Monday, June 27, 2022

Maximus the Confessor (580-662): Life of the Virgin 47 and Jesus being the only child that is "first-born and holy before the Lord"

  

But there is only one child that is first-born and holy before the Lord, the one whose conception took place not through desire and the male seed—certainly not!—but through grace and the coming of the Holy Spirit, and his birth took place not in corruption and pain but through the power and wisdom of the most high God. That is why the child was born holy, and the Holy of Holies according to the words of Isaiah. (Maximus the Confessor, The Life of the Virgin 47 [trans. Stephen J. Shoemaker; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012], 76 [do note: in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox tradition, Mary was an only child)