The Conception and Birth of Our Spiritual Being

Ninth Sunday After Pentecost

The fetus already has all the parts of its body, but it cannot use them inside its mother’s womb. When it is born into the world, the body develops in its senses and parts and acquires the ability to use them. Physically, it is in the world that the human being comes to perfection.

The same is true for our spiritual being. It begins as a fetus. Then it leaves the womb and bit by bit it develops until it comes ‘to mature manhood, measured by the stature of the fullness of Christ.’ (Ephesians 4:13)

The fetus is formed from the seed and the ovum; our spiritual being is conceived in the waters of Baptism and thanks to the fire of the Spirit.

The fetus in the realm of nature passes from non-being to being; the fetus in the spiritual realm from not having divine sonship or daughterhood to the condition of being a child of God.

The fetus in the realm of nature develops slowly; our spiritual being, once it has been conceived as a child of God, grows in the world as if in the womb, according to the measure of justice in this world.

Finally, the fetus in the realm of nature leaves its mother and is born into the world; the fetus in the spiritual realm, when it has fulfilled all justice according to the law of the world, leaves the world to be born again.

It enters then into another world, which is the world of Christ’s justice.”

— Philoxenus of Mabbug, Homily 9, 260ff. (SC 44, pp. 247ff.)