Matthew 24:8

The beginning of sorrows. — The words mean strictly, the beginning of travail pangs. The troubles through which the world passes are thought of as issuing in a “new birth” — the “regeneration” of Matthew 19:28. So St. Paul speaks of the whole creation as “travailing in pain together” (Romans 8:22). So a time of national suffering and perplexity is one in which “the children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth” (Isaiah 37:3).