ETERNAL REST GIVE UNTO THEM, O LORD, AND LET PERPETUAL LIGHT SHINE UPON THEM. AMEN.
Religious Celibacy and Virginity may be called the apotheosis of Chastity, which thus is raised to its highest term, and becomes absolute and permanent. Chastity, from being the guide and moderator of natural activity, rises to the highest self-abnegation, and establishes the dominance of the spiritual over the material element in human nature. The maintenance of the specific life is indeed a primary law of nature; yet nature itself always provides checks on a too abundant multiplication. God has provided one in the case of man that is proportioned to his dignity and future prospects, viz., the voluntary and supernatural check of religious celibacy. In this condition men approximate to the state of the angels in heaven, who neither marry nor are given in marriage; and thus they represent new perfections of God in humanity. By calling some to an exceptional state, God does not contradict His own general creative law; the exemption of some individuals from the command to increase and multiply is always necessary in the interest of the species. God gives only a counsel of greater perfection to a few chosen ones. When the Apostles suggested that "it is not good to marry," Jesus affirmed both the law and its exceptions. "All men receive not this word but they to whom it is given. . . . He that can take, let him take it" (Matt. xix. 11, 12). How harmonious are the ways of Divine Providence! How beautifully is natural law carried out in the spiritual sphere!
