After winning the Italian edition of “The Voice”, Sister Cristina Scuccia was already an internet sensation around the world. Now, she just released her first single called “Like a Virgin”. Yes, you got it right, it is a cover of one of Madonna’s most famous and iconic hits. The song was composed by Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg also famous for other songs such as “True Colors” and “Eternal Flame”. Before reflecting upon this daring single release some curious facts behind the mentioned song are important to enlighten the subject.
The idea of the song came as Steinberg was driving his pickup truck and thinking about his personal experience of a devastating relationship he had and finally meeting someone new that made him feel shining and new (as he wrote in the song). This is how he came up with the lines “I made it through the wilderness. I was beat, incomplete, I’ve been had”. When Kelly read the lyric he instantly related to it as he himself was also going through a relationship breakup. Most people would never think of this song as meaningfully written by two men.
In 1984, Madonna first released the song in a controversial appearance at the MTV Music Award, as she was wearing a punk-style wedding dress, a “Boy Toy” buckle belt while dancing, crawling and simulating an orgasm at the end. The video clip was released on the same year and has as its background the city of Venice, Italy, while the singer appeared in a provocative and sexual portrait. She was 26 years old at the time and this was her second album.
Sister Cristina, a young Ursuline nun and, therefore, a consecrated woman with vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, have chosen for her first single the same controversial song. As she stated in an interview, the reason for this choice is meaningful: “I chose it, with no intention to provoke or scandalize. Reading the text without being influenced by previous interpretations you discover that it is a song about the power of love to renew people, to rescue them from their past and this is the way that I wanted to interpret it”. It was her intention to give a testimony of God’s capacity to turn all things into something new. Curious to say, Sister Cristina releases the song also at age 26 and the video was also shot in Venice.
In Sister Cristina’s “Like the virgin” video, the viewer is led to understand that there is a deep yearning in the heart of every man which is to love and be loved, to be touched and fulfilled by someone. This desire has beauty, is sincere and is an attempt to fill a mysterious void inside. This echoes St Augustine when he wrote that there is a “God-shaped void” in the heart of man that can only be filled by God Himself.
It is not hard to see the differences between Madonna’s version, she who at the time was considered a sex symbol, and Sister Cristina’s version, who is a purity symbol. Both sing of someone who gives meaning to their lives and oriented their fundamental choices. It seems that Madonna’s crucifix, highlighted here and there throughout the video, is nothing but a decorative accessory along with the sensuality and sexual appeal in her body language reducing human sexuality to its genital level.
On the other hand, Sister Cristina, also wears a crucifix, but this one is not a trendy adornment but a sacramental that she received when she embraced religious life as a sign of her fundamental choice in life. She uses her body too but not as a sex symbol, but as a sign of eternity, a sign that our bodies are a precious gift of love and for the Love (which is God). In her femininity, tenderness and purity, she elevates human sexuality to its proper place, towards the Creator, the Beloved One of our souls, above the “right here right now”.
Same song, same setting, same age. Different interpretations, different appeal. One awakes sexual desire, the other awakes spiritual desire (which dignifies sexual desire to its highest meaning). Two roads, two options, same yearning of the heart. It seems that Sister Cristina accomplished much more: she turned into a prayer a stigmatized song not with her voice alone but most of all with her body, temple of the Holy Spirit, and her life testimony.
“So glorify God in your body” (I Corithians 6:20)
by Emanuela Cardoso
“Like a virgin”, Sister Cristina (2014): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0e8Uve7cJU
“Like a virgin”, Madonna (1984): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s__rX_WL100