I am now officially obsessed with the virgin martyrs.
I have been making a meandering sort of progress through Kathleen Norris’s The Cloister Walk. It is my habit to pick up a chapter here and there, waiting sometimes days or even a week or two between readings.
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Yesterday morning I picked up the text and found myself at a chapter about the virgin martyrs. I was madly underlining, bracketing, and starring the text, making copious notes in the margins with blue ink. I was so inspired and while I wasn't quite sure why at the time, I wanted to stand up and cheer in response to what I was reading. Norris’s narrative of the virgin martyrs and her own observations and conclusions about their choices and behavior gave shape to thoughts and feelings to which I have been utterly unable to encapsulate with my own words: thoughts about beauty and womanhood, thoughts about identity and purpose, thoughts about the world and God’s place for me in it, thoughts about death to self and surrender to Christ, not to mention all the feelings I have about this crazy and unexpected path I find myself walking.
Over the last several weeks, there has been a lot of internal juggling going on (hence the silence): this whole amazing business of claiming my identity as a writer and attending a writer’s conference, of writing a thorough confession to my body: it all happened after I came to God with an attitude of complete surrender. His work in me is not primarily about the writing and yet, that's how a lot of this is being made manifest right now. I wrote on one blog about how frustrated I was with my single status, and came to God in prayer. Instead of asking Him to satisfy me with someone else, I told Him, Okay. For now, your answer to my request for a partner is either ‘no’ or ‘not yet’. If you’re not going to fill this empty space with someone, what do you want to fill it with instead?
He wasted no time in responding.
That is when the most amazing things started happening. I prayed that prayer on February 15. Just eight days later, I woke up earlier than normal on a Saturday morning with the compelling directive in my heart and soul: I need to confess my sins toward my body. I couldn’t say for sure at the time that I knew it was God prompting me; I didn't know where the injunction was coming from. All I knew at the time was that piece of writing was not one I ever intended to write. It was not coming from me. But write it I did, and posted it with the smallest measure of faith that doing so was an act of obedience.
And now I'm watching all sorts of unimaginable blessings spring forth. One of those blessings is that I've found a substantive piece of God’s design for me, which is in short to bring forth this confession, to invite and give permission to others to do the same, to be witness to what God does in the wake of affirming these truths, taking them out of darkness and bringing them into the light, and to surrender this wholly unexpected place in my heart through which God desires to minister to others in a very particular way. Whew! I receive confirmation from Him almost daily (sometimes multiple times daily) that I’m on the right path, that he intends me for this particular and not wholly formed ministry. I don't have the opportunity to lose momentum, so often is He putting wind in my sails.
One of the many unexpected byproducts of this is that the space in my heart that felt so empty and dried out is no longer vacant, but bursting with fullness, lush and verdant and teeming with new life. God has filled it to overflowing; the heart He's given me in exchange for the one I surrendered to Him is one that has eyes only for Him. His design for my life in the context of His grander scheme is unfolding before me and I find myself utterly caught up in it, unwilling to allow that anything or anyone should take me away from it.
I am open to new friendships, but where relationships of the dating/courtship variety (or whatever you want to call it) are concerned, I feel a clear and resounding “no” rising up within me whenever it is offered. It feels incredibly empowering to declare truly and with utmost conviction that I’m just not all that interested in that right now, period. I cannot knowingly declare that this is the way it's always going to be; but I can affirm that this is the way it is now.
I make no apologies for this.
While I understand some women are in the habit of saying things they don’t really mean, it is irritating when I’m not taken at my word. Remember when Elizabeth in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice refuses Mr. Collins’s offer of marriage? He repeatedly attempts to counter her refusals of his proposal by accusing her of playing coy and of trying to incite greater passion from him. She keeps reaffirming her refusal with noticeable and increasing annoyance. While my circumstances are different than Elizabeth's, I can appreciate her frustration in that moment: her "no" is not being heard, but is being taken for something else entirely.
A couple months ago, I told a certain would-be pursuer three times over the course of two days quite explicitly that I wasn’t interested in dating him (I actually said three times: I don’t want to date you). Just seconds after I said this a fourth time, he accused me of being "unclear". I wish I was kidding.
I realize that this is one of those rare instances where my feelings and decisions are counter-cultural both in a popular sense and where the culture of the church is concerned as well. Most everyone desires companionship and to pair off with another. It is expected that single Christian adults are in pursuit of a marriage partner. It would not surprise me in the least to find that there might again be a time in my life where finding a spouse will be more important to me than it is at present. But it’s not now. I am satisfied and filled with contentment in the relationships with those I consider to be my community. I do not lack for human connection.
So what does any of this have to do with virgin martyrs? I'm so glad you asked!
Depending on the historical context from which they are being evaluated, virgin martyrs have been accused of being “unchristian” in their refusal to marry, and as an impossible ideal of Christian womanhood. It would seem then, that married Christian women and “those who do not suffer enough, would seem doomed to be imperfect models of Christian faith” (Norris, p. 187).
What makes the virgin martyrs such powerful examples is that they refused to marry pagan men or to worship idols and false gods as required by Roman law. It wasn’t merely popular culture they were defying: aligning themselves with Christ as they did was to openly resist the authorities and invite a vicious and brutal death. It was to blatantly defy every accepted standard of female behavior. They weren't going to marry pagan husbands in order to produce children who would also be required to worship false gods.
It wasn’t only in their behavior that they defied the laws of the time. Many virgin martyrs lucidly vocalized their dissent, which only incited more vehement responses from the prevailing male authorities. One such martyr, Mahya, after being publicly stripped naked at the command of the king declared, “‘It is to your shame … that you have done this; I am not ashamed of myself … for I am a woman – such as created by God.’ Had she finished her scriptural allusion,’ the authors note, ‘Mahya would have added, ‘created by God in his own image, male and female.’ Typically, such speech angers male rulers … the more the martyrs talk back, the more they mock those in power by their allegiance to Christ and his invincible power” (Norris, p. 194).
And what about their virginity? Typically, virginity is thought of as referring to someone who has not experienced sexual intercourse; in this sense, it is seen as a passive state of being, one that precedes knowing and experience. But the virginity that the martyrs embodied had more to do with embracing and affirming their identities in and alignment with Christ. One Benedictine sister described virginity as having its center in the heart, such that it could be named “singleness of heart”. The same sister continues, “Virginity is a state that returns to God in wholeness. This wholeness is not that of having experienced all experiences, but of something reserved, preserved, or reclaimed for what it was made for. Virginity is the ability to stay centered, with oneness of purpose” (qtd. in Norris, pp. 200-201).
Norris makes the point that physical virginity of the martyrs is not the issue, “and it never was. Reading between the lines of the tortures the virgin martyrs endured, it seems obvious that they were raped. Scholars of the early church now confirm this. The real issue is that these unprotected women dare to make an outrageous claim – that as Christians, they have been made in the image of God – and are thus greatly feared by governing authorities and punished to the full extent of the law.”
She continues, “In reclaiming our virginity, women can reclaim our first selves. We can allow the fierce, holy little girls we were to cast judgment on the ways our adult lives do and do not reflect what we were made for” (Norris, p. 203). In this sense, virginity is for the married woman or the single woman; it is available to all women. At these words I want to stand up, raise my arms, and cheer!!
For the first time in my life, I can affirm I am as single-hearted in my devotion to God as I’ve ever been. I don't know how else to say it: I am enamored of Him and desire in my depths to honor Him with my obedience by being true to that for which He has called me. Right now, in this moment, I’m doing what I was made for. At last, I can affirm without a doubt and know deeply without tangible proof that I am exactly where He wants me to be, that I am conforming exactly to that “fierce, holy little girl” He always intended me to be. Finally, after years of donning masks and acting a part, I am learning what it means to be me.
Though I really do understand when incredulity is the primary response to this declaration, that like Mr. Collins, some might think I’m just trying to put would-be pursuers in suspense, it is frustrating not to be taken at my word. I understand that it might seem ridiculous for me to be complaining that someone wants to pursue a relationship with me. What a terrible problem to have, some might say (and have said). I’m aware of how this sounds, which is why it’s difficult for me to articulate and why even now, I’m hesitating at posting this at all.
But I here affirm that I am a whole being, created in God’s image. Jesus Christ has filled me with Himself and I want only to be filled with Him. I am wholly at His disposal; I am caught up in Him. He is the only one on whom I set my sights. While declaring this publicly won't put me in any danger of suffering sadistic tortures or dying a brutal death, I understand that what I'm saying puts me in an overwhelming minority. But the testimony of the unswerving and undivided devotion of these virgin martyrs speaks volumes to me these thousands of years later; their stories aid me in understanding my own heart better: that theirs was a defiance not for the sake of defiance. Their defiance of the laws and accepted standards of the times in which they lived was a natural byproduct of the single-hearted love and devotion they bore toward their Creator.
It’s outrageous to claim this, I know. I can't claim that I understand it fully. But I’m not going to stop surrendering to Him now, not when I've opened my hands to Him and have begun to receive my true self from Him. This is not defiance for its own sake: it is just too wonderful finally to begin to understand and embody His design and purpose for me. I'm willing to fight for and defend this, even if it means turning aside from every accepted convention of faith and femininity.
Martyrdom of Saint Agatha
Sebastiano del Piombo (1485-1547)
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