Marriage and Virginity
46. There are, therefore, many gifts, and some are more splendid and more perfect than others; each person has his own gifts. Sometimes one person receives fewer gifts but greater ones, and another receives lesser gifts but more of them. Given that there is a great number of those different gifts, and the advantages of the better ones are not for this life but for eternity, who among us would dare to decide among them as to their equality or the extent of their inequality? In my opinion, however, the Lord chose to mention three different degrees of fruitfulness,†62 and leave the rest for us to work out. In fact one of the other evangelists mentions only the hundredfold fruitfulness.†63 Are we to take this to mean that he did not accept the other two or did not know about them, rather than that he left them for us to take as implied?
47. Whether the hundredfold fruitfulness refers to virginity dedicated to God, or whether those different degrees of fruitfulness are to be understood in some other way, which we may or may not have mentioned, it remains true, as I had begun to say, that no one, it seems to me, would dare to consider virginity superior to martyrdom, and no one would doubt that martyrdom is a gift that remains hidden if it is not put to the test.
Married People May Be Prepared for Martyrdom
47. The virgin, therefore, has enough to think about to help her to stay humble and not offend against love, that love that is the greatest of all gifts, and without which, whatever other gifts she may have, few or many, great or small, she is nothing. She has, I say, enough to think about to keep her from becoming proud†64 or envious. She should hold virginity to be a much greater and better thing than marriage, while still being conscious that she does not know whether any particular married woman is already capable of suffering for Christ, whereas she is not yet capable of that and it is a mercy to her that her weakness is not put to the test. God is faithful, says the apostle, and he does not allow you to be tempted more than you can bear, but along with the temptation provides a way out of it, so that you are able to withstand it (1 Cor 10:13). Perhaps those men and women, therefore, who live a married life admirable in its own way, are already capable of resisting the enemy's efforts to force them to commit acts of wickedness, even with their bodies torn apart and their blood poured out. And perhaps those men and women who have kept themselves chaste since childhood and have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God (Mt 19:12) still do not have the strength to endure anything like that for justice, or for purity itself. It is one thing to maintain the truth and one's holy resolution by not giving in to persuasion and blandishments; it is another to do so by holding out even in the face of torture and savagery. This strength lies hidden in the powers and abilities of the spirit; it is brought out by being tested and becomes evident when it is experienced. Consequently, to avoid becoming proud because of what one sees one can do, everyone should humbly meditate on the fact that he or she does not know of something more significant that he or she cannot do, whereas others, who do not do or claim to do the thing he or she glories in the knowledge of, are able to do the thing he or she cannot do. In this way, with true, not false, humility, the words will be fulfilled: Being quick to give honor to each other (Rom 12:10), and, each person thinking the other is better (Phil 2:3).
No One Is Ever Entirely Free of Sin
48, 48. What shall I say now about care and vigilance to avoid sin? Who will boast that he or she has a pure heart? Who will boast that he or she is without stain of sin (Prv 20:9)? To be sure, your holy virginity has remained intact from your mother's womb; but, he says, no one is clean in your sight, not even the baby that has lived only one day on this earth (Jb 25:4).
There is a kind of virginal chastity preserved in faith too, the chastity that makes the Church a chaste virgin fit for her one spouse; but that one spouse taught a prayer, and he did so from the highest region of the heavens right to its boundaries (Mt 24:31), not only to virgins faithful in mind and body, but to all Christians without exception, from the most spiritual to the most carnal, from the apostles to the lowliest of repentant sinners, and in that prayer he instructed us to say: Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us (Mt 6:12). By having us ask for this he made it clear what we ourselves are, and that we should be mindful it. He did not command us to say Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us as a prayer for the sins of our past life, which we are confident were all forgiven us in baptism through the peace it brings. Otherwise, it would be the catechumens who ought to say this prayer, until they are baptized. When baptized persons say it, however, persons in authority as well as the ordinary people, the shepherds as well as the flock, it is demonstrated