some inferior manuscripts, added the words, "but more chaste than if she had been a mother by her
SERMON 188 33 virgin while with child, a virgin while breast feeding. The almighty Son certainly did not in any way deprive his holy mother of her virginity by being bom, seeing that he had specifically chosen her to be bom of. Yes, fruitfulness in marriage is certainly a good thing, but integrity in the consecrated state is a better one. So the man Christ, who could grant both as God (the same person, of course, as man and as God), would never have given his mother the good thing that married people value, in such a way that he deprived her of the better one for whose sake virgins decide against being mothers.
And so the virgin holy Church celebrates today the child-bearing of the virgin. It is to the Church, you see, that the apostle says, I have attached you to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ (2 Cor 11:2). How could it be a chaste virgin in so many communities of either sex, among so many, not only boys and girls, but also married fathers and mothers? How, I repeat, could it be a chaste virgin, except in the integrity of faith, hope, and charity? Hence Christ, intending to establish the Church's virginity in the heart, first preserved Mary's in the body. In human marriage, of course, a woman is given to her husband so that she ceases to be a virgin anymore; the Church on the other hand could not be a virgin unless she had found that the husband she had been given to was the son of a virgin.
NOTES
1. If the African Church had the same custom as the Roman of celebrating Christmas with three Masses, then I would guess that this sermon was preached at the midday Mass, for which the gospel is John 1:1-18. Though nobody has suggested a date or place for this sermon, I would also make an informed guess, from the maturity and lightness of the style (full of typical conceits though it is), and also from the content and the encomium on the religious life at the end, that it was preached in Hippo Regius, to his own people, any time between 410 and 420.
2. See Mt 5:8. 3. "Formulate" translates format and formatur. While it may sound odd to talk of the mind being formulated by God, still Augustine means more than just "formed," which in English says little more than made or produced.
4. That is, specifically the Word, the Son, not just God without distinction. 5. See Gn 2:19-20. 6. See Gn 3:5. 7. Words that could bear a rather shocking interpretation. So early editors, following the lead of some inferior manuscripts, added the words, "but more chaste than if she had been a mother by her husband."