By Michael Pakaluk
Let us begin with the “O Antiphons.” There are seven of them and they conclude on December 23. Then, with Christmas Eve and Christmas, they add up to nine—a novena—which is a period of waiting, equal in number to the months of pregnancy.
Thus, the preparation for Christmas is like a preparation for birth.
It is very good to discourse on the O Antiphons, but to hear them in situ it is necessary to go to Mass during those seven days, or to pray Vespers. If it is the former, and we receive Holy Communion, we repeatedly express our hope of receiving the Lord precisely by receiving the Lord.
If it is the latter, we join Mary in celebrating the child growing in her womb, as she herself does in her Magnificat.
Moreover, since we are not Pelagians, and if we are sober and convinced that by our own efforts we are incapable of engendering anything divine in ourselves, we will also believe that the graces obtained by attending Mass on those days, or by praying Vespers, will transform us to make us more receptive to welcoming the Child.
Then, everything in Christmas tears down the barrier between the born and the unborn. Let us take up the O Antiphons again. It is well known that their initials form an acrostic (Sapientia, Rex, etc.) that, read backwards, says ero cras. It is usually said that this means in Latin “tomorrow I will come,” as if it were “I come into the world.”
It is not so: it means “tomorrow I will be.”
But (you say) He already is: before Abraham existed, He is (John 8:58). Indeed, and therefore it must mean “I will be for you,” that is, I will make myself visible to you, as, for example, to the shepherds. In other words, from the maternal womb He is saying that tomorrow you will see me, I who now am invisible.
The statements about His life made by Zechariah in the Benedictus, perhaps even in the presence of the Lord (if Mary remained for the circumcision), are all in the past—for example, “He has visited His people.” It is true that this priest employs the so-called “prophetic past,” to refer to something so certain in the future that it must be expressed with the necessity of the past. But at the same time, he is referring to what that two-week-old embryo has already done.
And furthermore, Catholics hold that Mary did not go through labor pains, and that there was no alteration of the birth canal or of her virginal integrity, so that the Child manifested Himself to us by passing through her body as later the Lord would pass through walls.
I do not think anyone has ever claimed that someone passes from being a “clump of cells” to being human by walking into a room. Nothing could show more clearly the continuity and identity between the born and the unborn.
But Christmas also tears down other justifications for abortion. “Every child, a wanted child?” (Please take what I am about to write with due reverence). Jesus was not a “wanted child” by Mary. This is certain. She believed she would remain a virgin. When the angel greeted her, “she was troubled at his word, and kept pondering what manner of greeting this might be” (Luke 1:29, Douay-Rheims).
She asks, famously: “How shall this be done?” She did not say: “I have been planning to have a child,” nor “How providential that you arrive just when Joseph and I thought we could afford a child!” But, yes, immediately the Child becomes “wanted”: “Be it done to me according to thy word.” She renounces any “autonomy” she might have claimed.
We often hear: “Who are you or who am I to tell a woman she must accept all the burdens of raising a child?” What burdens here, in this case? Moving from Nazareth to Bethlehem. From Bethlehem to Egypt. Moving back to return to Nazareth. Starting over.
Later, wandering through Judea. Suffering the adulation of the crowd and then hostility in Jerusalem. And, of course, the Cross. We dismiss most of these things—as is natural—, just as any mother of an adult son dismisses the sufferings she endured to raise him.
The most evident fact of Christmas is that we all receive as our own a Child who is not ours. I did not beget Him. You did not give birth to Him. And yet, if a Baby Jesus in a crèche came miraculously to life and asked to be taken in our arms—as has happened to the saints—you and I would not hesitate to welcome Him, rock Him, and even dance with Him around the room, as those saints did.
But then, what does this mean? That each one sets up a crèche in his house, and yet, if the Baby Jesus Himself appeared, we would not receive Him or raise Him, if we could? It would be our joy to spend as much time with Him as to raise Him!
But let us think then: that child conceived after that party, when the mother and father, two college students (the same age as Mary and Joseph), were completely drunk. He is the Christ Child, present. Ero. That “mistake” from an adulterous relationship? The Christ Child. Ero. The mother whose boyfriend acted as if he were going to marry her, but abandoned her? The Christ Child, once again, saying “Ero”.
“But the child of that relationship obviously would not be the husband’s, because his skin is a different color!” Who has ever walked away from a crèche in disgust because the Baby’s skin did not match his own?
And then, as a warning, and to teach us in advance the meaning of our own actions, Herod, in his fury against God’s sovereignty, massacres the innocents.
Let us leave aside, then, all mere Christmas representation and truly receive “the least of His brethren”, because what we do for the unborn child, we do for the Christ Child.
About the author
Michael Pakaluk, specialist in Aristotle and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is Professor of Political Economy at the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, MD, with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their children. His collection of essays, The Shock of Holiness (Ignatius Press), is now available. His book on Christian friendship, The Company We Keep, is available from Scepter Press. He contributed to Natural Law: Five Views, published by Zondervan last May, and his most recent book on the Gospel came out with Regnery Gateway in March, Be Good Bankers: The Economic Interpretation of Matthew’s Gospel. You can follow him on Substack at Michael Pakaluk.