Redeemer in the Womb: Jesus Living in Mary by John Saward, Post #6

This is the sixth and final post on Redeemer in the Womb: Jesus Living in Mary by John Saward.

You can find Post #1 here. 

Post #2 here.  

Post #3 here. 

Post #4 here. 

Post #5 here. 

 

Summary

Chapter 7: The Witness of Three Women

Saward opens the chapter with this from St. Pope John Paul II:

 

John Paul argues that there are spiritual qualities that are peculiarly feminine. Woman, he says, in the unity of her material body and spiritual soul, is disposed by the Creator to motherhood, to the welcoming of new life. At her body’s center is a space to be occupied by another human being, a child, the fruit of married love and a gift of God. This is the physical predisposition for the spiritual receptiveness that, though often suppressed or corrupted, distinguishes the minds and hearts of women, both married and unmarried.

The chapter follows the meditations of Jesus in the womb by three women in the church: St. Catherine of Siena, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, and the mystic Caryll Houselander.

Chapter 8: Revelation in the Womb

Saward outlines the chapter with the following:

 

The revelatory work of Jesus in the womb is mysterious and silent. He reveals, first of all, simply by being who he is (the eternal Son) and what he has become (true man, a real human embryo). He reveals by the miraculous manner of his conception and birth: “Such a birth befits God.” The first human person privileged to receive this revelation and ponder it in prayer is the Ever-Virgin Mother. From her it is communicated to St. Joseph, St. John the Baptist, St. Elizabeth, St. Zechariah, and so, through the Apostles and Evangelists, to the Church of every age. Our Lady’s faith in the incarnate Word has a chronological and theological priority in the history of salvation; as St. John Paul II says, she “precedes” us in faith. The believing Church first exists in her. More specifically, the Church first exists in the fiat of faith and loving obedience through which the Word took flesh and dwelt within her. Our Lady, great with child, is the image and beginning of the Church that with her “magnifies the Lord.”

The fact that Christ is hidden in the womb and then made manifest with His birth, parallels the Divine hiddenness of God and revealed in the manifestation of the Son.

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Michelle’s Comment:

I had never heard of Caryll Houselander until reading her thoughts here, and I purchased one of her books. She had some lovely and introspective thoughts. I had highlighted this insight from her:

 

"In becoming a child, God the Son united himself to every child. Every little one of the human family is a reminder of the Infant God, of the divine humility the demons so despise. Every child preaches the Gospel just by being what he is. He embodies the simplicity needed for entry to heaven (see Matt. 18:3). He calls his parents out of self-absorption into self-giving."

Michael’s Reply to Michelle:

Michelle wrote: "Every child preaches the Gospel just by being what he is. He embodies the simplicity needed for entry to heaven (see Matt. 18:3). He calls his parents out of self-absorption into self-giving."

Wonderful. Thanks for sharing!

My Reply to Michelle:

Michelle wrote: "I had never heard of Caryll Houselander until reading her thoughts here, and I purchased one of her books. She had some lovely and introspective thoughts. I had highlighted this insight from her:

Oh you must read Caryll Houselander. She is a brilliant writer. I have read The Way of the Cross and thought it a great Lenten read. I have a review here on Goodreads if you can find it. I highly recommend it for the upcoming Lent if you're looking for a book. I don't remember it being that long. She has such mystical insights. Actually I've been thinking of picking up another one of her books.

Michelle’s Reply:

I have that one on my list and two others. I bought Little Way of the Infant Jesus and haven't been in the right frame of mind to read it yet. Good to hear that she's worth reading!

Michelle’s Comment:

In Chapter 8, this stood out to me:

 

"Studiousness, the humble quest for understanding, can be perverted into curiosity, the proud craving for information."

 

I have this fault! I can get lost down the rabbit-hole for hours looking up countries, customs, NASA, Antarctica, the Penninsula Wars, etc. I have been trying not to do this anymore. I read something St. Padre Pio once said which is inline with the above quote. Someone asked him what the gravest sins were, and he named curiosity as one of them.

 

Also in this chapter, I thought the comparison of the tiny Jesus in the womb beginning as a zygote to a mustard seed was very profound. He grew into the Tree of Life over all.

Michael’s Reply to Michelle:

Michelle wrote: "I have this fault! I can get lost down the rabbit-hole for hours looking up countries, customs, NASA, Antarctica, the Penninsula Wars, etc. I have been trying not to do this anymore. I read something St. Padre Pio once said which is inline with the above quote. Someone asked him what the gravest sins were, and he named curiosity as one of them."

I think curiosity, like everything else, can be good or bad, Michelle. When the Apostles tell Jesus what people are saying about him, he asks them, "Who do you say that I am?"
Perhaps this means that as long as the engine of our curiosity is God, it's good. But when curiosity leads you down the path of obscurity, it can be a bad move. Occultism, for example, is all about curiosity about magic and similar stuff.

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My Comment:

I was surprised to see Saward included St. Catherine of Siena.  As some of you may know, I consider her my patron saint.  Though she prayed to the Blessed Mother, she was not Marian centric.  She was more focused on the incarnate Christ, and I guess Christ is there in the womb.  Despite hidden in the womb, the fetus is incarnate and so is physically there. 

 

For St. Catherine, as much as for the early Christian author Tertullian, “the flesh is the hinge of salvation.” Her genius, says François-Marie Léthel, is “to give bodily expression to all the spiritual realities.” So, when she speaks of the Holy Spirit, and of the charity he pours into our hearts, she thinks of the fire by which he revealed himself at Pentecost. Christian ‘interiority’ is not a disincarnate abstraction but the Christian’s participation in the mysteries of the Word incarnate’s life in his Virgin Mother’s womb and of the Church’s birth from his wounded side on the cross.

 

Saward goes on to quote from a prayer of St. Catherine of Siena.  I’m not going to quote Saward’s quoting of the prayer, but I will quote from my edition of the collected prayers.  Saward quotes from a Cavallini translation, but I think the Suzanne Noffke translation is more to his point. 

 

Oh Mary, my tenderest love!  In you is written the Word from whom we have the teaching of life.  You are the tablet that sets this teaching before us.  I see that this Word, once written in you, was never without the cross of holy desire.  Even as he was conceived within you, the desire to die for the salvation of humankind was engrafted and bound into him.  (The Prayers of Catherine of Siena, 2^nd Edition, Suzanne Noffke, OP, Translator and Editor, pp. 193-4)

 

Actually that translation came out in 2001, after Saward had published Redeemer in the Womb.  But you can see the metaphor St. Catherine uses, Mary is the book on which the Word is written.  Noffke lists that prayer as Number 18, prayed on the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25^th, 1379 in Rome.  Another factoid, March 25^th happened to be St. Catherine’s 32^nd birthday, and she was about thirteen months from her death on April 29^th, 1380. 

 

Saward develops further from St, Catherine’s prayer, and he concludes the meditation from St. Catherine with this observation.

 

St. Catherine sees Our Lady of the Annunciation as not only speaking for mankind but embodying all that is best and most beautiful in mankind, whether by nature or by grace.

 

I continue to find St. Catherine of Siena one of the most brilliant of persons to have lived.

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My Comment:

I don’t know that much about St. Elizabeth of the Trinity.  I have come across excerpts of her writing as meditations in the daily readings of Magnificat.  I have been impressed and would love to explore more.  I know she had a spirituality focused on the indwelling of the Trinity.  Here is how Saward opens his section on her meditations.

 

The spiritual doctrine of the Dijon Carmelite St. Elizabeth of the Trinity (1880–1906) is centered on the indwelling of the Trinity in the souls of the just. She came to see the Advent Mary, the expectant Virgin, as the highest model of the contemplative, within whose heart Christ lives by grace and charity and prayer.

 

Then he quotes this from one of her works.

 

It seems to me that the attitude of the Virgin during the months between the Annunciation and the Nativity is the model for interior souls, for those whom God has chosen to live inwardly, in the depths of the unfathomable abyss.

 

That sounds like the central thesis of the whole book.  If one needed to summarize Redeemer in the Womb in one sentence, that’s hits it spot on.

 

Saward also quotes St. Elizabeth from a letter to her sister Guite.

 

Think what must have been going on in the Virgin’s soul after the Incarnation, when she possessed within her the Word incarnate, the Gift of God. . . . In what silence, what recollection, what adoration she must have buried herself in the depths of her soul in order to embrace this God whose Mother she was. My little Guite, he is in us. O let us stay close to him in this silence, with this love, of the Virgin. That is the way to spend Advent, isn’t it?

 

I think other writers have been quoted in this book as such as well: the contemplative life is an act of gestating Jesus within us just as the Blessed Mother carried Jesus for nine months.

Michelle’s Reply:

"...the contemplative life is an act of gestating Jesus within us just as the Blessed Mother carried Jesus for nine months." This is a lovely way of looking at things!

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My Comment:

Saward ends the book on a chapter on how the hiddenness of Christ in the womb leading to His birth is a reflection of the revelation of God through Jesus Christ’s incarnation.  Saward quotes Dei Verbum from Vatican II:

 

Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, sent “as man to men,” “speaks the words of God” (John 3:34) and accomplishes the saving work that the Father gave him to do (cf. John 5:36; 17:4). It was therefore he himself—to see him is to see the Father (cf. John 14:9)—who completed and perfected revelation and confirmed it by divine testimony. He did this by his whole presence and self-manifestation: by words and deeds, by signs and wonders, but especially by his death and glorious Resurrection from the dead, and finally by sending the Spirit of Truth.

 

Saward seems to imply that the gestation time and subsequent birth for Jesus’ birth was fitting as a process for revelation.  He also quotes St. Bernard of Clairvaux.  “He who is incomprehensible and invisible, said St. Bernard, wanted to be comprehended and seen.”  This brings Saward to a concluding statement.

 

The same is true of the Word’s first nine months as man. Even then, as truly as when he “preached on the mountain,” he was at the work of revelation; by the simplicity of his embryonic life, Christ revealed God.

 

Saward expounds the thought further, but I think that’s the gist.

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My Comment:

I also found this passage in the final chapter beautiful.

 

For nine months, Mary’s faith and love are embodied in the physical and emotional experience of pregnancy. It begins, as it does for every expectant mother, with “a blind sense of touch, with the bodily sensing of a presence.” Touch, as Aristotle and St. Thomas well understood, is not a deficient form of sensation, but the foundation of all the other senses; it can even supply for sight and hearing in those born blind and deaf. The other senses operate through a medium, but touch is direct encounter. This first sensation, in which the Son of the Most High is felt deep within the Virgin Mother’s body, as he draws his bodily substance and sustenance from her, will not be cast aside but be incorporated into all her later seeing, hearing, and holding. She knows with unique authority what it means to say that “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” And Our Lady’s experience is more than simply individual. It is utterly unique, yet completely Catholic: in some way, it can be shared in the communion of saints. For the sake of the whole Church, by touching the marks left by the nails and the lance, St. Thomas the Apostle, who could not at first believe, proved the bodily solidity of the risen Christ. Similarly, for us all, by her touch, Mary, who never wavered in her faith, felt within her the reality of God’s taking of flesh. The mind and heart of the Holy Virgin, while she is with Child, are the beginning and the permanent measure of the Church’s confession of the realism of the Incarnation. A Christology that does not have something of Mary’s wonder at the Verbum abbreviatum, the embryonic Word within her, is destined for Docetism, the heresy that imagines that God assumed the semblance of a human body.

 

The point of the last sentence is interesting.  Jesus nine months of gestation shows He was truly man, not the illusion of a man as per the Docetic heresy.  He didn’t just show up on earth one day.  One might also conclude that a natural fertilization of Mary’s egg occurred in her womb.  It wasn’t just something planted in her.

 

I also found in this passage the beauty in the touch that developed between mother and child during the nine months.  I’ve never obviously been pregnant with child (:-P) but I can imagine the tactile relationship was as great or if not greater than that of St. Thomas the Apostle when he put his fingers into Christ’s wounds.

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My Comment:

Finally, Saward ends the book not with Mary, not with Jesus, but with St. Joseph who Saward feels is the vocation of every Christian, “to welcome Jesus living in Mary into our souls by faith alive with love and for their sake to welcome and keep safe every unborn human child and his mother.”  He continues:

 

St. Joseph was the first man to grant the Virgin Mother of God “a room in his abode.” Before ever he sought for her the hospitality of the innkeepers of Bethlehem, he took her into his own heart and home (see Matt. 1:24). He is the model of the chivalry of Catholic faith and charity. He offered a house, a roof but also a lineage, to the unborn Jesus. He gave sanctuary to God incarnate and his Ever-Virgin Mother. May St. Joseph by his prayers keep us faithful to the Gospel of Life first preached by the Redeemer in the womb.

 

Does this seem like a sequence of Russian nesting dolls?  Jesus inside Mary inside Joseph inside Me! 

 

I thought this was a marvelous advent devotional. 

Frances Comment:

Beautiful image, Manny. Thank you.

Sunday Meditation: Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany of the Lord.  I’ve had a number of posts on this feast and the subject of the Magi.  You can access past posts on these subjects here.    There are posts on the significance of the Epiphany as well as to its details.  There are posts on Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s wonderful book unlocking the mystery of these wise men, The Mystery of the Magi: The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men.   And there are analysis of poems by G.K. Chesterton and T.S. Eliot on the subject of the Magi.  All well worth exploring.

Today I would like to emphasize the gifts the Magi present infant Jesus.  It is commonly understood that the gift of gold represents Jesus’ royalty, frankincense represents his priestly office, and myrrh His sacrificial death.  Pierre-Marie Dumont in this month’s Magnificat magazine (Jan 2026, Vol. 21, No. 11, pp 6-7) proposes we offer these gifts to Jesus today in the form of spiritual gifts.  The gold we give is our love, “gold refined by the fire mentioned in the Book of Revelation (3:18).”  The frankincense we offer are our prayers “that ascend to God as a sweet-smelling offering.”  The myrrh we offer is “our communion in the Passion and death of Jesus,” consisting of our sacrifices and offerings to the Lord.  I found that beautiful.

 

Here is today’s Gospel reading.

 

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews?

We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.”

When King Herod heard this, he was greatly troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.

Assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people,

He inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.

They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it has been written through the prophet:

And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; since from you shall come a ruler, who is to shepherd my people Israel.”

Then Herod called the magi secretly and ascertained from them the time of the star’s appearance.

He sent them to Bethlehem and said,

“Go and search diligently for the child.

When you have found him, bring me word, that I too may go and do him homage.”

After their audience with the king they set out.

And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was.

They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother.

They prostrated themselves and did him homage.

Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their country by another way..

~Mt 2:1-12

 

Bishop Barron explains the traditional understanding of the three gifts, but he also connects the expedition of the Magi with a search for the ultimate fulfillment which is the quest to discover God. 

What is admirable in the Magi is that they follow the sign so that the longing will be fulfilled if we move in this direction.  “We’re the three kings longing for Christ.”  That is beautiful. 

I have presented pastoral homilies by different members of the Capuchin Franciscan Friars before in their YouTube channel, “A Simple Word.”  I have never presented Fr. Christopher Gama before, and here he provides an insightful homily.

We can only find God through the virtue of humility.  “Creation points out the way, and God finishes the path.  Grace builds on nature!”  It changes us and sends us home in another way.

 

Sunday Meditation: “They opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”

Let’s end with this lovely Christmas carol perfect for the epiphany, performed by North Valley Chamber Chorale:

I love this version. 

Redeemer in the Womb: Jesus Living in Mary by John Saward, Post #5

This is the fifth post of six posts on Redeemer in the Womb: Jesus Living in Mary by John Saward.

You can find Post #1 here. 

Post #2 here.  

Post #3 here. 

Post #4 here. 

 

 

Chapter 5: First Step Into the World: The French School

Kerstin’s Summary:

In the seventeenth century the French School of Spirituality was inspired by Pierre Cardinal de Bérulle (1575–1629). They devoted much time to Jesus’ time in the womb. Bérulle is quoted throughout the chapter.

 

A ‘Copernican’ Christology

The most marked feature of the theology of Bérulle is its Christ-centeredness. Pope Urban VIII called him “the Apostle of the Word incarnate,” and one of his successors as superior general of the French Oratory, Fr. Bourgoing, suggested he had been sent by God “as a new St. John to point out Jesus Christ.” Bérulle worked a ‘Copernican revolution’ in the sacred sciences. He attempted in theology what his older contemporary Galileo achieved in astronomy.

“One of the outstanding intellects of this age has tried to maintain that the sun, and not the earth, is at the center of the universe. . . . This novel opinion, little followed in the science of the stars, is useful and must be followed in the science of salvation. For Jesus is the sun, immobile in his grandeur and moving all things. . . . Jesus is the true center of the world, and the world must be in a continual movement towards him. Jesus is the sun of our souls, from whom they receive all graces, lights, and influences.”

The Lodgings of the Son of God Like the Syriac theologians, Bérulle compares and links the diverse lodgings (séjours) of Jesus: the bosom of God the Father, the womb of the Blessed Virgin, and the altars of the Catholic Church.

“There are three states of Jesus that deserve singular and daily consideration: in the womb (sein) of the Father as Son of God, God from God, consubstantial and equal with his Father; in the womb of the Virgin as Son of Man, both man and God, the Mediator of God and men; in the womb of the Church, which is his centre and altar, as Lamb of God and victim of praise and propitiation, which she [the Church] presents to the eternal Father.”

The marvel of the Incarnation is this: it enables God to worship God. God the Son in his humanity adores God the Father, with whom, in his divinity, he is coequal. What is more, this filial worship of the Father begins at the first moment of the Incarnation and has its first sanctuary in the Virgin’s womb.
[…]Bérulle follows St. Thomas’ teaching that, from the first moment of his conception, Christ has the use of his human free will and at the summit of his soul enjoys the beatific vision of God.
“He is living in the Virgin, and he is life itself. He is holy by the grace of the hypostatic union, which is the grace of graces. He is in glory by the state of his soul, established at the very hour of its making in the vision of God.

 

The Unborn State of Christ

 

The Christology of Bérulle is a doctrine of état, “state.” […] Bérulle uses état in the latter sense to revive St. Irenaeus’ theology of recapitulation and the Thomist doctrine of Christ’s headship. As man, but because he is God, Christ is “the head of human nature.” In assuming a complete and concrete human nature, the eternal Word in some way unites himself to all men, and, by living a complete human life from conception to the last breath, he touches and hallows every stage of every man’s journey through this world.

 

“By this high, divine, and lofty counsel, we do not just have a Man-God, which is what the Incarnation gives us. We have an infant God, a mortal God, suffering, trembling, weeping in a cradle; a God living and walking on earth, in Egypt, in Judaea. . . . God wants us to have all the miseries, conditions, and lowlinesses of our nature relieved by the divine subsistence and personality, a God suffering and dying on the cross, a God dead in the tomb, for he who took our nature by the mystery of the Incarnation wanted to take all these states and conditions of our nature and to honour them with the divine subsistence, what the ancient Fathers of the Church call the economy and dispensation of the divine mystery. For the Incarnation of the Word is the basis and foundation of a supreme dignity, in other words, not only of the sanctification but also of the deification of all the states and mysteries that share the life and wayfaring condition of the Son of God on earth.”

 

The human conception of the Son of God and his life in the womb have a redeeming purpose. The virginal and miraculous character of his conception and his perfections as a human child in the womb are intended “to repair the ruins of our pitiful entry into the world as sinners.”

 

“Seeing that he wanted to be an infant on earth, in order to consecrate and sanctify human infancy contaminated by Original Sin, could this infancy have been better restored than by a Virginal Conception, a miraculous birth, a light of glory before the light of the world, a divine power in the powerlessness of the Child, the use of a holy and perfect life with God his Father and the Virgin his Mother before the use of his senses and the force of nature?”

 

“But we see sensibly that in this present state she is more close and more conjoined, while he is in her, while he is part of her, while she lives for him, and he lives by her, and he is in a continual state of dependence and even of indigence with regard to her.”

 

The Visitation

 

The Visitation, says Bérulle, is the only visible work reported by Scripture that Jesus and Mary performed during the nine months the divine baby was in his Mother’s womb.

 

“God has become a child, and so he wants first to be known and adored by a child, and this is one of the first emanations of the childhood of God, manifesting himself to the universe. God is a child, the world ignores, heaven adores, and a child is the first person in the universe to recognize and adore him, and he does so by the homage and secret operation of God himself, who wants to act upon children. He wants to honour himself as child by giving the first knowledge of himself to a child in the world, making him his prophet in the universe. Thus, the Infant-God is recognized and manifested, not by an angel, but by a child. His first prophet is a child, just as shortly his first martyrs will be children.”

 

Jesus in Mary: A Union of Hearts

 

Between any expectant mother and the child in her womb, there is more than a merely physical presence of the one to the other, of the one in the other. The bodily closeness is the basis of an intimacy of knowledge and love, a union of hearts. This natural bond is wonderfully strengthened by the unique fullness of grace with which the God-man and his Mother, each in their own way, are endowed.

 

“All her senses are directed at him, for this is a sensible mystery, a mystery that is sensible in her. And the whole of human sensibility owes homage to its God made sensible for human nature. All her spirit is applied there. . . . The grace infused into the Virgin, grace so excellent and exalted, applies and absorbs all the senses, all the faculties, and all the spirit of the Virgin. . . . Thus grace and nature conspire in her to establish an excellent disposition, one that enraptures her heart and her soul in Jesus her Son and her God.”

 

The French Poet Paul Claudel expressed it in this way:

 

At the end of this third month after the Annunciation,

which is June,

The woman who is God’s has heard the tune

Of heartbeats under hers and felt the movement

of her Son.

Within the sinless Virgin’s womb commences a new era.

The Child who is before all time assumes time in his

Mother of his Mother,

And in the primal Mover man’s breathing is begun!

She moves not, speaks not a word. She adores.

She withdraws from the world. For her, God is not

outdoors:

He is her work, her Son, her Baby, borne as her All!

Satan rules and the whole wide world offers him incense

and gold.

God penetrates like a thief in this Eden of death

overbold.

A woman was once deceived, and now a woman

cheats hell.

O God, in a woman hid! O Cause, in this bondage

bound!

Jerusalem knows naught; even Joseph sees darkness

profound.

The Mother alone with her Child feels his ineffable

moving.

 

For nine months, says Bérulle, Mary is the only person on earth who worships the mystery of the Incarnation. It takes place “on the earth, for the earth, and yet is not known by the earth.” For the benefit of the whole world, Mary alone in the world worships Jesus.

 

The Graces of Mary’s Womb Burden

 

Jesus . . . in his states and mysteries is himself our portion, and, while giving us a universal share in him, he wants us also to have an individual share in his diverse states depending on the different ways in which he has elected us and we are devoted to him. Thus, he shares himself with his children, making them partakers of the spirit and grace of his mysteries, appropriating to some his life and to others his death, to some his infancy, to others his power, to some his hidden life, to others his public life. . . . In all these different states and conditions he gives himself to all. He gives us his heart, his grace, and his spirit.

 

The infancy of the Son of God is a passing state. Its circumstances have passed away. He is no longer a child. Nevertheless, there is something divine in this mystery that continues in heaven and that effects a similar kind of grace in the souls who are on earth, whom it pleases Jesus Christ to affect and to dedicate to this humble and first state of his person.

 

The Good by God the Christ an Embryo:

 

From which His conceiving we may conceive His great love to us-ward. Love, not only condescending to take our nature upon Him, but to take it by the same way and after the same manner that we do, by being conceived. That, and no other better beseeming way. The womb of the Virgin is surely no such place, but He might well have abhorred it. He did not; pudorem exordii nostri non recusavit, saith Hilary; “He refused not that ourselves are ashamed of,” sed naturae nostrae contumelias transcurrit, “but the very contumelies of our nature (transcurrit is too quick a word) He ran through them”; nay, He stayed in them, in this first nine months. I say the contumelies of our nature not to be named, they are so mean. So mean indeed as it is verily thought they made those old heretics I named, and others more who yet yielded Him to be Man, to run into such fancies as they did; only to decline those foul indignities as they took them, for the great God of Heaven to undergo. . . . This sure is matter of love; but came there any good to us by it? There did. For our conception being the root as it were, the very groundsill of our nature; that He might go to the root and repair our nature from the very foundation, thither He went; that what had been there defiled and decayed by the first Adam, might by the Second be cleansed and set right again. That had our conception been stained, by Him therefore, primum ante omnia, to be restored again. He was not idle all the time He was an embryo—all the nine months He was in the womb. . . . This honour is to us by the dishonour of Him; this the good by Christ an embryo.

 

“Oh Wonderful and Incomprehensible Dependence of God”

 

St. Louis-Marie On Jesus in Mary’s Womb:

 

Jesus is at present, as much as he ever was, the fruit of Mary, as heaven and earth tell him a thousand times every day, “And blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” It is certain that, for every human being in particular who possesses him, Jesus Christ is as truly the fruit and the work of Mary as he is for the whole world in general, so that, if a faithful Christian has Jesus Christ formed in his heart, he can boldly say, “Great thanks to Mary, what I possess is her fruit and her work, and without her I would not have him.”

 

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My Comment:

I found this surprising:

 

In the history of the Church, no school of theology and spirituality has given Jesus’ life in Mary more attention than the seventeenth-century French School, of which Pierre Cardinal de Bérulle (1575–1629)…was the chief inspiration.

 

I suppose that’s true. Until this book I had not realized there had been much contemplation of Jesus inside of Mary’s womb.

Frances’s Reply:

I hadn’t either, Manny.

Michelle’s Reply:

This book is the first time I've come across it. It's pretty clueless, but I never really gave much thought to it.

Michael’s Reply on a Different Thought:

Manny wrote: "I found this surprising:
In the history of the Church, no school of theology and spirituality has given Jesus’ life in Mary more attention than the seventeenth-century French School, of which Pierre Cardinal de Bérulle (1575–1629)…was the chief inspiration."

So interesting, Manny. I'll look into it. I think my wife has a book on French Catholic Church spirituality.

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My Comment:

I found this passage in chapter 5 fascinating and worth deeper meditation.

 

The marvel of the Incarnation is this: it enables God to worship God. God the Son in his humanity adores God the Father, with whom, in his divinity, he is coequal. What is more, this filial worship of the Father begins at the first moment of the Incarnation and has its first sanctuary in the Virgin’s womb. Bérulle, who had a thorough knowledge of the Greek Fathers, repeats what Cyril, Proclus, and Andrew of Crete had recognized before him—namely, that the Virgin’s pure womb, unshadowed by any sin, containing the divine Word himself, is “the holy or sacred temple where Jesus reposes, the true Ark of the true Covenant . . . and the Virgin’s heart is the first altar on which Jesus offered his heart, his body, his spirit, as a victim of perpetual praise.” When Christ comes into the world, he surrenders his new human body and will to the service of the Father: “Lo, I have come to do thy will, O God” (Heb. 10:5–10; cf. Ps. 40:6–8).

 

That God the Son adores God the Father is evident in John’s chapter seventeen when Jesus gives His farewell discourse and great final prayer.

 

When Jesus had said this, he raised his eyes to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you, just as you gave him authority over all people, so that he may give eternal life to all you gave him. Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ. I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do. Now glorify me, Father, with you, with the glory that I had with you before the world began. (Jn 17:1-5)

 

I’m surprised Seward doesn’t allude to it, but here God worships God, the Father the Son and the Son the Father. I guess one could see this worship beginning in the womb with the Incarnation. John’s passage is a statement of the hour of His glory, when at the altar of the cross Jesus will offer Himself in sacrifice. Bérulle see the Virgin’s heart as the very first altar.

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Note: While in discussion of Chapter 5, Kerstin received an emergency call that her mother in Germany, who was battling cancer, was in a critical state.  She had to rush to Germany.  I took over as lead moderator for the last three chapters.

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Chapter 6: Our Lady of the Sign: The Liturgy and Sacred Art

My Summary:

This chapter explores how Our Lady, pregnant with Jesus, has shaped the liturgical season, shaped various liturgies, and shaped sacred art. 

 

Saward on the Liturgical Season:

When the eternal God enters time in the Virgin’s womb, time itself is redeemed (see Eph. 5:16). Days and seasons can now be holy and sanctifying and the year becomes liturgical. As she makes the journey from Advent to the last Sunday after Pentecost, the Church relives the mysteries of the life of Jesus, joyful and luminous, sorrowful and glorious, drawing from each a specific grace and lesson. Pope Pius XII writes: The Liturgical Year, devotedly nourished and accompanied by the Church, is not a cold and lifeless representation of the events of the past, nor a simple and bare record of a former age. It is rather Christ himself, ever living in his Church, continuing the journey of boundless mercy that he began in his mortal life when he went about doing good (see Acts 10:38). Its compassionate purpose is to put the minds of men into contact with his mysteries and somehow to live by them. . . .  (p. 103)

 

In a sermon on the Annunciation, St. Aelred, Cistercian abbot of Rievaulx (1109-1167), suggested we become contemporary with all the mysteries of our lord’s life on earth, from the first moment of the Incarnation, through the renewal and representation in the Mass of his sacrifice on the cross, which summed up and perfected all the previous mysteries.  (p. 105)

 

The mystery of Jesus’ life in Mary’s womb is always ‘recent’ in the Church’s memory.  Every evening she sings the Magnificat, the song of the pregnant Virgin Mother, in order to share more fully in her attitude of gratitude and obedience to God.  And at the end of each year, in preparation for the Saviour’s birthday, she enjoys a month’s contemplation of the same mystery.   (p. 105)

 

Saward on the Use of Mary in the Liturgy:

The traditional Advent liturgies thus clearly distinguish and separately celebrate the first moment of the incarnation at the Annunciation, when the Son of God took flesh upon himself in the Virgin’s womb without seed, from its first manifestation at the Nativity, when the Son of God in the flesh came forth from the Virgin’s womb without corruption.  (p. 106)

 

The name of the Mother of God is found on almost every page of the Byzantine liturgical books.  In every sacrament and office, in the celebration of each mystery of Christ’s life, the Panagia (“All-Holy One”) is present, in and with the Church, interceding, contemplating, and adoring.  Her bearing of the Father’s consubstantial Son for nine months in her womb is indelibly imprinted on the liturgical consciousness of the East.    (p. 109)

 

In the Akathist hymn of the Byzantine rite, now an indulgence prayer for all Catholics, the Theotokos is praised as the fulfillment of all the sanctuaries of the Old Testament.

 

All who hymn thy childbearing praise thee, Mother of God, as an animate temple, for thy womb dwelt the Lord who holds thee in his hand.  He it was who sanctified thee, glorified thee, and taught all to cry out to thee:

Hail, tabernacle of God and the Word!

Hail, greater holy of holies!

Hail, Spirit-gilded ark!

Hail, treasury of unexhausted life!

 

Saward on Our Lady in Art:

One of the most ancient and best-loved icons of the Byzantine tradition, “Our Lady of Sign,” shows the Theotokos with her hands extended in prayer and with the Holy Child in her womb.  The “sign” is the Virginal Conception and Birth prophesied by Isaiah, “the fifth evangelist”:

 

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign.  Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son: and his name shall be Emmanuel.  (Isa. 7:14)

 

The Child visible in the womb is the pre-eternal God…The perpetual virginity of God’s Mother is marked by the three stars on her veil, two on her shoulder and one above her brow.  Before and in Jesus’ birth, and forever after, Mary is Virgin.  (p. 112)

 

Images of Jesus in his Mother’s womb are also found in the West.  For example, there is the relief carved by Bartolomeo Buon in the middle of the fifteenth century for the tympanum over the principal doorway of the Scuolo vecchia di Santa Maria della Misericordia in Venice.  Our Lady covers the kneeling members of the Guild of Mercy with her cloak.  The Infant Jesus, his hand raised in blessing, is enthroned within a mandorla in the center of the Virgin’s body.  In the Madonna del Parto of Piero della Francesca, painted in about 1460, the expectant Virgin stands motionless in regal dignity.  Her left hand is on her hip.  Her right points to her womb.  On either side, angels hold back heavy velvet drapes.  They veil and guard the awful mystery.  (p.  114)