Ihesus ad turbam

My Latin class is currently translating a sermon by an (I think) 13th century monk. At the moment I don't have the paper on which I wrote down his name, so I can't look it up. Anyways, we just went over this really long and repetitive section on the Virgin Birth, so I thought it might be appropriate to post it considering the season. The sermon is on the passage in the Gospels where Jesus is preaching to the crowd and a woman calls out "Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts which you have sucked." Forewarning: you are about to read a lot about Mary's milk.

"Certainly, a virgin is not able to lactate by a work of nature, just as a virgin may neither bear in her womb. And so the milk of the virgin equally with the child of the virgin is supernatural, by the Holy Spirit, it is a miraculous and peculiar thing. Whence the pious and prudent woman cried out to the Son of the virgin: "Blessed," I say, "is the womb which bore you and the breasts which you sucked." Blessed is the womb which bore you, because it was bearing by the Holy Spirit, and blessed are the breasts which you sucked, because in the same manner they are lactating by the Holy Spirit. If, therefore, blessed is the womb which bore you, because swelling by the Holy Spirit, how are the breasts blessed which you sucked, if they were not swelling equally by work of the Holy Spirit? Now, however, both that womb is blessed and those breasts are blessed. That womb is blessed, because it is virginal and full; those breasts are blessed, because they are virginal and full: the first by the baby, the latter by the milk. The baby to the first by the Holy Spirit, equally the milk to these by the Holy Spirit. Otherwise [if not by the Holy Spirit] neither that womb would be virginal nor would those breasts be virginal.

Blessed is that womb, not because it was virginal, for there are many virginal wombs, neither because full, because there are many full wombs, but because virginal and full at the same time, namely there is not another such. And blessed are those breasts, not because virginal, for there are many virginal breasts, nor because full, because there are many full breasts, but because both virginal and full at the same time, namely there are no others as such. It was not fitting that the Fruit of the blessed womb suck, unless he sucked those blessed breasts, neither was it fitting for those blessed breasts to be sucked by anyone else. That baby of the virgin scorned to be fed by milk not of the virgin, neither was it possible that the virginal milk be offered to a baby not of the virgin- because it is not fitting. For just as the Most High had sanctified that womb to Himself, namely that it would bear no one after Him, so he sanctified those breasts to Himself, namely that they should be sucked by no one except Himself. Plainly, blessed is that womb and blessed are those breasts. The first, swelling by the Holy Spirit to pour out the Author of life to us, the second equally swelling by the Holy Spirit to nourish our True Shepherd."

Anyways, I thought this was interesting because it says explicitly that the milk that Mary produced was just as miraculous as the fact that she conceived and that the milk had to have been the work of the Holy Spirit. I'm not going to try to figure out whether Mary's milk was just the natural bodily response to pregnancy, but it is interesting to think that it was a direct work of the Holy Spirit.