A woman when she is in travail has sorrow, because her hour has come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembers no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.
Read Chapter 16
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
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 born 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 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 child-birth. 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 ...
And He has used a comparison which the Prophets also use continually, likening despondencies to the exceeding pains of childbirth. But what He says is of this kind: Travail pains shall lay hold on you, but the pang of childbirth is the cause of joy; both confirming His words relative to the Resurrection, and showing that the departing hence is like passing from the womb into the light of day. As though He had said, Marvel not that I bring you to your advantage through such sorrow, since even a mother to become a mother, passes in like manner through pain. Here also He implies something mystical, that He has loosened the travail pangs of death, and caused a new man to be born of them. And He said not, that the pain shall pass away only, but, she does not even remember it, so great is the joy which succeeds; so also shall it be with the Saints. And yet the woman does not rejoice because a man has come into the world, but because a son has been born to her; since, had this been the case,...
