Often when people talk about virginity, they mean "waiting until marriage." But some people are called to virginity in a higher sense-- single-heartedness for God in celibacy. Isaiah 62:5 says: "As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you; And as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride so shall your God rejoice in you." Isaiah was talking about God's devoted and rejoicing love for the nation of Israel, but this came true in a far more personal sense when God looked with favor on the lowliness of the Blessed Virgin Mary. After she said "be it done to me according to your will", He became incarnate in her womb. What a mystery, the purely spiritual love of God resulted in Jesus becoming flesh, because of Mary! Mary was a virgin before Jesus' birth, even during His birth, and still after His birth, and remained ever a virgin. And Jesus also remained a virgin, and he invited his friends to do the same, if they were able, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus revealed Himself as the divine Bridegoom of every soul, and especially of those Christians vowed to lifelong virginity.  

There's a physical meaning to the word virgin, and there's also the more profound spiritual meaning, of single-heartedness for God. You're born physically a virgin, but you can become a spiritual virgin by growing in your relationship with God, especially in prayer, and seeking to do His loving will completely, including living chastely. Many people who are biologically virgins, aren't virgins in that spiritual sense, and Pope John Paul II points out in his book "Love and Responsibility" that (by God's marvelous grace!) some people become spiritually virginal late, in other words when they are no longer physically virgins. Even if they sinned in the past, there's no sinner whom God cannot make clean and new, and whom He does not love enough to want to give His whole self to, his whole transforming and overflowing gift of supernatural life. God delights in you!  

I grew up Catholic, but I never got a good education in Catholic truth, including the moral truth. I "fell away" from the faith when I was about 12 and I got involved with sexual sin especially in my early 20s, without really understanding what a terrible mistake and sin it was. The deep aches and longings of my heart were not satisfied or healed by the relationship I had with my boyfriend, so even though I felt like God didn't exist, I felt a desire to pray, I wanted to know if it might be true that the universe is really founded on Love. I NEEDED that to be true. God gave me so much confirmation in prayer that His love is real and personal, that I started, faltering at first but increasingly confident, to pray every day and to read the writings of many different Saints, for instance I loved Saint John of the Cross and Saint Augustine. Finally I was reflecting about the gospel of the Last Supper where Jesus says "do this in memory of Me." I realized that Jesus wasn't just talking to the disciples who were there in the room with Him, he was talking to me just as much, and I had to return to the Catholic Church, I had to go to Mass! I also, of course, went to Confession, even though I was very nervous!  

Along the way God was also giving me the grace of a powerful desire not only to leave behind my sexual sins, but to dedicate myself to Him in a very total way, with my whole being, my whole heart. I said yes, with a grateful sense that God had chosen me for a special love! And I have never looked back, even when it hasn't been easy. It's so romantic when a man and woman really love each other, but it's overwhelmingly more so when God loves a soul, and the soul loves God totally! I thought I should join a religious order, but the priests and other wise people I asked about it all agreed that because of some health problems and emotional problems, religious community life wouldn't be right for me. That disappointed me a lot, especially because I knew some sisters whose lives were so beautiful, and I wanted my life to be beautiful and precious like theirs seemed to me.  

I heard about a Catholic vocation to be a Consecrated Virgin, living the life of a Spouse of Jesus "in the world," but without joining a community of sisters or going to a monastery. At the time I thought this meant "virgin" in the spiritual sense, but over time I found that most people consider this vocation only for physical virgins. I felt humiliation, and deep grief over how lost and sinful I had been in the past, I had hurt and disappointed God, who had destined me for Himself and wanted my whole heart, my whole life. It was painful, but I was not in the least bit discouraged about dedicating myself to God in celibacy; what merely human spouse is so totally forgiving, so tenderly loving, who has the power to heal like Jesus? I was all the more sure I had made the right choice!  

I thought about Saint Mary Magdalene. The Bible says Jesus drove seven demons out of her, and what demons do is tempt people to sin, so it's reasonable to think that she sinned sexually and was not a virgin. After Jesus helped her so greatly, she dedicated herself to celibacy and her love for Him was very great! She was one of the holy women who was close by the foot of the Cross when Jesus died, together with Jesus' Mother. I thought about how Jesus must have looked at these women, both of them holy because of His grace. Grace preserved the Blessed Virgin from sin before she was ever even tempted, and the SAME Grace of God restored the wounded and dirtied soul of Mary Magdalene to wholeness and cleanness, after she sinned and then was set free from her sin by Jesus. All this saving Grace radiated from the Cross where Jesus fulfilled His mission to set us free from sin and unite us with God.  

After Jesus died, Mary Magdalene told anybody who would listen about Jesus casting so many demons out of her--you would think she'd have been terribly humiliated for people to know that (really, normally you shouldn't go around telling everybody your sins and problems), but on the contrary she could think only of His healing love, which she wanted everyone to know about! Scripture says that when Jesus rose from the dead, Mary Magdalene was the first person He appeared to. That astonishes me. Maybe it was because she was the one, BECAUSE of her sins and her woundedness, who most urgently needed the Resurrection. Mary Magdalene was the one who stayed by His tomb, weeping. A few Saints have said they think really Jesus appeared to the Blessed Virgin Mary first after He rose, because He loved her more than anyone. It's okay for them to think that, because in Jesus' heart there is really no first, second or third place but his whole heart is for everyone all at once. I myself think He really did rush first to give joy to Mary Magdalene. And Mary Magdalene had a special honor then, of being the first one to tell the apostles that she'd seen the Lord, no longer dead, but alive again!  

Nobody calls Mary Magdalene a virgin. That would be misleading. Yet, Jesus' spiritual healing and forgiveness really did make her soul like new. The two Marys, so terribly different in their past behavior, who seemingly can't be compared with one another, have become like each other in the beauty and virginal quality of their souls, because they said yes to God's merciful love!