Consider
the painful life that Jesus Christ led in the womb of his Mother, and the
long-confined and dark imprisonment that he suffered there for nine months.
Other infants are indeed in the same state ; but they do not feel the miseries
of it, because they do not know them. But Jesus knew them well, because from
the first moment of his life he had the perfect use of reason. He had his
senses, but he could not use them; eyes, but he could not see ; a tongue, but
he could not speak; hands, but he could not stretch them out; feet, but he
could not walk; so that for nine months he had to remain in the womb of Mary
like a dead man shut up in the tomb: I am become as a man without help, free
among the
dead.
--St.
Alphonsus Liguori, The Incarnation, Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ
