Cornelius a Lapide

A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow , because her hour is come : but when she is delivered of the child , she remembereth no more the anguish , for joy that a man is bom into the world. As hoping that the child will be a support and credit to her in this life, and will succeed her after her death. For since men cannot Digitized by v^iOOQLe JOY WHEN A MAN IS BORN. I7t themselves live for ever, they hope in a sense to live in their children. A queen rejoices in her first-born as having borne a king. This illustration is most apposite. For Christ compares His death to child-birth, and His resurrection to the joy after childbirth. For Christ suffered anguish and tortures like a woman in child-birth, but when He saw Himself rising again through the merit of His death, and knew that we should in like manner rise again, He greatly rejoiced Himself, and inspired the Apostles and all the faithful with great joy. For He brought them forth as His children, by dying for them on the Cross. So S. Chrysostom, Cyril, Theophylact, Euthymius. You may apply this also to the persecutions and sufferings of the Apostles and faithful in this life, and to their joy and exultation at the Resurrection. A man-child . “ Because,” as says S. Augustine (in loc.), “ the joy is wont to be greater when a boy is bom, to signify mystically that the faithful ought to be of a masculine mind both in doing and suffering, for they are called to the contemplation of heavenly things, and even to take heaven by storm, not to the softness of this world,” as says Gloss, inter. Moreover, this man-child is afterwards called “ a man ” to signify the Resurrection of Christ, for by His resurrection Christ, as it were, is bom again, not as a child, but as a perfect man. So S. Chrysostom says: By saying a man He simply suggests His own Resurrection, and our own blessedness after death] further, says Alcuin, “ we shall be bom into eternal life.” Whence Bede says, “ It ought not to seem a strange thing, if he who departs out of this life is said to be ‘bom.* For as he who comes forth from his mother’s womb into this light, so is he who is freed from the bonds of the flesh raised up to eternal life. Hence the solemnities of the Saints are said to be their birthdays, not their burials.” Moreover, the sorrow of the disciples is rightly compared to that of a woman in travail : (i.) Because both are painful, and the pain is greater at th$ birth of a boy. (2.) Because they are short. (3.) And perilous. (4.) Both turned into joy, the one by the birth of a child, the other by the Resurrection of Christ and His followers. So S. Cyril (5.) As the same child is the cause of pain in being Digitized by Google XJ2 bom, and of joy afterwards, so Christ also caused great pain to the disciples by His death, and great joy by His Resurrection. (6.) The joy in either case is surpassing and very great, and swallows up all the preceding pain