Commentaria in Leviticum
So let the penitent not cease to groan until he be purified. The voice of the turtle, therefore, heard in our land, is the voice of the groaning Magdalene.
Again: “The naturalists,” says St. Jerome, book 1 Against Jovinian, “relate that it is the nature of the turtle that, if it has lost its mate, it is not joined to another; and let us understand that bigamy is condemned even by many birds.” Christ, however, does not condemn second marriages, but prefers to them widowhood and continence.
The doves, on the other hand, are symbols of chastity and conjugal faith. For, as Pliny says, book 10, chapter 34: “Modesty is first among doves, and adultery is known to neither; they violate not the faith of the couch, and keep a common home, and bear with imperious males, often even with unjust ones.” So let modesty be first among married people as among doves, let adulteries be unknown to both, let them keep the faith of wedlock and a common home, love their children, and instruct them in the law of God; let the wife bear her husband’s authority, even if it be hard.
Such turtles and doves were found even among the Gentiles. Valeria, asked why, Servius her husband being dead, she would not marry again, said: “Because my Servius, though dead to others, lives with me, and shall live always.” Annia, flourishing in age and beauty, advised by her friends that, her husband being dead, she should take a second, both for hope of offspring and for mutual love, answered: “In no wise shall I do this. For if I marry a good man, I will not thereafter fear lest I lose him; but if a bad one, what madness would seize me, that after so excellent a one I should admit such?” Martia, daughter of Cato, asked why after her husband’s death she would not marry another, answered: “Because I shall not easily find a man who wishes me more than mine did”; and again: “A happy and chaste matron,” she said, “marries but once.” The same, when she mourned her husband a long time, asked “what day of mourning she would have as last?” answered: “That which is also of my life.” Rightly Propertius, Epigram 15:
By example be joined to thee in love the doves, the male and the female a whole marriage.
Finally, St. Ambrose, book 5 of the Hexameron, chapter 19: “This bird,” he says, “the law of God chose as the offering of a chaste victim; which, when the Lord was presented, was offered, because it is written in the law of the Lord, that they should give a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons. For this is the true sacrifice of Christ, bodily chastity and spiritual grace: chastity is referred to the turtle, grace to the dove.”
But hear a wonderful history, from which you will learn how much the dove is a symbol of chastity and piety. Gregory of Tours relates it, book On the Glory of Confessors, chapter 34, and from him Baronius, in the year of Christ 480.
There was at Auvergne a certain religious girl, devoted to God, who, dwelling in the country, that, remote from the city crowd, she might more freely offer to God worthy victims of praise, applied herself daily to fasts and prayers. It came to pass therefore that, departing from this world, she was carried to the church of the town to be buried. But when, the bier being raised, the body began to be borne along the way, a great flock of doves came and began to fly over her, and flying hither and thither to follow whither she was borne by those nearest. When she was brought into the church, the whole flock was seen to settle upon the roof of the building itself; and she having been buried, the doves flew away to heaven. Hence not undeservedly was she named Georgia, who so exercised her mind with spiritual culture that, having attained the harvest of the sixtyfold fruit of virginity, going forth from the world she was honoured with heavenly obsequies, says St. Gregory.
Ado relates, and from him Baronius, in the year of Christ 440, that the holy virgin and martyr Julia, tormented by the prince Felix and at length crucified, had a dove come out of her mouth and fly away to heaven.
St. Gregory, book 4 of the Dialogues, chapter On Hope, writes thus of the dying Abbot: “All the brethren saw a dove go forth from his mouth, which presently, the roof of the oratory being opened, went out, and penetrated heaven. His soul therefore is to be believed to have appeared in the form of a dove, that Almighty God might show by this very form with how simple a heart that man had served Him.”
Verse 7. And so she shall be cleansed from the issue of her blood—namely from the legal uncleanness which she contracted on account of the flow of blood of childbirth (it is a metonymy or catachresis), that thereafter she may approach the sanctuary, touch sacred things, offer other victims, and eat of them.
Verse 8. And if her hand find not sufficiency, and she is not able to offer a lamb.—In Hebrew, if her hand find not the sufficiency of a lamb, that is, the price that suffices to buy a lamb (so the Chaldee and Septuagint), namely if she be poorer, she shall take two turtles or two young pigeons: one for a holocaust and another for sin. The rich therefore after childbirth had to offer a lamb for a holocaust, and a turtle or young pigeon for sin; but the poor only two turtles or two young pigeons: one for a holocaust, the other for sin, as the Blessed Virgin did, poor in spirit and in means; though she did this not because she was poor in spirit, namely because she was a lover of poverty, as Abulensis will have it, but because in truth she was poor in means and in need: for of such this law speaks.
Morally, learn here what St. Gregory Nazianzen says, oration On Holy Baptism: “Nothing,” he says, “is esteemed great with God which a poor man also cannot give.” For God asks not so much the gift as the affection of the giver; and, as St. Gregory says, homily 5 on the Gospels, “before the eyes of God the hand is never empty of a gift, if the chest of the heart be full of good will: for nothing richer is offered to God than good will.” Hence Master Gerson, Chancellor of Paris: “God,” he says, “seeks not nouns but adverbs,” that is, “He attends not to what you do but how,” as St. Bernard says. Hence Christ was pleased more than with all others offering great things by the widow offering only two mites. If therefore you have much, give much; if little, give little, but with a great and liberal will of giving more if you had; so the liberality of your heart will provoke God’s liberality toward you that you may receive more: for God suffers not to be overcome in liberality. Leontius relates a wonderful thing of St. John the Almsgiver, Patriarch of Alexandria: “Many blessings,” he says, “God sends him, but he lets nothing go that he does not at once give to the poor. Many times some found him in exultation saying to God: So, so, either by Thy sending or by my scattering we shall see who conquers. It is plain, for Thou art rich, O Lord, and the pitier of our life.”
Note: With the purification of the woman after childbirth the infant was at the same time offered to God, if he was the firstborn, as is plain from Luke 2:22, and was redeemed with five shekels, as is plain from Numbers 18:16. It is moreover likely that the mother was first purified, then offered her infant, as Francis Lucas judges on Luke 2. Where note: of both these ceremonies this was the rite and order.
First, the woman after childbirth came to the court of the unclean, and there stood; for she could not enter the court of the clean, as being unclean, before purification.
Secondly, she offered turtles or a young pigeon for sin: it is likely she was also sprinkled with the water of the ashes of the red heifer; for that was as it were the lustral water in every purification.
Thirdly, she offered the infant to God, and redeemed him.
Fourthly, all being done, in thanksgiving she offered to God a lamb or a turtle, or a young pigeon, for a holocaust. But of these more on Luke 2. These last two things were done with the woman (as being now purified) standing in the court of the clean. For there she offered the infant at the door of the tabernacle, and from afar looked on her holocaust, which was offered in the court of the priests; for between the court of the priests and of the laity there was only a wall, or a fence three feet high, so that the laity from their court could see the victims and the other things that were done in the court of the priests.
The signs and seven species of leprosy are described: the first is white and shining leprosy, verse 3; the second is recurring leprosy, verse 7; the third is inveterate leprosy, verse 10; the fourth is the cleanest leprosy, verse 13; the fifth is leprosy of the head and beard, verse 29; the sixth is leprosy in baldness, verse 42; the seventh is leprosy of garments, verse 47. Finally, verse 44, five things are commanded to the leper: first, that he have rent garments; second, bare head; third, covered mouth; fourth, that he cry out that he is defiled; fifth, that he dwell alone outside the camp.