2.1 Virginal-spousal character of the human being⁵

Virginity, this is our thesis, describes in some way the nature of the human being, his virginal character, because he comes from God and is oriented toward Him, and virginn in its essence, signifies precisely this immediate referral (=without mediation), inevitable, deeply inscribed in the nature of the creature with his Creator.  Virginity is the expression of the origin of man created by God, and therefore expression also of his final destination, which is God Himself. The first and last espousal of man is with God.  Every man, then, is virgin and called to be so, according to the specificity of his vocation; and virginity, in any case, cannot be  reduced to a simple characteristic of his vocational state, since it describes, instead, a fundamental aspect of the human person. Much less can it be reduced to a disciplinary law more or less imposed on some, because in that case it would be something added on from the outside, besides turning out to be psychologically disliked and hardly practicable, or embarrassing to proclaim.  As we have experienced and, unfortunately, continue to experience

Instead, to say that every person is virgin and called to be such means saying that in the heart of the human being there is a space that only the love of God can fill, or there is an insuppressible loneliness that no creature can violate and expect to fill;

it means indicating the dignity and nobility of each man and each woman, because their heart is made “by” God and therefore “for” God. The person possesses a grandeur that comes to him directly from the One who made him. Paraphrasing what Bloy says about pain, we could say that man has areas in his heart that do not yet exist and where God and only God can enter so that they exist…

Virginity is nostalgia for one’s origins, like a wound that does not heal, memory of beginnings and prophecy of the future, reminder that arises from the radical depths of the species (almost Jungian archetype); it is the human identity, actual and conceptual, which therefore cannot but project each human being to seek full realization of his affectivity in God.  It is not burdening a human relationship with an impossible weight and excessive responsibility, of unrealistic hopes and mutual expectations of possession of one another, with the jealousy, dependence, infantilism, short-term belonging, weak fidelity and everything else that can spoil the human relationship.

Virginity does not signify immediately and exclusively an explicit life choice, but even earlier the discovery that God is the origin and end of every love; that every time a being loves, God is present there, because love is always love of God (just as every desire is basically desire of God), because it is God who has invented love, or rather, God is love.  And so, every earthly affection that wants to last forever and be intense does well to make room in some way for God and divine love, to leave center place to Him.

This amounts to saying that divine and human love are not in conflict to the point that one excludes the other; there is no envy or jealousy between them. On the contrary, God saves the love of man, to the point that human love, even at its happiest, conjugal or paternal/maternal or between friends, is more love to the extent that it is more“ virginal”, or it is more truly human affection in the degree that it learns to respect that space, that direct referral to God, and does not violate that solitude where every human being is in direct relationship with the infinitely loving Eternal One. It does not expect to satiate completely the other’s thirst for love nor be satiated by the other, because only God can respond fully to the human thirst for love. And if man really wants to love another human much and forever, he must welcome God’s love in himself, in order to let himself be loved by Him and to love Him. And thus, rediscover the genuine meaning of a freeing relationship with the other.