What does the motherhood of the Church mean?

St. Clement talks about the Church’s motherhood in words that really show how attached he was to the Church: “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; the mother draws the children to herself; and we seek our mother the Church.”¹¹⁶⁷ In St. Clement’s understanding, the motherhood of the Church is directly related to God’s loving fatherhood. He says, “O mystic marvel! The universal Father is one, and one the universal Word; and the Holy Spirit is one and the same everywhere, and one is the only virgin mother. I love to call her the Church. This mother … is pure as a virgin, loving as a mother. And calling her children to her, she nurses them with holy milk, with the Word for childhood.”¹¹⁶⁸

This motherhood was spoken of by many Church Fathers in the first and second centuries, such as the Shepherd of Hermas . They also talked about how through His incarnation, the Logos became milk that nourishes the children of the Church. In this vein, St. Irenaeus of Lyons says, “He was the perfect bread of the Father, offered Himself to us as milk, [because we were] as infants. He did this when He appeared as a man, that we, being nourished, as it were, from the breast of His flesh, and having, by such a course of milk nourishment, become accustomed to eat and drink the Word of God, may be able also to contain in ourselves the Bread of immortality, which is the Spirit of the Father.”¹¹⁶⁹