O Virgin of Virgins

O Virgin of virgins, how shall this be?  For neither before you was there any seen like you, nor shall there be after.  Daughters of Jerusalem, why do you marvel at me?  The thing which you behold is a divine mystery.

Malachi 3:1-5; Psalm 25:1-14; Luke 1:57-66

Our last O differs from the others in several ways.  It began at a later date, perhaps only 500 years ago, and it does not refer to Isaiah’s promises.  It began and continues to honor Mary as her day approaches.

John, I love you and rejoice at your birth. Thank you for pointing the way, preparing the way.  I love the story of Elizabeth standing up to everyone to name you John.

But Mary has my heart today.  Her time approaches.

In the Western, Latin Church, Mary is mostly known as the Blessed Virgin.  We have emphasized her asexuality, her “purity,” even to the point of denying that she had sex with Joseph after Jesus was born (As Matthew tells us she did) or that she bore other children (implied in the fact that Jesus has brothers and sisters).  Mary’s role has been to erase the “blot,” the “curse of Eve,” by renouncing sex (and, following the story of Eden, perhaps renouncing knowledge of good and evil?).  She has been the innocent one.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, however, she is the Theotokos, the God-bearer.  She is the Mother of God.  Icons capture her thoughtfulness, her awareness of the sadness in front of her and her son.  Some show her might and power, as if she’s singing her song.

She is the Virgin, the integral, intact self.

She is the Mother, the one who gives birth.

How can this be?  

It is a divine mystery.

Mary is not a virgin because God needs to erase a spot or deny sexuality.  Mary is a virgin because God creates in open spaces. 

It seems that new birth, new creativity, always comes from that space of emptiness.  Those of us who meditate or do centering prayer know that the emptiness is where new ideas and insights and encounters originate.  Perhaps we can only give birth by becoming virgin again, intact and centered.

I have a less-than-pure record sexually.  But after years of prayer and monastic life, a day came when I realized that I had become a virgin again - fresh, new, ready for beginnings.  That was an Advent moment for me.

Whoever you are, whatever has happened to you and whatever you have done, you can start over.  You can find your center again and claim it and let it be a place of new birth.  I will be praying for you today, for all those whose center has been wounded.  May we all, of all genders, become virgin/mothers today.