Scandalously irreverent and theologically imprecise briefs on heroines of the faith, written by a recovering Protestant agnostic seeker with practically no training and exactly zero filter.
So, St. Macrina the Younger is evidently the patroness of nursing mothers. According to the Internet you pray to her for “healthy breasts.” Y’all, this is why I’d fail outta being Catholic on day one. I know I would accidentally (out loud) fumble the words and pray to her for “younger breasts.” THIS IS OBVIOUSLY A SET UP.
But I digress. Already.
Anyway, St. Macrina was born in AD 330 to a woman named Emmelia and her father, Basil “the Elder”. She was one of nine kids and was engaged to a man who died before they could wed, at which point she decided to just stay a virgin since she had committed to him and now he was gone. That is pretty sweet, right? But also maybe it had something to do with her being around nine—nine!—other sibs her whole life and perhaps she just needed some dang alone time by that point.
Then Basil—her dad—died, and she asked her mom if they could give all of their wealth to each family member and their servants according to what they needed. Her mom agreed.
Macrina then became a nun and spent her life studying scripture and teaching her little brother, Peter… no mention of the other 8 tho. But everyone has a favorite, right? No bigs.
Either way, her sibs—among them several other very important early Christians apparently, including Gregory (that’s St. Gregory of Nyssa to you) and Peter (ahem, St. Peter of Sebaste, Bishop)— credit her for teaching them about the Church, and Eastern Christians—Orthodox and Byzantines—use the liturgy of St. Basil the Great (another of her brothers) in worship to this day.
Anyway, when she eventually died in 379, she wouldn’t even sleep on a bed. She just laid on the floor because that was more #onbrand for her humble life I guess.
“Macrina is significant,” says Wikipedia, “in that she set the standard for being a holy Early Christian woman. She contributed to her brother’s writings [Gregory’s, that is] and his belief that virginity reflected the “radiant purity of God.”
Um, what?!?
And warning, this is where this article gets NC17…
Alright, so as a feminist who was raised Protestant at the height of purity culture (like, I had the virginity ring… the whole 9 yards), that last paragraph made me . Hard.
Like, of course that’s gonna be a dude’s takeaway since they’re so big on the virgin/whore dichotomy. But then, in the serendipitous way the universe works, right after reading that, I saw a post from my friend Leticia, a fellow Chapter House contributor. She was talking about how since there’s no marriage in heaven, there’s also no sex.
Now, I’d never really thought of that, BUT I also sorta figured if heaven is real *get ready to clutch your pearls here, y’all* I imagine it probably kinda feels like a Big O all the time. So, then yeah, sex would be sorta unnecessary. All the people have already been created and the pleasure part is already there, 24/7.
And obvi, since I have no filter and neither does Leti, I immediately sent these thoughts to her. I told her how I have a good friend that once mentioned a quote that really stuck with me. He said, “Many a man enters a brothel looking for God.” Which at first, sounds kinda blasphemous. But the more I thought about it… what if climaxing is the closest we can get to heaven on earth? Pretty sure that’s some Lady Gaga theology, but I also maybe believe it a bit.
So, while I tend to think of dudes who pay for sex as major creeps, maybe they’re actually just trying to find a counterfeit version of something their soul needs… they just don’t know there’s a real version out there.
Leti’s response was, “Woman, you’re so freakin’ Catholic, just go take the sacraments already,” because evidently that concept is one that’s been previously … ah … fleshed out the Church.
She said that there are saints and mystics who talk about being in the presence of God and legit describe it as “ecstasy.”
Just google the “Ecstasy of St. Teresa.” It’s a sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and if that’s not an O face, I don’t know what is. Sis is in the full on throws of something. Furthermore, our bodies were designed for this type of pleasure. Especially women’s bodies. We have parts that only serve that sole purpose, and when stimulated they offer myriad health benefits. So maybe it’s a two-for type deal that an all-knowing being installed in our very biology back when the blueprints for the female body were first created. We need to be having orgasms to stay healthy – and not just as a form of stress relief, but to strengthen our reproductive muscles as well.
So, is it crazy to wonder if we might be getting a small taste of heaven when we have one… like, in order to encourage our overall physical, emotional, and spiritual health all at once?
Now if only sit-ups offered that same pay-off… I’d be freakin’ cut, y’all.
So that all tracks. None of us were designed to go without those sensations. But perhaps there are multiple avenues to get there. And of course this got me thinking that maybe just maybe these consecrated virgin saints weren’t all prudes, they were just on a whole other level that us lowly earthly pleasure seeking peasants can’t even fathom.
Like, think about the best sex you’ve ever had…
I highly doubt it was just friction. It was probably more of a mind, body, soul connection, right? I think that’s why I love the JPII quote where he says something like the problem with porn is not that it shows too much, but that it shows too little. That’s some major sex positive thinking.
Like, why settle for some rushed, “don’t be too loud or you’ll wake up the kids,” mid-week quickie when you could be having full body, super-spiritual, next plane of pure consciousness, Ram Dass-level, soul-transcending shiz?
And imma be honest, I kinda needed that perspective bc I keep reading about all these lady saints, and like, the vast majority were consecrated virgins, lots of whom had sex used as a weapon against them, which was never okay, but it carries even more weight to me now. I mean, if I was having next level holy ecstasy, I’d probably take a knife to the throat before giving that up for basic pagan D too. So, now maybe I get it.
Now, everyone please go pray for intercession to St. Macrina the Healthier for me to have younger breasts.
*The author previously published a version of this entry to her Facebook page, but we liked it so much, we asked her to revise and expand it for us. -Ed.
Destiny Herndon De La Rosa is the founder of the secular pro-life New Wave Feminists organization. She is a frequent op/ed contributor to the Dallas Morning News and a sought-after speaker.
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