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Virgin Before birth, In Birth, and After Birth: “The Lord alone enters in and goes out by this gate” (Ez. 44:2)
Associate Pastor's Column
Sunday, December 17, 2006

It is written (Ezech. 44:2): "This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall pass through it; because the Lord the God of Israel hath entered in by it." Expounding these words, Augustine says in a sermon (De Annunt. Dom. iii): "What means this closed gate in the House of the Lord, except that Mary is to be ever inviolate? What does it mean that 'no man shall pass through it,' save that Joseph shall not know her? And what is this, 'The Lord alone enters in and goeth out by it,' except that the Holy Ghost shall impregnate her, and that the Lord of angels shall be born of her? And what means this, 'it shall be shut for evermore,' but that Mary is a virgin before His Birth, a virgin in His Birth, and a virgin after His Birth?"  (St. Thomas Aquinas, S. Th., III, 28, 3)

            Many have now seen the popular movie which just came out on the Nativity; I have not. Given some of the scenes in the movie, naturally many of the faithful have asked me questions about the faith of the Church regarding various teachings, among them, the virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This typically arises when the discussion turns to the birth pains which the movie attributes to Mary.

            The teaching of the Church is that Mary was a virgin before the birth of our Lord, during the birth of our Lord, and after the birth of our Lord forever.

            Mary was a virgin when she conceived Christ, for God is His Father. The Holy Spirit cannot be called the father of his flesh; the true father of his Person is eternally God the Father. Joseph was his foster father, his legal father on earth.

            Mary was a virgin while she gave birth to Christ, in a completely miraculous way, by direct intervention of God’s divine power. Isaiah prophesied, that the Virgin would “conceive and bear a son,” including both conception and birth in the word revealed to the prophet. It is the teaching of the Council of Ephesus (P. III, Cap. ix). It is the clear teaching of all of the Fathers of the Church who discuss this matter. For those who wish to investigate more, explore some of the Fathers, such as St. Ignatius of Antioch (Ad Smyrn., 1-2), Tertullian (De Carne Christi, 23), St. Augustine (e.g., Sup. Joan. Tract. 121), Dionysius (Letter to Caius, iv), the Venerable Bede, St. Thomas Aquinas (S. Th., III, 28, 2), many others, and the ancient authors and authorities they themselves quote.

            Mary was a virgin forever after the birth of Jesus. Joseph never knew her, and she bore no other children in the flesh; yet she bore us all spiritually, as she is the mother of all the baptized. St. Jerome, the greatest biblical linguist ever known, who produced the Latin Vulgate, answers in a letter to Helvidius all of the objections one could find to the matter, a letter which I cannot reproduce I whole in this small article.

Mary was a virgin before birth, in birth, and after birth;  in Latin we Catholics say, Virgo ante partum, in partu et post partum. The perpetual virginity of Mary was dogmatically promulgated in 649 by the Lateran Council, and repeated often, as recently as Vatican II (Lumen Gentium, 52).

So when you see movies where Mary is shouting in pain at the birth of Jesus, know that such films do not spring from Catholic humus. Rather, these performances are implicitly heretical and cause great scandal to Mary’s children in the Catholic Church everywhere and in all times , since they deny Mary’s virginity in partu, in birth. Into such errors one easily falls, when one fails to walk by the light of Catholic teaching. So let us be faithful to the Magisterium.

Picture: Giotto di Bondone (b. 1267, Vespignano, d. 1337, Firenze), Birth of Jesus, 1304-06, Fresco, 200 x 185 cm, Cappella Scrovegni (Arena Chapel), Padua. Thanks www.wga.hu.