I’m sailing into treacherous waters this morning; I’m acutely aware that I stand before you as a male, daring to speak about pregnancy. I’m going to do my best not to lapse into mansplaining – if I don’t succeed, I hope you’ll go easy on me.
I think many
of you know that my wife Therese and I are parents; we have four wonderful
children. So I’ve observed a number of
pregnancies up close, but I suppose you could say that my experience of
pregnancy – at least after my mother gave birth to me – has all been
second-hand.
So in view
of today’s Gospel reading, of this meeting of two expecting women, I asked an
expert – I asked my wife Therese. First,
I asked her, Is there a spiritual aspect to pregnancy? She said, Yes, there is. And she went on to explain that the
closeness, the intimacy, of having a living being, who is also your own child, inside
you, can be intensely spiritual. She
told me that when a child is developing inside you, you’re so united with the
baby that in many ways the two of you are a single organism; and the expecting mom
is always aware of this mystery. Therese
sees powerful spiritual imagery in that, and when she described it to me, I think
I can see it, too. As close as an
expecting mother is to the baby within her – that’s how close God desires us to
draw to him. Just as an infant in the
womb is always with his or her mom, God desires us to be with him always, too.
I also asked
Therese, is pregnancy a joyful experience?
I know already, just from being a husband and walking this road with my
wife more than once, that a pregnancy can be a painful experience. I know it can be stressful. I know it can be a time of anxiety. Can it
also be a time of joy? She told me, “Of
course it’s joyful!” The experience of having
your own child grow and develop within you, and the looking-forward to having
the child join the family – these have been sources of joy for her.
That same joy
and that same spirituality come bursting through in today’s Gospel
passage. Elizabeth feels her baby leap
in the womb at the sound of Mary’s voice, and inspired by the Holy Spirit, she
interprets it as a revelation of God’s goodness and blessings. Amid all the difficulties and anxieties and
frightening possibilities, these two expecting moms meet in joy and praise.
It’s often
remarked that in our culture, Advent tends to get washed away in the tidal wave
of secular Christmas commercialization. Perhaps
Elizabeth’s and Mary’s pregnancies can be an antidote to that tendency. Pregnancy is such a potent symbol of what
Advent is all about. Advent is about expecting
and preparing.
I could wish
that all of us, even the men here today, could be pregnant like Elizabeth and
Mary – could be aware of God at work inside us, preparing us for life with
him. I wish we could be pregnant with joy
in the realization that God is so good to us, and pregnant with the hope of
what God is yet to do in our lives. If
we’re good pregnant parents, then we’ll attend to the changes happening inside
us. The idea that God is working to
change us, to transform us - perhaps we’ll be a little scared of what is
happening to us, and what it can mean for our lives. We may think we’re too old like Elizabeth, or
too young like Mary, or just not ready for change to come upon us. And so let us be courageous in our Advent
pregnancies, as brave as Elizabeth and Mary, in not only accepting but
embracing the blessing of what God has done and is doing to us; and like them,
let us look forward, with hope and joy, to a future in which God’s plans for us
come to fruition.
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