Numbers 31

But a deeper vengeance is taken on fiercer foes and on those that are false as well as on those who have done greater wrongs, as was the case with the Midianites. For they had made many of the Jewish people to sin through their women. For this reason the anger of the Lord was poured out upon the people of our fathers. Thus it came about that Moses when victorious allowed none of them to live.

The soothsayer Balaam set up a scandal for the people of Israel when he went to meet their warriors, not with men in armor but with women arrayed in all their finery. He hoped to make the men drop their arms for debauchery, change their triumph into disgrace, bring the avengers of guilt into guilt themselves and—to put it briefly—to profane all their holiness into depravity. As a result of it all, when Moses was meting out punishment, he sentenced Balaam thus: "Kill Balaam the soothsayer, because he set up a stumbling block before the children of Israel."

The same angel, however, said to the Virgin Mary, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you"; the one who will be in you is already with you. "Blessed are you among women." Holy Scripture bears witness to the fact that in the proper usage of the Hebrew language all females are habitually called women; in case some of you perhaps may be astonished and scandalized, if you are not used to hearing the Scriptures. There's a place in the Scriptures where the Lord says openly, "Set apart the women who have not known man." In any case, call to mind those origins of ours; when Eve was made from the man's side, what does Scripture say? "He removed a rib from him and built it into a woman." She is already called a woman, taken indeed from the man but not yet united to the man. So now, when you hear from the angel, "Blessed are you among women," take it in such a way, as if it were saying, in our usage, Blessed are you among females.