Month of St. Joseph: The Expediency of Virginity for the Divine Word

But does it not seem that there is too great a disproportion between the corruption of our bodies and the immortal beauty of this pure spirit, and that it is therefore not possible to unite two natures so distant from each other?

It is also for this reason that holy virginity stands between the two natures, as a way of bringing them closer together. Indeed, we can see that light, when it falls upon opaque objects, can never penetrate them for their obscurity rejects it, but when it encounters a transparent body, it enters into it and unites itself to it, because it finds in it the radiance and transparency that are similar to its nature and share in the characteristics of light.

Thus we can say that the divinity of the Eternal Word, wishing to unite itself to a mortal body, required the blessed intermediary of holy virginity that, as it has something spiritual about it, was able in a way to prepare the flesh to be united to this pure spirit.

- Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, First Panegyric of St. Joseph