"You humbly chose the Virgin's womb"
It’s always a good time to meditate on the Incarnation, but today—Christmas Day, when I’ve scheduled this newsletter to post—is an especially fitting moment for it. Lately I’ve had a line from the historic Christian hymn known as the Te Deum swirling in my mind:
When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man : thou didst not abhor the Virgin's womb.
or, as a newer translation puts it:
When you took our flesh to set us free you humbly chose the Virgin's womb.
What a marvel-ous thing that Jesus chose as his first earthly residence a woman’s womb; that he received the hospitality and care of her body1; and that he entered the world through her birth canal. As Amy Peeler writes in Women and the Gender of God2:
In the incarnation, God has deemed the female body—the impure, bleeding female body—worthy to handle the most sacred of all things, the very body of God. … Those who find themselves either by choice or necessity bearing the mundane tasks of pregnancy, nursing, and childcare can know that God did not demand that women deny these unique bodily realities, but instead, in midst of their ritual impurity and physical messiness, God came to them. Instead of demanding they separate from their female embodiment to approach the holy, God’s holiness came to them in the midst of their female embodiment. God had said of the female body at creation that it was good. God said so again in the incarnation, good enough for the residence and handling of God.
Our Lord thus honors the literally visceral experiences of early motherhood and sets the tone for his ministry, not only to the spiritual need of his people, but also, with great attentiveness and care, to their physical selves. Truly we praise you, O God!
H/T Aimee Byrd, who also wrote recently on similar themes, for sharing the first part of this quote on Twitter.