Discerning Religious Life After Sexual Brokenness
“Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”
St. Peter’s words often arise in the hearts of women with histories of sexual brokenness who are discerning a religious vocation.
Feelings of unworthiness, inadequacy, and shame all take turns to point out the ways we could never live up to this call. Even for those whose struggle did not involve the loss of physical virginity, the blatant discrepancy between the virginal spirit of religious life and our own sexual struggles is difficult to reconcile. Yet, the Lord did not get the wrong address when He placed His call in your heart. Your desire to belong totally to Him is an invitation to experience the restorative nature of His love in a deeper way.
“I Will Restore Your Virginity”
In the book of Hosea, we read about a woman named Gomer who struggles with fidelity; time after time, she relapses into her old ways. Yet, her beloved does not give up on her, and pursues her heart to the end:
“I will betroth you to myself forever, betroth you with integrity and justice, with tenderness and love” —Hosea 2:19
Most remarkably, the speaker uses the word ‘betroth’—which in this context was only used when referring to virgins. The contrast between this declaration and Gomer’s patterns of sin could not be more stark. Fr. Blaise Arminjon observes this inconsistency:
“To Gomer, the adulterous, the prostitute, her husband Yahweh-Hosea had said: ‘Betrothed is used only for a virgin…’ But there is no infidelity that can resist such a merciful love, for which to forgive is to re-create.” —The Cantata of Love: A Verse by Verse Reading of the Song of Songs, 220
During confession, a priest once shared this passage with me, paired with these words of hope: “The Lord says to you here, ‘I will restore your virginity.’”
The Lord—in His initiative of love—betroths us to Himself.
In the same breath, He forgives infidelity and restores our purity and innocence.
Wounds of Love
In receiving these promises of restorative love, we are still faced with our wounds. Even after absolution from our sins, we can remain burdened by memories, regret, and fears of falling into old habits. No matter how much time passes, it seems these scars will never completely fade—the sins still occurred.
How can we embrace the promise of restoration despite scars which could—however faint—remain our whole lives?
Sometimes when we ask the Lord to heal our wounds, we are in fact asking for them to simply disappear. We don’t want to see them anymore. However even after the Resurrection, Jesus bore His own physical wounds—the nails in His hands, the wound in His side—which became a testament of His glorious triumph over sin and death. In the same way, our wounds, united with the wounds of Christ, can be transformed into a song of praise for His glory.
St. Augustine experienced this similarly: “In my deepest wound I saw Your glory, and it astounded me.” St. Augustine was himself no stranger to brokenness, yet even his deepest wounds were transformed in the love of God. Our wounds too can become transfigured by the love of Christ into our greatest testaments of His power.
In the works of St. John of the Cross, we read that as we open our wounds of sin to the firebrand of God’s love, these same wounds are transformed into wounds of love. We can therefore shift the focus from asking God to erase our wounds to asking Him to transform them.
Through continually abandoning our wounds to the furnace of love, St. John of the Cross says the soul becomes “wholly absorbed” in this love and “made quite whole in love.” Eventually, the soul is “wholly wounded and wholly healed.” (St. John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love)
As we strive to surrender our whole lives to God, the very wounds that pulled us apart can become our path to wholeness.
Our Lady & Mary Magdalene
In our aspirations to give our hearts wholly to God, we set before ourselves two models: Our Lady and St. Mary Magdalene.
Both of these women shared our desires and gave preeminent examples of their fulfillment.
In Our Lady, it is clear to see the exemplification of purity she embodied in every moment of her life. In contrast, St. Mary Magdalene offers us an example of a penitent love, which can resonate more personally for those of us with a history of sexual sin.
St. Francis de Sales says that following her conversion, St. Mary Magdalene received a “supereminent purity” and that, “having been purified in the furnace of sacred love, she was filled with excellent chastity and filled with such perfect dilection that after the Mother of God it was she who loved Our Lord more.” (St. Francis de Sales, Sermon on the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene, July 1621)
In light of a possible religious calling, it can become easy to compare ourselves to others who have experienced a similar call but have not experienced similar sexual brokenness. However, as we reflect on the depth of love both Our Lady and St. Mary Magdalene possessed, it can be fruitful to meditate on the relationship they would have had with one another.
Our Lady, despite her perfect fidelity, would have never in any way looked down upon St. Mary for her past or demeaned her holiness. She would have simply praised God’s work in her conversion. Likewise, St. Mary Magdalene would have loved and honored Our Lady and all her virtues without glancing back at herself to be ashamed by her own past impurity. Their relationship with one another would have been mutually praising the Lord for His work in their lives.
In this same way, we can see that both forms of love—innocent and penitent—can be complementary and live alongside one another in peace, each giving due praise to God.
I Will Betroth You to Myself Forever…
In the Byzantine Rite for the baptism of adults, the priest informs catechumens that, in baptism, they will die to sin. “Whoever dies no longer has power over his possessions,” the priest tells them. “Let none of you keep in your heart anything that belongs to the devil.”
When shame over our past sins prevents us from responding fully to the call of the Lord, we must remember that in Christ, we have all died to sin—the infidelities we surrendered are no longer ours to carry. The devil would have you remain forever in the bondage of your sins. But because of your yes to Christ, the devil “bewails his loneliness, disbelieving your escape to freedom.”
We can praise God for His restoration and redemption, and for the opportunity to discern a call to religious consecration. In our sexual brokenness, we have not only seen ourselves for what we are, but seen the Lord for who He is. We can proclaim with Mary Magdalene, “I have seen the Lord!”
In meditation on the Immaculate Conception, a Carthusian monk writes of this spirit of gentle self-knowledge which can be ours if we continue to give ourselves entirely to God:
“We need much patience with our own soul, to say nothing of the body. But anyone who recognizes himself frankly for what he is; who by that fact alone is freed from the temptation to criticize others, and who in spite of self-knowledge does not omit to renew his effort every day, keeping his eyes fixed on God, persevering for God’s sake alone and counting solely on His bounty—such a one, I say, does more than grow better; he abandons himself to God, to whom such loving humility gives more glory than all success.”
Our Lady—model and Mother—takes each of us as her own, and leads us by the hand on the path before us:
“Let us then, beg our Beloved Lady something of her meekness. It is she who shields us for God, and makes us chaste in the highest sense: that is, free from all resistance, awaiting the coming of our Spouse.” —The Prayer of Love and Silence
Our stories of restoration and redemption should be our songs of praise within our vocational call. Our stories ground us in the truth of His goodness and keep us reliant on Him to restore us.
The Lord sees your whole story and says to you, “I will betroth you to myself forever.”