Annotation CXXXVII

”Every male opening the womb shall be called holy to the Lord.” — Luke 2:23

On Mary giving birth.

Ambrose, in book 2 of the commentaries on Luke, expounding this passage, seems to hold that the womb of the Virgin Mary was opened in [the] birth, and the enclosures of [her] virginity loosed. Which indeed conflicts with the definition of all the theologians, who teach that Christ came forth without the striving, pain, and defilements of one giving birth — the Virgin’s womb [remaining] closed — through the intact enclosures of [her] virginity, like a ray of the sun sent through the solidity of glass without any injury to the glass. But he [Ambrose] writes in this manner: “He who had said to the prophet,¹ ‘Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee, and in the womb of [thy] mother I sanctified thee’ — and who sanctified another’s womb, that a prophet might be born a prophet — this is he who opened the womb of his [own] mother, that he might go forth immaculate.” St. Thomas, in the third volume of the Summa, question 28, says that Ambrose, by the word “opening,” did not signify that laying-open of the womb which happens to other [women] giving birth, but that going-forth of the offspring which did not violate the enclosures of virginal modesty. But lest the words of the law, adduced by the Evangelist, cast a scruple upon anyone, it is worth bringing here the opinion of Bernard at the beginning of the third sermon On the Purification of Mary, writing in this manner: “In the law it was written, that a woman who, having received seed, had borne a son, should be unclean seven days, and on the eighth day the boy should be circumcised; thereafter, intent on the washing and purification, she should abstain from entering the temple for thirty-three days. These being fulfilled, she should offer the son to the Lord with gifts. But who does not notice, at the very beginning of this statute, the mother of the Lord [to be] free from this precept? For do you think that Moses, about to say that a woman who had borne a son is unclean, did not fear to incur the crime of blasphemy against the mother of the Lord — and therefore prefaced ‘having received seed’

— otherwise, unless he had foreseen a virgin about to give birth without seed: what necessity was there to make mention of ‘received seed’? It is clear, therefore, that this law does not include the mother of the Lord, who — no seed being received — bore a son.”

Origen, homily 14 on Luke, treating this very clause of Luke, asserts that the womb of Christ’s mother was opened in [the] birth, in these words: “Of all women, [it is] not the birth of the infant, but the intercourse of a man, [that] opens the womb; but the womb of the Lord’s mother was opened at that time in which also the birth was brought forth, because a male in no way touched, before the nativity of Christ, that holy womb, worthy of all veneration.” Tertullian too, touching the present passage in the same manner, at the end of the book On the Flesh of Christ, brought in thus: “This, in fine, is the womb on account of which it is also written concerning others,² ‘Every male opening the womb shall be called holy to the Lord.’ Who [is] truly holy, save the Son of God? who properly opened the womb, save he who laid open the closed [one]? but for [all] others, marriage lays [the womb] open. Therefore [hers] was the more opened, because it was the more closed. Assuredly she is rather to be called not-a-virgin than a virgin — at least in a certain way [she was] a mother before [she was] a bride. And what further is to be reconsidered about this? Since the Apostle, by this reasoning, pronounced the Son of God brought forth not from a virgin, but from a woman, he acknowledged the nuptial travail of the opened womb.” As the words of these authors are consonant with the sayings of Ambrose, so they receive the same understanding.