Gregory of Nyssa, on Ps 112:9

“Who maketh a barren woman to dwell in a house, the joyful mother of children.”

“What lesson, then, results from these remarks? This: that we should wean ourselves from this life in the flesh, which has an inevitable follower, death; and that we should search for a manner of life that does not bring death in its train. Now the life of virginity is such a life. We will add a few other things to show how true this is. Everyone knows that the propagation of mortal bodies is the work of sexual intercourse; whereas for those who are joined to the Spirit, life and immortality instead of children are produced by this latter intercourse; and the words of the apostle beautifully suit their case, for the joyful mother of such children as these "shall be saved in childbearing"; as the psalmist in his divine songs thankfully cries, "He makes the barren woman to keep house and to be a joyful mother of children." Truly a joyful mother is the virgin mother who by the operation of the Spirit conceives the deathless children and who is called by the prophet barren because of her modesty only. This life, then, which is stronger than the power of death, is, to those who think, the preferable one. The physical bringing of children into the world—I speak without wishing to offend—is as much a starting point of death as of life, because from the moment of birth the process of dying commences. But those who by virginity have desisted from this process have drawn within themselves the boundary line of death and by their own deed have checked his advance; they have made themselves, in fact, a frontier between life and death, and a barrier too, which thwarts him. If, then, death cannot pass beyond virginity but finds his power checked and shattered there, it is demonstrated that virginity is a stronger thing than death; and that body is rightly named undying that does not lend its service to a dying world or allow itself to become the instrument of a succession of dying creatures. In such a body the long unbroken career of decay and death, which has intervened between the first man and the lives of virginity that have been led, is interrupted.”

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