And in my mother’s womb was fashioned to be flesh in the time of ten months, being compacted in blood, of the seed of man, and the pleasure that came with sleep.
Read Chapter 7
Severus of Antioch
AD 538
After the banishment from paradise and the loss of immortal life, Adam knew his wife, and thus carnal relations were introduced, this mixture of emissions that is more appropriate to animals than to human beings endowed with intellect and that is the foreboding of corruption and death, though it assures the continuance of the race. Acting, then, with such wisdom and love toward humanity, what does Emanuel do? He reunites both natures in one, that is, the creature that had been privileged with the grace of immortality (the soul) and that linked to corruption (the body) in a birth that comes from their union. He who in the beginning fashioned human beings from the earth was fashioned from the Virgin, taking flesh from the Holy Spirit and from her. This flesh is consubstantial with ours, which is animated by a soul endowed with intellect. And this did not take place through sleep, by concupiscence or with the emission of human seed. What characterized our creation at the beginning was a coming in the flesh without seed. But for us, what distinguishes this second way of coming into existence is to come entirely from the woman. (Likewise, the conception took place in time, because "the time came for her to have her child.") The sacred Scriptures say on the one hand regarding the mother of God that this took place in a marriage but on the other hand that everything began without her having experienced carnal union and was accomplished in virginity, since, after the birth, the seal of her virginity remained intact. - "Cathedral Homilies 7.10–12"
