Glossa Ordinaria

Call me not. The synagogue acknowledges her calamity, which after the coming of Christ she deservedly suffers: and she shrinks from being called beautiful, because she sees the times of her prosperity coming to an end. When first. That is, when the law turns the order of its own incarnation to the mystery of the passion of Christ. For the barley harvest expresses the time of the Lord's passion, which fell in the month of new things, that is, in the first month. Rightly therefore do they come to Bethlehem at that time, when the law preaches Christ, whom it teaches to have been born in Bethlehem, to have been slain at the pasch, that is, in the month of new things. Holy Church also labors with all her effort, that those whom she calls to the faith she may worthily imbue with the incarnation, the passion, the resurrection. The barley harvest expresses the belief of the Jews: who, the sacrament of the passion being accomplished, and the apostles preaching, come first to the faith. And they are read elsewhere to have been fed by the Lord with five barley loaves.