Regardless of St Jerome’s dogma at this stage in his life, I was so captivated by his last sentence.
“If every day the hands of God form babies in their mothers’ wombs, why blush to think that Mary, after the birth of Jesus, became a real wife? If they find this disgraceful, then they should not believe that God was born by passing through the genital organs of a Virgin. According to their view, this would be more shameful than believing that a virgin was joined to her husband after the birth of her child.
Jerome, De perpetua virginitate Mariae adversus Helvidium 4; PL 23, 202.
Now add, if you will, the other humiliations of nature: the womb growing larger for nine months, the nausea, the birth, the blood, the swaddling-clothes. Picture to yourself the baby wrapped in the usual protective membranes. Do not omit the uncomfortable manger, the crying of the Child, the circumcision on the eighth day, the time of purification for declaring pure that which had been impure. We do not blush; we are not silent about these matters. The greater the humiliations he suffered for me, the greater my debt to him.”
If you are interested in more quotes on Virgin Mary, you can find them in Mary and the Fathers of the Church on Amazon in both in Kindle and paperback formats.
References:
Gambero, L., 1999. Mary and the Fathers of the Church 1st ed. Translated by Buffer, T., San Francisco: Ignatius Press.
