"Let my beloved come to his locked garden and eat its choicest fruits, which I have reserved for him."

What are the most precious fruits of the human person which can be hidden away and locked in the interior garden of the soul, reserved for God alone?  Certainly sexuality and all the deep mysteries it encompasses comes to mind.  The celibate seeks to offer this gift.  But what does this mean when God is spirit and we are accustomed to thinking of sexuality in terms of flesh?  Clearly the mystery of sexuality transcends genital, bodily expression.  Will we leave our sexual identity behind when we enter heaven?  Obviously not, we would no longer even be human without our sexuality.  Rather, it reaches its ultimate fulfillment which transcends marriage, thus there is no marriage in heaven.  The celibate who reserves the choicest fruit of sexuality thus becomes a living witness even now of the destiny of those who are deemed worthy of eternal life.

What then is sexuality which is reserved for God?  It is the deepest intimacy and communion possible in the human soul set aside and reserved only for Him.  Such an offering is obviously not the purview of only the unmarried.  But those who remained unmarried "for the sake of the Kingdom" do so out of a response to a profound inner call, a vocation to begin living in this life the kind of exclusive, unconditional love we each will have for God in the next.  In that next life which opens up and out onto eternity we will be given a new name by Christ which no one else will know, representing an exclusive, intimate union he will have with each individual soul.  The virgin for Christ begins to hear the whispering of that new name even now, in this life.

Sexuality is not the only choicest fruit we can offer to God alone.  The object of our mind, the relentless pursuit of our intellect and the thoughts we have can be reserved for him too.  This means that we constantly bend the thrust of our mind in the direction of the Incarnate Word, dwelling on God's profound mysteries of Revelation.  We do not claim our mind as our own by demanding the right to think and own any thought we wish, or to subscribe to ideas in so far as we have weighed them in the scale of our own judgment and found them to be acceptable.  We discipline our mind by belief in Christ and thus, as with sexuality, our mind finds its ultimate fulfillment.  "Be transformed by the renewing of your minds."  (Romans 12.2)

Our will, too, is a most elemental part of ourselves we can reserve in our locked garden for God.  This means seeking God's will for us each day.  Ultimately it means sacrificing our will through obedience to God's law and "the obedience of faith."  (Romans 1.5)  It is through obedience that our will finds its ultimate purpose and fulfillment.

We cannot grow choice fruit for the bridegroom without mortification.  Mortification is the means by which we till the soil and remove the weeds.  For chastity this means overcoming lust through prudence and modesty.  For faith to blossom we must mortify our minds through humility.  Obedience requires trust.  But though mortification to some seems a frightful word, the lover mortifies himself almost without realizing it in the act is continually seeking and loving the beloved.