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The gospels tell us nothing about Mary’s pregnancy except for its very beginning and its end. But without straying into pious fantasy or fiction, and since nothing indicates that hers was in any way not a normal pregnancy, it’s not inappropriate to meditate on the not-so-simple truth of the Word made Flesh growing among us.
Growing in Mary’s body, a body that changed like any woman’s during pregnancy. Her breasts grew heavier, the first visible sign of pregnancy as the body prepares to nourish a child. A slight thickening, a bump, a bulge, and then a firm, strong, weighty place, a home for the child, forming in warm darkness.
Slowly, the baby makes himself known directly. He flutters at first, like shy butterflies inside you, movement so slight and unexpected you are never sure if it is you or him. It is hard to tell the difference, hard to separate it out.
Then there is a kick. A definite kick.
Finally, near the end, when you are so heavy and there is just the thinnest, ever-tightening layer of skin and muscle between the baby and the rest of the world, there is no doubt that someone is in there. Even an observer can see and might even be able to discern a knee, heel, or elbow. You can give him a little push so he’ll back off your ribs. He might even push back.
Millimeters away, but in another world. Closer to you than anyone else could ever be, but still a mystery. So, to fill in the blanks, you imagine. Sitting at your desk, lying in bed, standing at the well at Nazareth. You still yourself and you feel the baby who, it seems, has always been with you and, it feels like some days, always will be. It’s hard to remember a time that he wasn’t.
You wonder who he is. You might even make up little stories, imagine scenes of what he’s doing in there, what he thinks when you are still, what he does when you move around, what he wonders when you eat something spicy (if you still can). You can almost hear him murmuring there in the waters, in the shrinking space within. Always, in your imaginings, he is wise. Wiser than any real baby could ever be, but still, the dancing, rolling, kicking babies we imagine within us always seem to be wise beyond their years.
Even after birth, in that early, blurred, squinty-eyed gaze, we see some of that wisdom. We watch them watch us and listen to them listen to us, calmly, blinking rarely, staring. What are they listening to? The music of the spheres? We see them stare at the ceiling and we look, too. What do they see that we, our gaze narrowed by life in the world, can’t? Angels? Sometimes I wonder.
So as Mary grew, so Jesus grew within Mary. They settled into life with Joseph, patiently waiting in the midst of villagers, some of whom minded their own business, others who did not.
Mary had at least a few clues about her son. She knew he was a boy. She knew that he was from God, promised to save Israel. But still questions had to remain; questions we’re told Mary pondered and wondered about and searched through and, we can assume, prayed about, as she prayed the psalms and perhaps even her own canticle, over and over again, waking every morning, remembering with a start what the angel had said, and relaxing, resting in the prayer of praise.
We’ve seen already that Mary’s role as Mother of Jesus is about more than one woman’s relationship to her child. When we contemplate this reality of the Creator God moving in the womb of a woman, what we are contemplating is the Incarnation itself. God meets humanity in the body of a woman. When we watch Mary, when we contemplate what God is doing in her life, we watch all of humanity being embraced by God, indwelt and clothed.
That is why we honor Mary. That is why a Christianity that seeks to drive Mary away is deficient and actually makes the gospel less clear. Mary is us. She is our part of the relationship. She stands for us in the Mystery.
Mary longs to see her child, like any pregnant woman, wanting to know the one who dwells within her. Each person—indeed, humanity itself—longs, as well. We long for the fulfillment of our own deepest desires for life, for unconditional love, for joy that never ends, for healing. In Mary’s longing for the Promised One within we see our own longing. With Mary, we yearn for the promise to be fulfilled. And we patiently wait, trusting, letting God do his work, letting God’s presence grow within us, letting Him be magnified.
The spiritual writer Caryll Houselander wrote beautifully about what all this means in her classic, The Reed of God:
If Christ is formed of our lives, it means that He will suffer in us. Or, more truly, we will suffer in Him.
“And He was made man.”
Our Lady saw at once what was meant in her case: supernaturally, He was made herself.
If He is made man in you, he will be made you; in me, me.
It is extremely difficult to lay hold of this fact. It is very hard not to think of a kind of mystical Christ just beside us, or just in front of us, suffering with infinite patience and joy, being obedient, humble, persevering, fulfilling His Father’s will.
It is really difficult to realize that if He is formed in our life we are not beside Him but in Him; and what He asks of us is to realize that it is actually in what we do that He wants to act and suffer.9
A Child is Born
At last, the time came. But not in the expected way (as if anything could be expected in these circumstances.) And not in the easy way. Instead of birthing at home, a familiar place with women she knew and trusted, there was first a journey.
We find the narratives of Jesus’ birth in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. While they both relate the same fundamentals that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and was virginally conceived, the accounts differ from that point on.
These differences have been explained in various ways, ranging from the conclusion that the stories were simply fabricated by the evangelists to fit the general themes of the gospels to the assumption that the various aspects of the stories are rooted in the perspective of different witnesses—particularly Joseph for Matthew and Mary for Luke.
We really don’t know the answer. What we do know is that the gospels, while written as testimonies of faith, were also written out of the assumption that they were telling the truth:
Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed. (Luke 1:1-4)
It should also be obvious that since the four canonical gospels evolved only decades after Jesus’ life on earth and since there was no attempt to harmonize Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts, perhaps the memory of Jesus’ origins, preserved in his family and then shared, included all the elements we find in both Matthew and Luke, with each evangelist highlighting the aspects of the account that most powerfully illustrated his own, inspired account of Jesus.
So in Matthew, who emphasizes Jesus’ fulfillment of Jewish prophecy even more than the other evangelists, we find copious references to the Hebrew Scriptures. Matthew’s gospel also emphasizes Jesus’ mission to the Gentiles—to the whole world. Consider, for example, how the gospel ends, as Jesus tells his apostles to go out and “make disciples of all nations” (28:19). In his infancy narrative, Matthew emphasizes just this point—we see the end of the gospel encapsulated in the beginning. In fact the entire gospel is compressed into those first two chapters, as Herod the Great, the King of the Jews, hears the news of Jesus’ birth, rejects him, and seeks his death. It is the Gentiles—the Magi from the East—who recognize Jesus and honor him.
On the other hand, Luke’s gospel offers us a special emphasis, not only on Mary but on the poor, as well as on forgiveness (Luke 11 is a chapter full of parables of mercy). Luke highlights the announcement of Jesus’ birth to shepherds, not the visit of the Magi. According to the Jewish Law, shepherds were in a bad way because they were more or less perpetually ritually unclean, since they were constantly dealing with blood and corpses as they tended to the life cycles of their flocks.
So just as earlier in Luke, we see the marvelous fact of God’s breaking through the Temple walls to touch the world through the life of an unknown girl from an unknown place, after Jesus’ birth, in a place of poverty, rejected by a world that had no room for him, the Good News bursts forth, not to the religious establishment or earthly powers—but to shepherds. The unclean. The lowly, waiting well outside the town walls, deep in the night.
Glory to God!
Listening with Mary
Since ancient people were directly in contact with the world day and night, in a way that we simply no longer are, they were alive to signs and portents coursing around them. We complain that God doesn’t speak to us so clearly any more, that there are no angels, no stirrings of the Spirit, no pointed dreams, but honestly, if there were, who would hear them? Who would see? Who would unplug their ear buds, turn down the volume, be still and just listen?
Mary did, of course. Once again, we look to her for the other half of this story of redemption. How do we respond?
John has no infancy narrative in his gospel. Instead, he reaches further back, to the pre-existence of Jesus, long before time, before the earth. He begins his gospel by identifying Jesus as the Word. Logos is the Greek word, and it has many nuances. In this context, we can hear echoes of more than simple “logic.” Jesus is the self-expression—the literal word of God. He also is expressive of the divine principle of reason and order, of the meaning that we can see in every aspect of creation, from the marvels of a cell to the expansiveness of the universe.
One of the most dangerous temptations of the Christian life is to get tied up in knots figuring out how to squeeze this amazing, rich, expressive, infinite Word into a baby.
How can the infinite reach for his mother’s breast, cry, be taught to walk, tumble down laughing amid his squeals? How could this be?
Such twisting and turning misses the point. Think of words. What is our general attitude towards them? When we (if we’re open-minded) hear words spoken to us, do we immediately try to impose meaning on the words and try to fit them into our reality?
Well, perhaps we do. But that leaves us no better off, no wiser than we were before.
However, we all know that to grow in wisdom and spirit, when confronted with a word, we listen.
We let the word speak to us. We ponder. We reflect.
So here he is, finally out of Mary’s womb.
Her uterus has contracted and she has pushed and he has emerged, been cleaned, fed, wrapped up, and laid down to rest after such a short (but such a very long) journey.
The Lord sleeps. The Word rests, breathing softly in the cave that shelters animals. Shepherds nearby awaken to the signs.
What is God telling you about himself?
Listen. With Mary. Listen.
I think God is telling us all we need to know.
And so with Mary, we listen. We listen to the Word of Mercy, now laid in a wooden manger, whose life on earth would end in a passion of love laid out on a wooden cross.
It is God who has done this, but we come back to this point again and again: God has done this, given us exactly what our broken hearts and lives need and so deeply desire, by clothing himself in human flesh, by speaking our language, by touching us with hands through which our own blood rushes.
And this flesh—our flesh—is Mary’s. As Houselander writes, she gives herself over to God, giving her flesh, and so God enters the world through us:
That is what it meant to Mary to give human nature to God.
He was invulnerable; He asked her for a body to be wounded.
He was God; He asked her to make Him man.
He asked for hands a feet to be nailed.
He asked for flesh to be scourged.
He asked for blood to be shed.
He asked for a heart to be broken.
The stable at Bethlehem was the first Calvary.
The wooden manger was the first Cross.
The swaddling bands were the first burial bands.
The Passion had begun.
Christ was Man.
. . . A few words spoken to an angel and heard only by him: “Be it done unto me according to they word.”
Then, like the pause that measures music as truly as the sounds, the word of God is silent; for nine months it is inaudible.
It is the pause during which the opening phrase grows within us in loveliness, preparing our minds for the coming splendour.
Suddenly drifting down the darkness, like the bleat of a lamb, comes the cry of a new-born infant.
Now it is no longer Mary’s voice uttering the word. Nevertheless it is her voice, for it is the human voice that she has given to God.
And may we to add to the above sweet reflection, what hope for us is contained in the fact that even Mary as Immaculate and devoid of sin, that is, absent the human urge to be without God, and Jesus even in His Divine Hunanity...that both underwent a lifelong journey by which the fullness of each one’s mission became clearer and clearer, leading right up to the Cross, and through the Cross, to the Resurerction, and to the early seeds of Church with Mary at its prayerful center. So, then, must we who are not Immaculately conceived nor divine by nature, traverse our own deepening journey to God by the abundant graces given to us from Christ, Church, and Mary, albeit with our own twists and turns, ups and downs, until we too have begun to give Him birth. This is demonstrably possible for the human being, for we point and venerate its actuality today in a uniquely created human being, the Immaculate One. And we point to the power and source of that actuality, the Incarnate One. What could the race possibly ask for that would be better or more sublime than these? Pray with me that the human race come to conversion by the sheer power and mystery of Mary and by the Incarnation; that we as a race of fallen beings come to see what divine love and grace really are and thus begin transformation into Him.