On Mary and Virgo Season
Hello friends!
I hope that you’re staying safe and sound, wherever you are. We’re back in New York after spending some time out of the city this summer, and it feels okay to be home. COVID-wise, NYC is faring better than most right now, but it still feels like kind of a sad and lonely place. The people are the best part of the city, and having to find space to keep distance from people is difficult in such a dense city and feels counter to everything I love about NYC. My kids and I are managing with a lot of early-morning trips to Central Park and figuring things out as we go.
I’ve been spending a lot of time lately praying to Mary, for a lot of reasons. Some of it is Texas homesickness, and the way Our Lady of Guadalupe is tied into those feelings of home. Some of it is that prayer feels difficult for me lately, and when that happens I usually turn to Mary because I find her always easy to pray to. Some of it is that this year has been a difficult one for me, as a mother, and Mary helps keep me patient. And some of it, I think, is Virgo season.
I’m not an expert in astrology, so I won’t go too deep here. But Virgo season happens mid-August to mid-September, and it’s zodiac symbol is a maiden. This symbol is based on Astraea, who in Greek mythology was the virgin goddess of justice, innocence, purity, and precision. Virgos are characterized by loyalty and kindness. They tend to be hard-working and often self-critical. And independent, in a very particular way. Obviously I associate this sign with Mary as well (though I’m sure I’m not the first person to do so), and it’s changed how I think about her.
Growing up, Mary’s perpetual virginity was something that seemed to take up a lot of space in my brain. I can’t remember if it was something that was even talked about particularly often in the churches I grew up in, but I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I did grow up in a very conservative culture, where the fact of my physical virginity took on an outsized importance in charting the course of my adulthood (namely, that I would never catch a husband without it). But weirdly, I never connected the two things. Mary’s virginity seemed always to be a different, more mystical, kind of thing.
Mary always seemed to be completely herself, a thing that I found deeply appealing. For me, this is always what her virginity was about. It was less about physical abstinence and more about a classical definition of virginity, to be whole-unto-oneself. The spiritual nature of her virginity seemed much more important to me than the physical fact of it. In my mind, it gave her a particular independence. It implied that women can have dignity simply as human persons, outside of their roles as wives or mothers.
I have probably spent more time contemplating the Annunciation than I have spent contemplating anything else in the entire history of the world. Mary’s assured yes in the face of God’s command is maybe the most beautiful thing I know. I think it can be difficult to reconcile Mary’s independence with her obedience to God. It seems contradictory on the surface, but I don’t think it is, not really. Mary made a conscious choice to consecrate herself wholly to the love of God. She lived her entire life in the closest relation to God, that is, in grace. That is, I think, the most virginal way to live. The most wholly-unto-oneself way of being.
There’s a poem by Marie Howe that I love, called “Annunciation.” It’s one of those poems that lives in my heart:
Even if I don’t see it again—nor ever feel it
I know it is—and that if once it hailed me
it ever does—
And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction
not as towards a place, but it was a tilting
within myself,
as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where
it isn’t—I was blinded like that—and swam
in what shone at me
only able to endure it by being no one and so
specifically myself I thought I’d die
from being loved like that.
This is what I always find so meaningful about Mary’s virginity. The physical fact of it is something I believe in but also something that seems secondary. Mary’s virginity is about being so deep in the love of God that you can’t be anything other than your fullest, purest, most specific self. It’s a fullness, not a lack. It’s being “full of grace.” There’s nothing more virginal, or aspirational, than that.