By Water & Blood

Homily 8.3: Why birth makes unclean; saints and birthday feasts

Now let us inquire also why the woman who renders service to those born into this world is said to become unclean not only when she has received seed but also when she has given birth. Hence for her purification too she is commanded to offer young pigeons or turtledoves for sin at the door of the tabernacle of witness, so that the priest may make propitiation for her; as though she owed propitiation and purification from sin because she rendered service to a human being born into this world. For so it is written: “And the priest shall make propitiation for her, and she shall be cleansed.” I dare say nothing in such matters; yet I perceive that certain hidden mysteries are contained in them, and that there is something of a hidden secret for which the woman who has conceived from seed and given birth is called unclean, and, as if guilty of sin, is commanded to offer a victim for sin, and so to be purified. And the one who is born himself, whether of male or female sex, Scripture declares of him that he is not clean from filth, even if his life is of one day. And so that you may know that there is some great thing in this, and such that it has not come to the mind of any of the saints, none of all the saints is found to have kept a feast or a great banquet on his birthday; no one is found to have had rejoicing on the birthday of his son or daughter. Only sinners rejoice over a birth of this kind. For we find in the Old Testament Pharaoh, king of Egypt, celebrating his birthday with festivity, and in the New Testament Herod. Yet each of them stained that very festivity of his birthday by shedding human blood. For the one beheaded the chief of the bakers, the other the holy prophet John in prison. But the saints not only do not keep festivity on their birthday, but, filled with the Holy Spirit, curse this day.

For so great and so excellent a prophet (I mean Jeremiah, who was sanctified in his mother's womb and consecrated a prophet to the nations) would not have set down anything idly in books that will remain for ever, unless it contained some secret and was full of great mysteries, where he says: “Cursed be the day on which I was born, and the night in which they said: Behold, a male. Cursed be he who brought the news to my father, saying: A male is born to you. Let that man rejoice like the cities which the Lord destroyed in wrath and did not repent.” Does it seem to you that the prophet could have called down such grave and burdensome curses unless he knew that there was something in this bodily birth which seemed worthy of such curses, and for which the lawgiver charged so many uncleannesses, on which he consequently imposed fitting purifications? But it is a long task, and one for another time, to explain the testimonies we have taken from the prophet; for our purpose now is to discuss not Jeremiah but the reading from Leviticus. Job too, speaking not without the Holy Spirit, cursed the day of his birth, saying: “Cursed be the day on which I was born, and the night in which they said: Behold, a male. Let that night be darkness, and let the Lord not seek it again, nor let it come into the days of the year, nor be numbered among the days of the months.” But if it does not seem to you that Job speaks this by a prophetic and divine Spirit, consider it from what follows; for he added: “But let him curse it who cursed that day, who is to slay the great sea monster.” You see, then, how in the Holy Spirit he foretold the great sea monster which the Lord was to kill, of which that sea monster of Jonah was a type; hence the Lord too, who was to kill that sea monster, the devil, says: “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so the Son of Man must be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” And if you wish to hear what other saints too thought about this birth, hear David saying: “In iniquities,” he says, “I was conceived, and in sins my mother bore me”: showing that whatever soul is born in the flesh is polluted by the filth of iniquity and sin; and that for this reason that was said which we have already mentioned above: that no one is clean from filth, even if his life is of one day.

To these things this too can be added, that one may ask why, since the baptism of the church is given for the remission of sins, according to the observance of the church baptism is given even to little children; since surely, if there were nothing in little children that ought to pertain to remission and pardon, the grace of baptism would seem superfluous. “Any woman, then, who has conceived seed and borne a male shall be unclean seven days”; just as she too who, according to the days of her purification, is separated for seven days from everything clean. For she spends seven days in unclean blood, and thirty-three days in clean blood; but this in the birth of a male; in the birth of a female she spends double the days. She begins, then, to be in clean blood from the eighth day, and she is in clean blood thirty-three days, that is, three tens and three units. And when she who has given birth has begun to be in clean blood, then she circumcises the infant: “For on the eighth day,” it says, “you shall circumcise the flesh of his foreskin.” This is the law of the letter; but you, seek what circumcision the Apostle preaches, which he bids us both receive and have. “For we,” he says, “are the circumcision, who serve God in the spirit.” And as for what he says in the Psalm, “Sinners are estranged from the womb,” consider whether he does not say this of those who receive that circumcision with which the Apostle forbids us to be circumcised; and it is then that sinners are estranged from the womb, when they are circumcised not in the spirit but in the flesh. For “those who are circumcised in the law have fallen from grace.” The woman, then, who having conceived seed has borne a male is said to become unclean; but she who has borne a female will be not only unclean but doubly unclean.

For she is written to remain in uncleanness for twice seven days.