The Nativity of the Lord

12-24-2023Weekly Reflection©LPi — Father John Muir

“She gave birth to her firstborn son.” The pain of childbirth is something that boggles my mind. I’m sure I couldn’t handle it. I can’t even watch scenes in movies in which a woman gives birth. I understand it’s a beautiful part of nature, but there’s still something awful about it and the attendant suffering.

Which is why it’s worth pondering an often neglected and currently unpopular part of the Church’s theology around the birth of Christ, his was miraculous because it caused no pain to his mother. Even her physical virginity remains intact. Of course, we modern scientific people scoff at such an idea.

Without obsessing over the obstetrical details, we discover a glorious illumination in the symbolic meaning of this birth that we moderns find so embarrassing. God comes into the world in an utterly non-violent way. He himself will suffer his own bloodshed but will never shed that of others. He is so peaceful and non-violent that he will even rise from the dead without breaking the seal of the tomb. All of humanity, in the Church, will give birth to him in the Church free from the terrible pain due to original sin. How badly we need the truth of this miraculous birth today!

Let’s delight in this great mystery and miracle of Jesus’s birth. He is the Prince of Peace and always nonviolent. We need not fear him, ever.