The virgin birth of Jesus

At his birth, Jesus did not cause his mother any bleeding, so it was a virginal childbirth that dispelled the condemnation of Genesis 3:16: "Thou shalt bear children in pain". With the entry of the Messiah-Savior into the world, a new order of things appeared: a return to the admirable harmony of the origins.

Judaism had not intuited this; rather, it seems that Christianity influenced Judaism: the idea of painless childbirth in Judaism is only to be found after Jesus Christ, and coincides with the Patristic era.

The virgin birth is not a depreciation of sexuality, but forms one and the same event with the virginal conception. Conception and virginal childbirth correspond to Jesus' identity as the Son of God.

The Church Fathers, especially in the 4th and 5th centuries, made the connection between Mary's virginal childbirth and the Lord's resurrection:

- Mary's womb remains "closed" at the moment of childbirth, and the entrance of the resurrected Jesus into the cenacle takes place "with closed doors" (Jn 20:19-26) ;

- the Virgin's womb recalls the Lord's sepulcher, and both remain "closed - sealed" (Mt 27:66);

- the Lord left the funerary bands in the same position as before (Jn 20:5-7), as an image: the womb of the earth (the tomb), like the mother's womb, remains intact.

The conclusion: Jesus came out of his mother's womb in a miraculous way.

A. Serra

(Marianum, Viale trenta aprile, 6; 00153 Roma)

Marian Encyclopedia