The answer
About the motherhood of the Church, Origen says, “According to the Spirit, your Father is God; your mother is ‘the heavenly Jerusalem’ [See Gal. 4:26; Heb. 12:22]. Learn this from prophetic and apostolic witnesses. This Moses himself writes in a song, ‘Is He not your Father, who bought you? Has He not made you and established you?’ (Deut. 32:6).”1064
He also says, “But the Apostle says about ‘the heavenly Jerusalem,’ ‘She is free who is the mother of us all’ (Gal. 4:26). Therefore, first, your Father is God who begot your spirit and who says, ‘I have begotten sons and exalted them’ (Isa. 1:2). But the Apostle Paul also says, ‘Let us submit to the Father of spirits and we shall live’ (Heb. 12:9).”1065
St. Cyprian of Carthage also says, “He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.”1066
Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty
Notes
1064 Origen, Homilies on Leviticus 11.3 (FOTC 83:215).
1065 Origen, Homilies on Leviticus 11.3 (FOTC 83:215).
1066 St. Cyprian of Carthage, On the Unity of the Catholic Church 6 (ANF 5:423).