The Blessed Virgin Mary isn’t the only person who was called to give birth to Jesus. We are all called to give birth to Jesus. Not physically, of course. Mary is unique in that respect, as in so many others. But we are all called to give birth to Jesus spiritually in our hearts, in our minds, and in our lives. The physical birth of Jesus into the world was a one-time occurrence; the spiritual birth of Jesus into the world is an ongoing event—one that is intended to continue until he comes again, and one to which each of us is invited to contribute. By “giving birth” to Jesus, we help to bring his loving presence to every time and place throughout the world until he returns in glory.
This concept of “giving birth to Jesus” goes all the way back to the earliest centuries of the Church. St. Irenaeus spoke of the Word of God allowing himself to be “carried” by man, and of man “making room” for the Word within himself. St. Hippolytus described the Logos as constantly giving birth to the saints and allowing the saints, in turn, to give birth to him. Hippolytus emphasized the central role that the Church plays in this process: The Church as a whole strives to give birth to the Word of God in the world, and the Church enables her individual members to do the same. Similarly, St. Methodius portrayed the Church as being “with child” and as giving birth to the mystical Body of Christ.
St. Augustine discusses the theme of giving birth to Jesus in a sermon (Sermon 25, 7–8) that focused on Matt. 12:46–50, a passage which serves as one of the main scriptural foundations for this concept. In that passage, Jesus is speaking to a crowd, and someone informs him that “his mother and his brethren” are outside, asking to speak to him. Jesus replies by asking, “Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?” He then points to his disciples and says, “Here are my mother and my brethren! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” Augustine points out that all of us who have been baptized became brothers and sisters of Christ by virtue of that baptism, and he asserts that we become Jesus’ “mother” in at least two ways: by doing the will of God the Father, as Jesus emphasizes in this passage, and by expanding the Body of Christ by drawing other people to seek out baptism and membership in the Church:
Now you in your turn must draw to the font of baptism as many as you possibly can. You became sons when you were born there yourselves, and now by bringing others to birth in the same way, you have it in your power to become the mothers of Christ.
More than four centuries ago, St. Teresa of Avila wrote the poem “Christ Has No Body,” which eloquently describes our call to give birth to Jesus and incarnate him in our world:
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
God entrusts each of us with the undeserved privilege—and the rather daunting responsibility—of incarnating Jesus Christ in our contemporary world by doing the Father’s will (which is always love) and by allowing the Holy Spirit to transform us more and more into the image of the Son (Rom. 8:29).
Incarnating Christ requires that we die to self so that Christ might live in us as fully as possible.
The poet Charles Péguy expressed the magnitude of this responsibility and the depth of the trust that God has placed in us in this regard in stark terms in his 1911 work The Portico of the Mystery of the Second Virtue:
Fortune, mystery, danger, wretchedness, divine grace, a unique call,
A terrible responsibility, the misery and nobility of our life,
Ephemeral creatures that we are . . .
Fragile, it depends on us whether the eternal Voice will resound or lapse into silence.
St. Paul gives us some concrete guidance regarding ways in which we can incarnate Jesus in our lives—ways in which we can help ensure that the “eternal Voice” continues to resound in our world today and in the future. Prayer is always a good place to start. In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul emphasizes the transformative power of time spent contemplating the life of Christ and the “glory of the Lord”: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18, emphasis added).
In several of his letters, Paul exhorts us to allow the Lord to transform our minds and grant us “new knowledge,” knowledge that will help us to put on the “mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16; see Phil. 2:5). He reminds the Colossians (and us as well), “You have put off the old man with his practices and have put on the new man, who is being renewed in knowledge after the image of his creator” (Col. 3:9–10). And he gives the following encouragement to the Romans of his time and to us: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:2). This transformation of our minds (and hearts) will enable us to “speak the truth in love,” which further helps us to grow into the image of Christ (Eph. 4:15).
But at the most fundamental level, incarnating Christ requires that we die to self so that Christ might live in us as fully as possible: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:19–20).
If we strive to do such things as these, we will have done our part in giving birth to Jesus in today’s troubled world, as Hans Urs von Balthasar reassures us:
We too will be capable of a suprahuman generation and birth that can make us, as Jesus says, his “mothers”. We can plant God’s life in this world and make it grow; we can make God’s kingdom come and cause his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven; we can cause his Name to be glorified in this godless and blasphemous world, despite all aggressive atheism. . . . Our bearing of God need not worry us at all: if we live by faith we shall surely bring forth our fruit.
