says, You shall surely die, Genesis 2:17 once more, say, Marriage indeed must end in death; but the life on which I have resolved is independent of sex. Let those who are wives keep the place and the time that properly belong to them. For me, virginity is consecrated in the persons of Mary and of Christ.
 * p.18


 * Some one may say, Do you dare detract from wedlock, which is a state blessed by God? I do not detract from wedlock when I set virginity before it. No one compares a bad thing with a good. Wedded women may congratulate themselves that they come next to virgins. Be fruitful, God says, and multiply, and replenish the earth. Genesis 1:28 He who desires to replenish the earth may increase and multiply if he will. But the train to which you belong is not on earth, but in heaven. The command to increase and multiply first finds fulfilment after the expulsion from paradise, after the nakedness and the fig-leaves which speak of sexual passion. Let them marry and be given in marriage who eat their bread in the sweat of their brow; whose land brings forth to them thorns and thistles, Genesis 3:18-19 and whose crops are choked with briars. My seed produces fruit a hundredfold. All men cannot receive God's saying, but they to whom it is given. Some people may be eunuchs from necessity; I am one of free will. Matthew 19:11-12 There is a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. There is a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together. Ecclesiastes 3:5 Now that out of the hard stones of the Gentiles God has raised up children unto Abraham, Matthew 3:9 they begin to be holy stones rolling upon the earth. They pass through the whirlwinds of the world, and roll on in God's chariot on rapid wheels. Let those stitch coats to themselves who have lost the coat woven from the top throughout; John 19:23 who delight in the cries of infants which, as soon as they see the light, lament that they are born. In paradise Eve was a virgin, and it was only after the coats of skins that she began her married life. Now paradise is your home too. Keep therefore your birthright and say: Return unto your rest, O my soul. To show that virginity is natural while wedlock only follows guilt, what is born of wedlock is virgin flesh, and it gives back in fruit what in root it has lost.
 * p.18


 * I praise wedlock, I praise marriage, but it is because they give me virgins. I gather the rose from the thorns, the gold from the earth, the pearl from the shell. Does the plowman plow all day to sow? Isaiah 28:24 Shall he not also enjoy the fruit of his labor? Wedlock is the more honored, the more what is born of it is loved. Why, mother, do you grudge your daughter her virginity? She has been reared on your milk, she has come from your womb, she has grown up in your bosom. Your watchful affection has kept her a virgin. Are you angry with her because she chooses to be a king's wife and not a soldier's? She has conferred on you a high privilege; you are now the mother-in-law of God. Concerning virgins, says the apostle, I have no commandment of the Lord. 1 Corinthians 7:25 Why was this? Because his own virginity was due, not to a command, but to his free choice. For they are not to be heard who feign him to have had a wife; for, when he is discussing continence and commending perpetual chastity, he uses the words, I would that all men were even as I myself. And farther on, I say, therefore, to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I. 1 Corinthians 7:7-8 And in another place, have we not power to lead about wives even as the rest of the apostles? 1 Corinthians 9:5 Why then has he no commandment from the Lord concerning virginity? Because what is freely offered is worth more than what is extorted by force, and to command virginity would have been to abrogate wedlock. It would have been a hard enactment to compel opposition to nature and to extort from men the angelic life; and not only so, it would have been to condemn what is a divine ordinance.
 * p.20


 * Elijah lived a virgin life, so also did Elisha and many of the sons of the prophets. To Jeremiah the command came: You shall not take you a wife. Jeremiah 16:2 He had been sanctified in his mother's womb, Jeremiah 1:5 and now he was forbidden to take a wife because the captivity was near. The apostle gives the same counsel in different words. I think, therefore, that this is good by reason of the present distress, namely that it is good for a man to be as he is. What is this distress which does away with the joys of wedlock? The apostle tells us, in a later verse: The time is short: it remains that those who have wives be as though they had none. 1 Corinthians 7:29 Nebuchadnezzar is hard at hand. The lion is bestirring himself from his lair. What good will marriage be to me if it is to end in slavery to the haughtiest of kings? What good will little ones be to me if their lot is to be that which the prophet sadly describes: The tongue of the sucking child cleaves to the roof of his mouth for thirst; the young children ask for bread and no man breaks it unto them? Lamentations 4:4 In those days, as I have said, the virtue of continence was found only in men: Eve still continued to travail with children. But now that a virgin has conceived Isaiah 7:14 in the womb and has borne to us a child of which the prophet says that Government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called the mighty God, the everlasting Father, Isaiah 9:6 now the chain of the curse is broken. Death came through Eve, but life has come through Mary. And thus the gift of virginity has been bestowed most richly upon women, seeing that it has had its beginning from a woman.
 * p.21


 * I conjure you before God and Jesus Christ and His elect angels to guard that which you have received, not readily exposing to the public gaze the vessels of the Lord's temple (which only the priests are by right allowed to see), that no profane person may look upon God's sanctuary. Uzzah, when he touched the ark which it was not lawful to touch, was struck down suddenly by death. 2 Samuel 6:6-7 And assuredly no gold or silver vessel was ever so dear to God as is the temple of a virgin's body.
 * p.23


 * If there is anything of which you are ignorant, if you have any doubt about Scripture, ask one whose life commends him, whose age puts him above suspicion, whose reputation does not belie him; one who may be able to say: I have espoused you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. Or if there should be none such able to explain, it is better to avoid danger at the price of ignorance than to court it for the sake of learning. Remember that you walk in the midst of snares, and that many veteran virgins, of a chastity never called in question, have, on the very threshold of death, let their crowns fall from their hands. If any of your handmaids share your vocation, do not lift up yourself against them or pride yourself because you are their mistress. You have all chosen one Bridegroom; you all sing the same psalms; together you receive the Body of Christ. Why then should your thoughts be different? You must try to win others, and that you may attract the more readily you must treat the virgins in your train with the greatest respect. If you find one of them weak in the faith, be attentive to her, comfort her, caress her, and make her chastity your treasure. But if a girl pretends to have a vocation simply because she desires to escape from service, read aloud to her the words of the apostle: It is better to marry than to burn. 1 Corinthians 7:9
 * p.29


 * Look to yourself and glory in your own success and not in others' failure. Some women care for the flesh and reckon up their income and daily expenditure: such are no fit models for you. Judas was a traitor, but the eleven apostles did not waver. Phygellus and Alexander made shipwreck; but the rest continued to run the race of faith. Say not: So-and-so enjoys her own property, she is honored of men, her brothers and sisters come to see her. Has she then ceased to be a virgin? In the first place, it is doubtful if she is a virgin. For the Lord sees not as man sees; for man looks upon the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. 1 Samuel 16:7 Again, she may be a virgin in body and not in spirit. According to the apostle, a true virgin is holy both in body and in spirit. 1 Corinthians 7:34 Lastly, let her glory in her own way. Let her override Paul's opinion and live in the enjoyment of her good things. But you and I must follow better examples.
 * p.38


 * All such efforts are only of use when they are made within the church's pale; we must celebrate the passover in the one house, Exodus 12:46 we must enter the ark with Noah, 1 Peter 3:20-21 we must take refuge from the fall of Jericho with the justified harlot, Rahab. James 2:25 Such virgins as there are said to be among the heretics and among the followers of the infamous Manes must be considered, not virgins, but prostitutes. For if — as they allege — the devil is the author of the body, how can they honor that which is fashioned by their foe? No; it is because they know that the name virgin brings glory with it, that they go about as wolves in sheep's clothing. Matthew 7:15 As antichrist pretends to be Christ, such virgins assume an honorable name, that they may the better cloak a discreditable life. Rejoice, my sister; rejoice, my daughter; rejoice, my virgin; for you have resolved to be, in reality, that which others insincerely feign.
 * p.39