Spirit shall impregnate her, and that the Lord of Angels shall be born of
her? And what means this––‘It shall be shut for evermore,’ but that Mary is
a Virgin before His birth, a Virgin in His birth, and a Virgin after His
birth.”
St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew Hom. 1
(c. 390 AD)
“Joseph did not know her, until she gave birth, being unaware of her
dignity: but after she had given birth, then did he know her (by way of
acquaintance). Because by reason of her child she surpassed the whole
world in beauty and dignity: since she alone in the narrow abode of her
womb received Him whom the world cannot contain.”
Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566)
Pt. I, Ch. IV: He is born of His Mother without any diminution of her
maternal virginity, just as He afterwards went forth from the sepulcher
while it was closed and sealed, and entered the room in which His disciples
were assembled, the doors being shut; or, not to depart from every-day
examples, just as the rays of the sun penetrate without breaking or injuring
in the least the solid substance of glass, so after a like but more exalted
manner did Jesus Christ come forth from His mother’s womb without
injury to her maternal virginity. This immaculate and perpetual virginity
forms, therefore, the just theme of our eulogy. Such was the work of the
Holy Ghost, who at the Conception and birth of the Son so favored the
Virgin Mother as to impart to her fecundity while preserving inviolate her
perpetual virginity.
Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992)
No. 499:
The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the
Church to confess Mary’s real and perpetual virginity even in the act of
giving birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christ’s birth “did not
diminish His Mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it.” And so the
liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the “Ever-virgin.”
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