Sex--The Unknown Quantity: The Spiritual Function of Sex

by Alexander J. McIvor-Tyndall

If, instead of indignantly denying this fact, as though it were profane criticism of the saints, defenders of the Theological view of mysticism would calmly consider and accept the evidence, they would be able to infuse into the creeds, the vitality which they so lack.

The lives of the saints, in so far as they relate to trance and ecstatic visions, must, sooner or later meet one of two fates. Either they will be analyzed and presented, with the reverence that is due the subject, as proofs of the spiritual function of sex-love; or they must be relegated to the position to which the Church assigns all sexual desire—that of eroticism and innate and ineradicable depravity.

Viewed in the light in which Theology has held the sex relation, the paroxysms which are ascribed to St. Catherine of Sienna, and to the Holy Mechthild and other saints, have in them something decidedly obnoxious; while, if we take the premise that these saints, by virtue of prayer, aspiration, and intended sacrifice of the mortal self to an ideal, transmuted their sex-nature from the physical to the spiritual, then indeed, we have an approach to a mighty truth, which is at once both explanatory and satisfying. St. Catherine is referred to as "the mystic bride;" and Jesus Christ, to whom she was "espoused" (using the terminology which the Church prefers, as suggesting a less physical union than the word "married") was the "bride-groom;" more than that; she declared that she was married with a ring, set with precious stones; just like any other betrothal or wedding ring.

Always in these recitals we find the phraseology which lovers employ when exalting the loved one above the world. The term "My Beloved" is singularly universal, and seems to spring involuntarily to the lips of the lover when his love is of the quality that reverences; adores; and exalts its object. And it is equally foreign to the lips of the dilettante lover.

To their credit be it said, the love which the saints developed within themselves, by dint of their attempts to exalt celibacy in an age of sexual profligacy, is none the less human love; it is human love spiritualized, exalted, and transmuted from the plane of the animal to that of the soul. This transmutation is in fact responsible for the intensity, the absorbing power of the love which thrilled them into such an ecstacy that in most instances they became lost in the bliss of the emotions excited by the inward flow of their sex nature, and were totally unfitted to take part in the outer, or so-called practical life.

Such, for example, was Saint Teresa, of whom William James, in his "Varieties of Religious Experience," says: "Her idea of religion seems to have been that of an endless amatory flirtation—if one may say so without irreverence—between the devotee and the Deity." Although this estimate of St. Theresa's saintliness will doubtless be shocking to the people who think they are pious, we take an optimistic view of it, and suggest that the saint's idea of religion is far more satisfying than that usually presented as saintliness. St. Theresa, like most of the female saints, became "the bride of Christ"—the man Jesus, the Christ, let it be remembered.

St. Gertrude, a Benedictine nun of the Thirteenth Century, gave herself up so wholly to this inward contemplation; to fasting, prayer, and withdrawal from the outer to the inner life, that she lived as the "bride of God," in such daily contact with Him as would fitly describe any love-mated honeymoon of today. According to her testimony "God" indulged in such language and caresses, and intimacies, kisses and compliments as would satisfy any woman married to her ideal lover.

In the case of St. Louis of Gonzaga, it is significant that he selected the Virgin Mary as the object of his adoration and "consecrated to her, his own virginity;" and we read how "burning with love, he made his vow of perpetual chastity." In consequence of this vow, he was never tempted as was St. Anthony, by visions of beautiful women.

Here again we have the love of the male for the female. If it were not so, St. Louis may well have chosen Jesus, or Joseph, or John, as the object of his devotional contemplation; and St. Catherine, and Theresa, and Mechthild might have paid their homage to the Virgin Mary.

"Jeanne of the Cross" held constant converse with her guardian angel, who by the way was a beautiful youth, "more brilliant than the sun and with a crown of glory on his head."