Consecration to Perpetual Virginity || Maggie Hartman - Diocese of Lafayette, IN

A consecrated woman is a woman in the Catholic Church who has been set aside to live as a bride of Jesus. She will never marry a man; instead, she gives her heart entirely to God and lives a life of prayer and service for Him alone.

While there are a few different ways of being consecrated in the Church, the vocation to consecrated virginity is one in which a virgin lives the rest of her life as Christ’s bride, while remaining in the secular world. She doesn’t wear a habit, change her name, use the title “Sister,” or live in a convent under vows of poverty and obedience. Instead, her only outward sign of her vocation is the ring she receives at her consecration, symbolizing her commitment to God and God’s eternal fidelity to her.

A woman is consecrated by her diocesan bishop in a rite celebrated at the diocese’s cathedral, ideally on a Marian feast day. During this Mass, she promises to persevere in the state of virginity to death and to live to be a witness to the reality that all the faithful will eventually belong to God alone in heaven one day.