Augustine of Hippo, on 1Thess 2:7

“Whereas we might have been burdensome to you, as the apostles of Christ: but we became little ones in the midst of you, as if a nurse should cherish her children:”

“While Scripture is spiritual in itself, nonetheless it often, so to say, adapts itself to carnal, materialistic people in a carnal, materialistic way. But it doesn't want them to remain carnal and materialistic. A mother, too, loves to nurse her infant, but she doesn't love it so that it will always remain a baby. She holds it in her bosom, she cuddles it with her hands, she comforts it with caresses, she feeds it with her milk. She does all this for the baby, but she wants it to grow, so that she won't be doing this sort of thing forever. Now look at the apostle. We can fix our eyes on him all the more suitably because he wasn't above calling himself a mother. He writes "I became like a baby in your midst, like a nurse fondling her children." There are of course nurses who fondle babies that are not their own children. And on the other hand there are mothers who give their children to nurses and don't fondle them themselves. The apostle, however, full of genuine, juicy feelings of love, takes on the role both of nurse when he says "fondling" and of mother when he completes it with "her children."”

Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.