: and God is charity. The guardian therefore of virginity is charity: but the place of this guardian is humility.

THOU: It comes to this: how chaste is chaste? This morning I am reading around again and remembering that I've put aside the writings of Church fathers whenever they collide in my head with the old wrath-inflicted bruises: the summons to guilt within the romanced ideal of purity. Well, Fr says we must protect ourselves from what we read if it puts our faith in danger--even from the saints. Still, I think I should tell you: there is nothing pure about me, Lord. I believe I am making a sound decision, and I believe you will either accept it or let me know, in some unforeseen trial, that this vocation is not for me. But as for purity, I know I have none to offer.

What's more, I am lazy. What I have is a desire to give myself to you, a desire that I tend to live out abstractly, but that I fail, practically and materially, almost every moment. I know abstract desire is not enough. I recognize that I must carry out my promise to you in the ordinary and mundane sacrifices of the everyday, that this too is the cup of the martyr, that without total surrender, I withhold the holocaust I offer and wreck the union--which I am certain to do. For the vow itself is simply a promise. One cannot suck life from a promise--one can only continually renew the effort to restore the promise through vigilance and love, and this is no honeymoon, Lord. It promises to be painful at best, and (forgive me) dull at worst, because I am a creature of pleasure and leisure.

So the ancients discuss purity as though it is intact, retained, enclosed: they cannot be speaking to me. All I have to offer you is sincerely adulterated by self-interested desire, affect, and powerful illusions of who you are. I am too human to recall that the vow resides in the immediate present towards the future unfolding of my daily remembrances. And so you must help me to remember I am yours, and that to be yours is to be a partner to your enduring passion towards the instruments of your death and torture. This is your end. It must be mine too.

And finally: pain is pain. Hurt is hurt. It is only to easy to be attracted to it when all is fat and comfortable. Such is my life and my attraction to you. I am almost, in my illusions, incited towards the ecstasy of your cross--but what do I know of your humiliation? Almost nothing at all. It is a dangerous unreality, a masochism that puts limits on what you might ask. I am trying to ready myself for the truth, I am trying to prepare for the smallest and greatest things, but in truth I am afraid. It is up to you to pour out whatever lies ahead. You already know I would rather not share your cup. I only hope I will not refuse it when you ask.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. To God who is, who was and who is to come, now and forever.

Amen.
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"Forsooth the hidden gifts of God, which nought save the questioning of trial makes known to each, even in himself. For, to pass over the rest, whence does a virgin know, although careful of the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord but that haply, by reason of some weakness of mind unknown to herself, she be not as yet ripe for martyrdom, whereas that woman, whom she rejoiced to set herself before, may already be able to drink the Cup of the Lord's humiliation, which He set before His disciples, to drink first, when enamored of high place?" (45)

--St Augustine, De virginitate

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