The two childbirths of Mary

Mary was exempt from the suffering common to all mothers, because she gave birth without pain and conceived without corruption. How then are we to understand these apparent contradictions with what the old man Simeon had predicted to her?

Here we must understand the two childbirths of Mary: she gave birth to Jesus Christ, and she gave birth to the faithful. That is to say, she gave birth to the innocent, and she gave birth to the sinners.

She gave birth to the innocent without pain, but she had to give birth to the sinners amid sorrows and cries—and you will be convinced of it, if you carefully consider the price at which she had to buy them—it cost her her only Son! She can only be the mother of Christians by giving up her Beloved to death: O painful fertility! 

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627 - 1704)

Funeral Orations – Sermons