The intimate experience of the Mother of the Lord is hidden from us. And nobody was ever able to share this unique experience, by the very nature of the case. It is the mystery of the person. This accounts for the dogmatic reticence of the Church in Mariological doctrine. The Church speaks of her rather in the language of devotional poetry, in the language of antinomical metaphors and images. There is no need, and no reason, to assume that the Blessed Virgin realized at once all the fullness and all the implications of the unique privilege bestowed upon her by the grace of God. There is no need, and no reason, to interpret the “fulness” of grace in a literal sense as including all possible perfections and the whole variety of particular spiritual gifts. It was a fullness for her, she was full of grace.
And yet it was a “specialized” fullness, the grace of the Mother of God, of the Virgin Mother, of the “Unwedded Spouse. Indeed, she had her own spiritual way, her own growth in grace. The full meaning of the mystery of salvation was apprehended by her gradually. And she had her own share in the sacrifice of the Cross: “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also” (Luke 2:35).
The full light shone forth only in the Resurrection. Up to that point Jesus himself was not yet glorified. And after the Ascension we find the Blessed Virgin among the Twelve, in the center of the growing Church. One point is beyond any doubt. The Blessed Virgin had been always impressed, if this word is suitable here, by the angelic salutation and announcement and by the startling mystery of the virgin birth. How could she not be impressed? Again, the mystery of her experience is hidden from us. But can we really avoid this pious guesswork without betraying the mystery itself? “But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).
Her inner life had to be concentrated on this crucial event of her story. For indeed the mystery of the Incarnation was for her also the mystery of her own personal existence. Her existential situation was unique and peculiar. She had to be adequate to the unprecedented dignity of this situation. This is perhaps the very essence of her particular dignity, which is described as her “Ever-Virginity.” She is the Virgin.
Now virginity is not simply a bodily status or a physical feature as such. Above all it is a spiritual and inner attitude, and apart from that a bodily status would be altogether meaningless. The title of Ever-Virgin means surely much more than merely a “physiological” statement. It does not refer only to the Virgin Birth. It does not imply only an exclusion of any later marital intercourse (which would be utterly inconceivable if we really believe in the Virgin Birth and in the Divinity of Jesus). It excludes first of all any “erotic” involvement, any sensual and selfish desires or passions, any dissipation of the heart and mind. The bodily integrity or incorruption is but an outward sign of the internal purity. The main point is precisely the purity of the heart, that indispensable condition of “seeing God.”
This is the freedom from passions, the true apathia, which has been commonly described as the essence of the spiritual life. Freedom from passions and “desires,” epithimia — imperviability to evil thoughts, as St. John of Damascus puts it. Her soul was governed by God only, it was supremely attached to him. All her desire was directed towards things worthy of desire and affection (St. John says: tetammeni, attracted, gravitating). She had no passion, thymon. She ever preserved virginity in mind, and soul, and body (Homil. 1, in Nativitatem B.V Mariae 9 and 5, Migne, Ser. Gr. XCVI, 676 A and 668 C). It was an undisturbed orientation of the whole personal life towards God, a complete self-dedication.
To be truly a “handmaid of the Lord” means precisely to be ever-virgin, and not to have any fleshly preoccupations. Spiritual virginity is sinlessness, but not yet “perfection,” and not freedom from temptations. But even our Lord himself was in a sense liable to temptations and was actually tempted by Satan in the wilderness.
Our Lady perhaps had her temptations too, but has overcome them in her steady faithfulness to God’s calling. Even an ordinary motherly love culminates in a spiritual identification with the child, which implies so often sacrifice and self-denial. Nothing less can be assumed in the case of Mary; her Child was to be great and to be called the “Son of the Highest” (Luke 1:32). Obviously, he was one who “should have come,” the Messiah (Luke 7:19).
This is openly professed by Mary in the Magnificat, a song of Messianic praise and thanksgiving. Mary could not fail to realize all this, if only dimly for a time and gradually, as she pondered all the glorious promises in her heart. This was the only conceivable way for her. She had to be absorbed by this single thought, in an obedient faithfulness to the Lord who “hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden” and “hath done for her great things.” This is precisely the way in which St. Paul described the state and the privilege of virginity: “the unmarried woman, and the virgin, thinks about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and in spirit” (1 Cor. 7:34). The climax of this virginal aspiration is the holiness of the Virgin Mother all-pure and undefiled.
~Adapted from Archpriest George Florovsky, The Ever-Virgin Mother of God, (http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/maria_florovsky_e.htm).
