Ave Maria, Respect the True Meaning of Sex

While we were hearing about the foundations of the Christian beliefs during the lecture last week there was one part of the lecture that correlated the "Virgin birth" with a negative outlook towards sex.

As some of you may know from Art History or your own knowledge, the Annunciation is when the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her that she was going to conceive in her womb a son named Jesus, the son of God. In the Gospel of Luke 1:34-35 it says, "But Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?" And the angel said to her in reply, "The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God." Mary proceeded to say in verse 38, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word."

Rebecca was correct when she stated that Mary conceived the son of God through the holy Spirit, but I don't agree that this was a reason for Christians to have a negative perspective towards their sexuality. The reason I feel this way is because Mary was conceived by her parents Anna and Joachim without sin. This means that she was the only human to be born without the stain of original sin. This is referenced by the greeting Gabriel gives to Mary in the Gospel of Luke 1:28, "And coming to her he said, "Hail Mary full of grace! The Lord is with thee." The angel Gabriel greets her as "full of grace" and for Mary to fully accept her vocation to bear the son of God, it was necessary that she be born in grace instead of sin.

The phrase "full of grace" comes from the Greek word "kecharitomene" which is a word used for characteristics. Being born with sin is a characteristic, but in her case she was born "full of grace", which is a characteristic of her birth. A characteristic is something that is natural. So naturally we are born with original sin (the fall from Adam and Eve), and so naturally Mary wasn't. Mary was the exception. The grace given to Mary is at once permanent and of a unique kind. "Kecharitomene" is a perfect participle of the Greek word "charitoo", meaning "to fill or endow with grace" Since this term is in the perfect tense, it indicates that Mary was graced in the past, but with continuing effects in the future. So the grace Mary enjoyed was not a result of the angel's visit, but of when she was created.

Mary's exception doesn't really correlate with a negative outlook on sex because it doesn't compare with how the rest of humankind, conceived in sin, conceives children. Christians don't have a negative view towards sexuality they just don't believe it is recreational. A person gets a negative view of sex from the fall of man, because after Eve and Adam sinned they noticed that they were naked. This causes us to have the temptation to lust instead of seeing past someones body for who they were created to be. God breathed in the "breath of life", inspiring our bodies. So as humans we are not just a body but somebody. Sometimes when we make out for no reason or lust we forget that.