Scripture tells us that in the region where Jesus was born “there were shepherds out in the field keeping watch over their flock” (Lk 2:8), and they saw a vision of an angel who told them of the birth of Jesus: “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Lk 2:11). Note the present tense of the angel’s announcement. He does not say the Savior “has been” born but that the Savior “is” born, as though the angel is speaking of an event that is taking place at that moment. The angel implicitly directs them to the site saying, “This will be a sign for you; you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger” (Lk 2:12). They must go to the site so that the revelation they received could be confirmed by a competent authority (i.e., the child’s mother) and thereby brought to its fullness, thus meeting a requirement of spiritual discernment. The reaction of the shepherds is to go at once to see what had been announced to them: Luke tells us they “went with haste, and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger.” These facts raise a question about the length of time between the birth of Jesus and the appearance of the angels at the birth site. Luke’s description of the events implies that the shepherds arrived soon after the birth, perhaps only a matter of minutes later. Once there, they observed the sign that had been given them. And when they saw it they made known the saying which had been told them concerning this child” (Lk 2:16-17).

The phrase in verse 17, “when they saw it they made known the saying,” is the common modern translation, but it can also be translated, “And seeing, they understood of the word that had been spoken to them concerning this child,” as in the older Douay Rheims bible. Both versions of that verse are followed with, “all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.” Hence, we can see that both the modern and the older versions of verse 17 tell us that the shepherds made known the angel’s message, the older implicitly and the modern explicitly, and both tell us that the shepherds understood the message, the older explicitly and the modern implicitly. Taken together, they tell us that the shepherds understood when they had seen the sign, and then went on to make known to others what they had come to understand. This raises a question: What did they see that enabled them to understand that this baby was their long-promised Messiah. The fact that the shepherds would find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger in and of itself is not sufficiently unique to make the shepherds understand that the baby was their savior and the longed-for Messiah. There is some mystery, then, as to what was sufficiently unique that would enable the shepherds to understand what had come about with the birth of Jesus. What was the sign? It seems as though something on the order of the miraculous would be necessary. Luke helps us to unravel the mystery.

Luke, the “beloved physician” (Col 4:14), would surely be familiar with childbirth. Because of his experience, he captures an important detail about what happened immediately after the birth of Jesus that points to the miraculous nature of His birth: “She gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger” (Lk 2:7). Fr. Juan Bastero says of this: “St. Luke delicately hints at the miraculous birth when he says that Mary ‘gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger.’ It is the very Mother that has just given birth who attends immediately, without help, to the first needs of the Child, and all that is required is that she wrap him and put him in a manger. . . . This is an interpretation given by many Fathers and by many ancient and modern authors and exegetes.” (1)  We know that St. Joseph was present at the time of Jesus’ birth (Lk 2:16), and perhaps there was a midwife present, but the fact that it was the mother herself who took care of the newborn’s immediate needs is surprising to say the least.

Earlier, at the time of the Annunciation, Luke tells us: “The child to be born will be called holy” (Lk 1:35). In the Church’s two thousand years of pondering these mysteries, there are found four different translations of this phrase, each of them using the word “holy” in a different sense: 1) “the holy child who is to be born”; 2) “the child will be holy”; 3) “[the child] will be called holy”; 4) “[the child] will be born holy.” The fourth option was very popular among the Fathers of the Church and in the Middle Ages, but it is not thought of much by modern authors, perhaps because of what it says about the birth. Nevertheless, Fr. Ignace de la Potterie shows that the only philologically acceptable translation of the phrase is the last of the four mentioned: “the child will be born holy.”(2)  This tells us that Luke is speaking of the birth of Jesus in regard to the Levitical sense. Bastero writes: “[The child being born holy] implies the absence of contamination and, more specifically, the contamination through bleeding, which made a woman unclean [i.e., a ritual impurity, not a moral impurity].(3) Consequently, we have a scriptural witness to the virginal birth of Jesus that stands alongside His virginal conception as bookends to the time He spent in His mother’s womb.

One might object that the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, some forty days later (Lev 12:1-4), was specifically for the ritual purification that necessarily follows childbirth. This is true, in the natural order, but we are dealing here with a case from the supernatural order. Luke writes: “The time came for their [i.e., mother and Son’s] purification according to the Law of Moses” (Lk 2:22). Clearly, it is not possible that the divine Son of God needed purification. Nevertheless, He goes through the process of purification, just as He received John’s baptism of repentance (Lk 3:21), though He had no need of repentance, and just as He paid the Temple tax, even though, as the Son of the almighty King, He was not obliged to pay it. But He did these things so as to give good example and “not to give offense to others” (Mt 17:27). It follows that because the Son was born holy, there was no need for the purification of either the mother or the Son, though they went through the ritual so as to avoid what would appear to be a scandalous violation of the Law to those who did not know the whole story.

This is entirely consistent with Luke’s application of Isaiah’s two-part prophecy (Is 7:14) to both the conception and birth of Jesus: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son” (Lk 1:26-31). Grammatically, the verbs “conceive” and “bear” in this verse both refer to the action of the subject, the “virgin”; that is, the virgin conceives (the first part of the prophecy) and the virgin bears (the second part of the prophecy); in other words, both the conception and birth of Jesus are virginal. The former through the power of the Holy Spirit (Lk 1:35), and the latter through the power of her Son, to whom the natural barriers of neither the womb (Lk 1:35), nor the tomb (Mt 28:2), nor the closed doors of the upper room (Jn 20:19) were obstacles to His passing through them, for “with God nothing will be impossible” (Lk 1:37).

We have a prophecy of these virginal bookends in book of Genesis.  After the fall of Adam God says to Eve: “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children” (Gen 3:16). This is one of the punishments that followed from the sins of Adam and Eve for all who are under the curse of Adam’s sin. However, God also said to the Serpent: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed” (Gen 3:15), thereby pointing to a woman and her offspring who would not be under the curse of Adam’s sin and, thus, this woman would not be subject to the “pain in childbearing” punishment. On this verse, Bastero comments: ‘There is a perfect parallel between the woman’s enmity with the Devil, and the enmity of the woman’s descendant (the Messiah) with the serpent. This enmity is total, absolute and radical, and it rules out any sort of friendship with the devil . . . [hence] she was conceived without original sin” (4) and was therefore not under the curse of Adam’s sin and, in particular, not under the childbearing punishment. For the offspring, the enmity is rooted in His divine nature; for the woman, the enmity is a supernatural gift that would enable her to play a particular role as Mother of the Redeemer in salvation history.

Mary’s virginity “in partu” (in childbirth) is one the three aspects of the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary. The first aspect is her virginity before the birth of Jesus, known as her virginity “ante partum,” which is explicit in Scripture (Lk 1:27), the second aspect is her virginity “in partu,” spoken of above, which is implicit in Scripture, and the third is her virginity “post partum,” which is implicit in Scripture in a remote sense. However, “the earliest Fathers [of the Church] say that Mary’s motherhood was a virginal one . . . it was regarded by the Church as an incontrovertible doctrinal patrimony and was placed at the service of the defense of the divinity of the Redeemer.” (5)  The doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary is the only one of the four Marian Dogmas that was not formally defined. This is because it was widely recognized from the earliest days of the Church; hence, there was no need for a formal definition. However, the doctrine has been formally confirmed by the Church on multiple occasions.

(1) Juan Bastero, “Mary, Mother of the Redeemer,” p. 170.
(2) Ignace de la Potterie, “Mariology,” p. 303.
(3) Juan Bastero, “Mary, Mother of the Redeemer,” p. 170.
(4) Ibid., p. 193.
(5) Ibid., p. 173.