Catholic Thought discussion

Chapter 3 – A Womb Wider than Heaven
From the early Church Fathers on there has been a wonder and amazement that God would condescend to become a little baby, going through the same nine months of development in the womb like any human. What makes this even more unusual is that in pagan antiquity there was a contempt for women and the bodily reality of birth was considered distasteful. Pagans may believe that simple statues are deities, but that God would subject Himself to the messiness of birth was unfathomable. “When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man,” sings the Church in the Te Deum, “thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb.”

The Theotokos as Sanctuary

Earth and heaven too narrow to serve as embracing
arms, to conceal your divinity.
The womb of the earth is too small for you, and yet
the womb of Mary is large enough for you.

St. Ephrem has a ‘locational’ Christology. He sees the divine Word taking up a series of residences, each of which, in some sense or other, is a womb: the bosom of the heavenly Father in which he is eternally begotten in his divinity, the earthly womb of the Blessed Virgin in which he is conceived and carried in his humanity, the watery womb of the Jordan in which as man he is baptized, the deathly womb of Sheol into which in his human soul he descends.

Mother of Manna

The liturgical imagery applied by the Fathers to the expectant Theotokos sometimes becomes explicitly Eucharistic. “Mary,” says St. Ephrem, “gave us the living bread instead of the bread of trouble, which Eve gave.” She carries in her womb him who is the Bread of Life, the heavenly Manna.

Nestorianism and the Unborn Christ
In the 5th century the debate over the divine and human natures of Christ was intensely explored. Nestorius took the stance of indwelling,, the man Jesus is the temple in which the divine Word dwells. This means that God is only attached to a human being, and therefore Mary cannot be the Theotokos, the Mother of God. It was chiefly St. Cyril who brought more clarity to the issue and preserved not only the full divinity of Christ but also Mary as the Theotokos.

St. Cyril and St. Proclus came to see that the temple and
dwelling-place images of Scripture, indeed all the figures of containment and enclosure, apply with greater precision to the Mother of God than to her Son. The Lord Jesus Christ is Emmanuel, God-with-us, God-made-man, God the Word personally present in the flesh. When for nine months the Virgin carries him in her womb, she is the consummate Ark and Temple of God.

Nestorianism, which removes God from Mary’s womb, was therefore declared a heresy.

Womb and Bridal Chamber

According to the Patristic understanding, the Virgin’s womb is not only a church, the shrine of divine presence; it is also a chamber, the scene of divine nuptials. “The nuptial union is between the Word and the flesh,” says St. Augustine (354–430), “and the bridal chamber of the union is the Virgin’s womb.”

…The description of the virginal womb as Christ’s “bridal chamber” is liable to misunderstanding in another way. It does not sufficiently show that the Incarnation takes place through the Blessed Virgin’s faith as well as in her flesh. She is not simply the scene of the Word’s marriage to humanity, the impersonal place in which the knot of the two natures is tied. She is actively engaged, personally involved. God does not force his Son upon mankind. Incarnation is not invasion. He wants humanity to welcome him. He wants the race of Adam to give the Word its nature freely, with a bridal love. At the Annunciation, Our Lady gives her consent on behalf of us all. “To show there is a kind of spiritual marriage between the Son of God and human nature,” says St. Thomas, “the Virgin’s consent was sought at the Annunciation in place of all human nature.” Our Lady says “I will” to the marriage as representative of mankind, indeed of all creation, and as such she is Bride. She is all at once, as St. Ephrem says, Christ’s Mother, Daughter, Sister, Handmaid, and Bride.

The Ark’s Final Transfer

When the Church begins to celebrate the falling asleep of the Mother of God, the Fathers make a direct connection between the womb that housed God and the tomb that could not hold his Mother. The reason for the bodily Assumption of Our Lady is her divine motherhood. “It is in recognizing this Virgin as Mother of God that we celebrate her Dormition.” For St. John Damascene (c. 675–749), there is a certain necessity about the glorification of the body that once contained God. It was necessary (edei) that she who had given hospitality to the divine Word in her womb should come to dwell in the tabernacles of her Son.
. . . It was necessary that she who carried her Creator as an unborn child (hôs brephos) in her womb should live in the divine tabernacles.
…As Ever-Virgin Mother, Mary reveals that with God all things are possible. The world is not a closed system of corruption. When he is born of a Virgin and rises from the dead in the flesh, the divine Word breaks the cycle of Adam’s decay. He comes to make all things new, to halt the decline into dust.

Ten Long Lunar Months
These texts show quite a departure from the pagan world in how Mary and her pregnancy are treated. They show reverence of the unborn child, womanhood, and the human body.

O noble Virgin, do you see,
As weary months of waiting end,
that your unblemished purity
Shines more lovely in motherhood?
O what great joys for the world,
Your chaste womb within it holds,
Whence comes forth the golden age
Whose light renews the face of the earth.

I don’t know who St. Anastasius of Sinai was but I have heard of his point that God did not have to incarnate as a baby but could have gone straight to a man.

St. Anastasius of Sinai (d. c. 700), who succeeded Sophronius and Maximus in the struggle against Christological heresy, observes that the omnipotent Word could have bypassed human infancy altogether and created for himself an adult human nature.

For he who had made Adam and brought him into being from non-being, without woman, womb, or birth, could have constructed an adult human nature for himself and dwelt in it and lived in this way in the world.

But he did not. The Son of God emptied himself and accepted the whole slow development of human life from conception to the last breath. He condescended to be conceived and carried in the womb, to take flesh from, to be “made from” (Gal. 4:4), a woman. A Victorian woman poet intuited the truth as swiftly as the Fathers:

No sudden thing of glory and fear
Was the Lord’s coming; but the dear
Slow Nature’s days followed each other
To form the Saviour from his Mother.

My thought here is that if we only had the Gospel of Mark, we might come to believe it to be so. To my count there are only two references to Mary in Mark. The first is when His mother and kindred show up while He is preaching:

Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you“. Jesus replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers”? And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother”. (Mk 3: 31-35).

And the second is a response from the crowd also in response to His preaching.

“Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us”? And they took offense of him” (Mk 6:3)

Mark doesn’t even have the Blessed Mother at the foot of the cross or at the tomb. So what do we make of Mark not having an infancy narrative? Does he not know of those events? He does identify a mother, but a mother is essentially by-passed. Thank God for the other Gospels, So much would have been lost if we only had Mark.

Yes. Didn't Mark write his gospel much later? Maybe he didn't find certain things to be as important. His gospel always struck me as a type of "just the facts" narrative.

Michelle wrote: "Yes. Didn't Mark write his gospel much later? Maybe he didn't find certain things to be as important. His gospel always struck me as a type of "just the facts" narrative."

Manny wrote: ".Thank God for the other Gospels, So much would have been lost if we only had Mark."

In theory, Mark was a child at the time of the crucifixion, some say he was the child who appears in the Garden of Olives when they arrest Christ, a child mentioned only in his Gospel. After, Mark was with Peter when Christians were being persecuted in Rome. So, his gospel is very much about martyrdom as a Christian vocation; more about the "Church" and the way a Christian should act, typical themes of the apostles' preaching in Rome. I think I read something about this in a book by Pope Benedict XVI, but I am not sure. Perhaps Michelle remembers it better than I do.

Michelle wrote: "Yes. Didn't Mark write his gospel much later? Maybe he didn't find certain things to be as important. His gospel always struck me as a type of "just the facts" narrative."

No actually he's regarded as the first.

Michael wrote: "n theory, Mark was a child at the time of the crucifixion, some say he was the child who appears in the Garden of Olives when they arrest Christ, a child mentioned only in his Gospel. After, Mark was with Peter when Christians were being persecuted in Rome. So, his gospel is very much about martyrdom as a Christian vocation; more about the "Church" and the way a Christian should act, typical themes of the apostles' preaching in Rome. I think I read something about this in a book by Pope Benedict XVI, but I am not sure. Perhaps Michelle remembers it better than I do.."

This is true. Mark is regarded as that child, but since he was Peter's secretary, it has been speculated that Mark got most of his Gospel from Peter. It is quite possible that Peter never knew the infancy stories, or if he did he may not have thought them as pertinent. I believe it has been speculated that Luke actually interviewed the Blessed Mother. How Matthew knew of the infancy story is more uncertain. But if you look at his version, it is much more surface historical facts than interior thought of the participants. He probably pieced that together. The only interior thought Matthew gives us is the angel who assures Joseph in a dream.

I found this lovely.

According to the Fathers, God the Word treats Mary’s womb with infinite courtesy and gentleness: he leaves it, as he enters it, without breaking its maidenly seal. It is God’s inviolable sanctuary, and, like the temple in Jerusalem, says St. Ambrose, its gate remains shut.

What is this “gate of the sanctuary,” this “outer gate towards the East” that remains closed, and “no one shall pass through it, except the God of Israel”? Is this gate not Mary, through whom the Redeemer entered into this world? This is the gate of justice. . . . This gate is Blessed Mary, of whom it is written that “the Lord will pass through it, and it shall be shut” after birth, because she conceived and gave birth as a virgin.

As the most perfect sanctuary in revelation, the Immaculate Virgin’s womb, like her heart, is consecrated forever to God, and to him alone. She conceives as a virgin, she gives birth as a virgin, and remains forever a virgin. St. Ambrose speaks for all Christendom when he asks: Would the Lord Jesus have chosen for his Mother a woman who would defile the heavenly chamber with the seed of a man, that is to say, someone incapable of preserving her virginal chastity intact?

How wonderful to call Mary’s womb “the most perfect sanctuary.” Her womb carrying Christ is a sanctuary, a sanctuary being a consecrated place and a most holy place.

The reference to God treating Mary’s womb “with infinite courtesy…without breaking its maidenly seal” is a reference to conceiving without the sexual act and birthing without breaking the hymen. For those that don’t know, the Catholic Church teaches that Mary did not birth Jesus through the vaginal canal but that He passed through her body in the way that the resurrected Jesus passes through walls. Remember in Genesis after the eating of the fruit, God says to Eve, “I will intensify your toil in childbearing; in pain* you shall bring forth children” (Gen 3:16). But Mary delivers Jesus, the “uncorrupted-by-sin” man and woman God originally intended to bear children in the way it was originally intended before the Fall.

Manny wrote: "No actually he's regarded as the first."

I don't know why I thought he was the last. Thank you for the correction, Manny!

In addition to the passages you highlighted, this one was short but profound:

". . . hail, thou who hast contained in thy holy virginal womb him who cannot be contained." (St. Cyril)

And a few pages later, the link between our Blessed Mother's womb and her assumption:

"When the Church begins to celebrate the falling asleep of the Mother of God, the Fathers make a direct connection between the womb that housed God and the tomb that could not hold his Mother. The reason for the bodily Assumption of Our Lady is her divine motherhood."

"Through his Virginal Conception, God the Son becomes “one body” (syssômos) with his Mother; indeed, for nine months, like every other baby, his body is literally within hers. It is only right, therefore, that she should be “one body” with him in glory."

St. John Damascene agrees with the above, writing:

“It was necessary [says Damascene] that she who in giving birth had preserved her virginity intact should keep her body without corruption, even after death.”

Manny wrote: "No actually he's regarded as the first."

Ah, thank you for that, Manny! I thought it was Matthew the first Gospel.

Thanks Michelle and Manny, you both highlight very deep and high passages. I'll share it with my wife, she'll be happy :-)

Chapter 4: Perfection from Conception: The Middle Ages

The Middle Ages had a deep fascination with Jesus in Mary’s womb. “The new religious foundations of the Middle Ages—first the Cistercians, later the Franciscans—excelled in devotion to the humanity of Christ and to the mysteries of his life on earth, not least its very first months.” They pondered on the two distinct natures of Christ and how he developed in the womb, the one not diminishing the other.

From the very moment the Word was made flesh, the Lord Jesus carried his cross. From that moment he was truly a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. We believe the evangelist signified this when he said that “the Word was made flesh.” By “flesh” he meant the capacity of the flesh to suffer and to suffer with. For what in all creation is more fragile than flesh, more delicate than flesh? Fragility, therefore, corresponds to Passion, suffering; delicacy to Com-passion, suffering-with. From these two, as from two planks, Christ’s cross is constructed. For to suffer and to suffer with, as St. Gregory says, is Christ’s true cross, namely, affliction of body and compassion of mind, provided such a cross is borne for Christ and following Christ. Christ carried this kind of cross from his entry into his Mother’s womb. He endured the confines of the virginal womb.

The Franciscans

Devotion to the infancy of Christ, including his first nine months of life, is one of the pillars of Franciscan spirituality. […] Of the Virgin’s womb, he says it is a temple made by the Father’s power, adorned by the wisdom of the Son, dedicated by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and filled by the presence of the Word made flesh to be his “special temple and hospice.”

St.Thomas Aquinas

…the monastic theologians of the twelfth century, following the Fathers, readily attributed the fullness of the grace of the Holy Spirit to the soul of Christ from his conception. […] The embryonic Christ is holy, the holy of holies, and at the same time he is hallowing; his grace is intended to overflow to others. The personal grace by which Christ’s soul is sanctified is really identical with the grace that makes him Head of the Church, sanctifying others. […] The loving knowledge with which the divine Redeemer has pursued us from the first moment of his Incarnation surpasses all the powers of the human mind; for by means of the beatific vision, which he enjoyed from the time he was received into the womb of the Mother of God, he has forever and continuously had present to him all the members of his Mystical Body and embraced them with his saving love.

Some modern theologians cannot handle these writings. The abilities attributed to the infant Christ do not coincide with human development in the womb and early childhood. What modern man fails to see is the ability of the child to perceive God uninhibited.

In every little one of the human family there are hidden spiritual depths to which modern Western culture, materialistic and mechanistic, contra-life and contra-child, blinds the eyes of the mind. If God-made-man is true and perfect man, we should expect there to be capacities realized in his childhood that in us remain mostly dormant.

Mother of the Eucharist

The same body of Christ that the most blessed Virgin brought forth, which she nourished in her womb, wrapped in swaddling clothes and brought up with motherly care: this same body, I say, and none other, we now perceive without any doubt on the sacred altar.

If you believe that flesh to have been created from the Virgin MaMary in the womb without seed by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that the Word became flesh, truly believe that this body taken from the Virgin is confected [in the Eucharist] by the word of Christ and through the Holy Spirit.

You, Mary, are Mother of the Eucharist, because you are Mother of Grace. . . . If, with your mercy and help, we receive your Son in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, he will surely receive us and incorporate us into his Mystical Body.

Kerstin, I just noticed. You got the title of Chapter 4 wrong. It's not "Perfection from Perfection" but "Perfection from Concepcion."

Typos can be so funny...lol

The contrast of the nature of Christ’s intellect of St. Bernard of Clairvaux with that of the scholastics is interesting. St. Bernard postulates:

Even while he was still unborn, Jesus was a man, not in age, but in wisdom, in vigor of mind, not of body, in the maturity of his mental powers, not in the development of his members. For Jesus was not less wise, or rather I should say was not less Wisdom, at his conception than after his birth, when he was a little one than when he was full-grown. Whether he was lying hidden in the womb or wailing in the manger, whether as a growing lad questioning the doctors in the Temple or as a man of mature age teaching among the people, he was in truth equally full of the Holy Spirit.

Here he is postulating that Jesus had the wisdom, and, therefore, mind of a grown man even while a fetus in the womb. I think St. Bernard failed to realize—at least in this passage; Saward goes on to say Bernard elsewhere acknowledged Christ’s human nature—that though Christ has a God side to His nature, he also has a developing human nature.

If this monastic theology has a shortcoming, it is its failure to state explicitly what Scholastic theology will later explain: there can be growth at one level of Christ’s human knowledge and an abiding fullness at another. In the century after St. Bernard, St. Thomas Aquinas will confess that he himself “advanced in wisdom” on the subject of Christ’s “advance in wisdom” and came eventually to attribute a real acquired (experimental) knowledge to Christ.

I have always found this hard to keep straight myself. Christ as one person had one mind but He has two natures, a human nature and a divine nature. As one person, He has one brain but that brain develops as a human develops and so has the knowledge of comparable human at a given age, but that one brain has a divine nature and functions as the omniscient knowledge of God. I hope I got that right. Someone correct me if I didn’t.

I think that's what was meant, although I somehow left this section with the impression that although omniscient, He chose to bring the human nature to the forefront. He could access His divine nature at will, but wanted to live fully as a human, even while in His mother's womb.

Now someone please also correct me if I got that wrong!

Michelle wrote: "Now someone please also correct me if I got that wrong!
"

LOL, I think we're saying the same thing. :)

Girls, this is all a bit difficult for me, but thanks so much. Your comments are very important to me both in understanding the book better and in thinking about my faith.

The one thing I found interesting in the scholastic section was St. Thomas Aquinas’ notion that the fetus Jesus was able to see the beatific vision in the womb despite His human development not being sufficient.

Some modern theologians are embarrassed by this view of Christ’s prenatal perfections. They imagine it makes his humanity, if not unreal, at least incredible. Psychology, they argue, has shown that mental development from infancy to adulthood is intrinsic to human life, so that a child already free, already in the bliss of man’s final destiny, would hardly seem to count as a child. He would be a sad infant prodigy, robbed of his childhood. In my opinion, however, St. Thomas’ doctrine of Christ’s “perfections from conception” has much to teach us. It affirms truths about infancy and thus the unborn Infant God to which modern minds have grown oblivious.

To the criticisms of recent writers, St. Thomas would answer that whatever graced the unborn Christ Child perfected, but did not destroy, his real unborn human childhood. He quotes St. Leo the Great with approval: apart from the virginal manner of his conception and birth, the Child Jesus is “in no way dissimilar to the generality of human infancy.” The marvels of the extraordinary ‘beatific knowledge’ at his soul’s summit (superior pars animae) do not rob its lower slopes of their precious ordinariness. The Child Jesus is both “pilgrim” and “beholder.” He sees the Father in a childlike way. The One whom he sees and the sublime act of his human intellect by which he sees him are unchanging, but how that seeing bears upon the rest of his human experience depends on the stage of life in which he finds himself. Likewise, the knowledge “infused” by the Holy Spirit into his “possible” (receptive) intellect does not interfere with the normal process of growth in knowledge through the operation of his “agent” intellect. St. Thomas’ doctrine of Christ’s human knowledge does not lead to the ridiculous conclusion that, in his Mother’s womb, the Holy Child “was thinking about the theorems of hydrodynamics and the Battle of Hastings.” The infused knowledge is habitual, not actual: it is a store on which our Lord can draw when he has the need, not an instrument he is perpetually exercising.34 In the womb, he is not engaged in the adult business of thinking at all. He is doing something much more important: in the earthly paradise of his Mother’s body, he is resting and seeing, loving and praising, God his heavenly Father.

So what did Jesus think about in the womb? According to Aquinas He was contemplating the Father “in a childlike way, “infused” by the Holy Spirit. But it does not interfere with His human development! How? I cannot conceptualize it…lol.

Manny wrote: "The one thing I found interesting in the scholastic section was St. Thomas Aquinas’ notion that the fetus Jesus was able to see the beatific vision in the womb despite His human development not bei..."

I had difficulties with this part as well. It is hard enough to conceptualize the hypostatic union for the adult Jesus.

Kerstin wrote: ".I had difficulties with this part as well. It is hard enough to conceptualize the hypostatic union for the adult Jesus."

Yes!

I don't feel as stupid now. We all had trouble here 😀

Manny wrote: "So what did Jesus think about in the womb?"

A stunning question. What did Jesus think about? Not only in the womb, but always, in his days. While working, while walking, while observing others, or his Mother. I'd never thought 'bout this and had missed this point in reading the book. I'll prob be thinking about it all day.

Michelle wrote: "I don't feel as stupid now. We all had trouble here 😀"

It's a tough book. The more you all talk about it, the more I realize I don't really get it. I'll def read it again :-P

Michael wrote: "Manny wrote: "So what did Jesus think about in the womb?"

A stunning question. What did Jesus think about? Not only in the womb, but always, in his days. While working, while walking, while observing others, or his Mother. I'd never thought 'bout this and had missed this point in reading the book. I'll prob be thinking about it all day.."

You know, when I wrote that I didn't realize the profundity of the question. And your exapnsion of the thought is even more profound. I can't even imagine how to answer it.

Michael wrote: "Manny wrote: "So what did Jesus think about in the womb?"

A stunning question. What did Jesus think about? Not only in the womb, but always, in his days. While working, while walking, while observ..."

These thoughts are superb, Michael. You just gave me more to think about, in a good way.

Michelle wrote: "These thoughts are superb, Michael. You just gave me more to think about, in a good way."

Manny wrote: "You know, when I wrote that I didn't realize the profundity of the question."

This whole group inspires beautiful thoughts. I'm very grateful to be here.

I am glad you're here with us Michael!