So today I want to write about a delicate issue. Not for me because in my head and in my heart things are clear to me. But I know the topic can be touchy for most Catholics.
I want to talk about Mary.
This is my understanding. Mary was a virgin when God selected her to give birth to Jesus. She was engaged to Joseph who accepted to marry her because in a dream God spoke to him.
The virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus. After a bit more than three decades later, came the death of her son on the cross and then we had her assumption into heaven.
In my teenage and early adult years I was baffled by her life and Joseph’s. So I read the New Testament and found reference to Jesus’ brothers, so in my mind it was settled that Mary had children after she had Jesus, the Bible said so.
Then Catholics that know more than me put me in my place and insisted that Mary died a virgin and Christ was her only son. That she never had sex, which led me to believe that, yes, Margarita, sex is bad and Mary never did anything bad.
See, I have a hard time processing this. I believe that sex through love, commitment and responsibility is not only beautiful but smiled upon by our Creator. I don’t think he expected his favorite daughter, Mary, on to whose womb he trusted his son to acquire his human form, and her saintly fiancé, Joseph, to go through life without this deeply needed and deeply satisfying aspect of our humanity.
So I ask myself this, if Mary had sex with her husband, how did this diminish her role and her position in our Christian narrative? In my mind in no way whatsoever. I imagined she led a life obeying the precepts of her faith and that she dedicated it to God, her husband and her children. How could she be more saintly if she didn’t have sex (unless sex is really something bad to be avoided like the plague)? I just don’t know. And anyway, what business is it of ours to wonder and decide she had to die a virgin? I think that conclusion really drives the idea that sex is a taboo, something to hide and hold as a measure of ethic and moral value, instead of making sure we hold it as the wonderful thing it is and learn to approach it and practice it with reverence and responsibility. I think Mary and Joseph did that and that God smiled on that relationship.
This line of thought took me think about Jesus and all the controversy about him and Magdalene. If I accept he is the Son of God and our Redeemer, how would he having a relationship with this woman make him less divine? He still fulfilled his ministry and his destiny, pleasing his Father with the way in which he lived and died. And, ultimately I don’t care what he did in his private life. He still is who he is.
His divine nature remains untarnished in my heart and soul.
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