Pray for us sinners

[ 8 ] December 9, 2011 AD |

Last time I wrote here at Ignitum Today, I shared with you that I am expecting a new baby this spring and that I was experiencing the dreaded symptoms of hyperemesis gravidarum. I was about 10 weeks pregnant at that point and in the throes of nasty all-day nausea and fatigue. Thankfully I am now 18 weeks into this pregnancy and the sickness is finally starting to lift. As long as I am careful when brushing my teeth, I usually won’t spontaneously throw-up any longer. Thank you Jesus!

As I’ve been coming out of the nausea and sickness this past week, I can’t help but look back at myself these past few months and take note of how I have handled the situation.  I wish I could say that I accepted this challenge with the grace and dignity of someone fully in communion with the Will of the Father.  I wish I was able to say that I did not complain about the discomforts or make my husband miserable every evening with my daily account of my trials.  I wish I could have focused completely on the fact that this child growing within me is a child of God and that I am fulfilling His will with my “yes” each day.

In other words, I wish I were more like Mary.

This year for the first time ever, I prayed the Immaculate Conception Novena in preparation for yesterday’s Feast Day. (I used a great website called PrayMoreNovenas.com to help me remember to say the prayers. Check them out, they’re great.) As I went through the prayers each day I felt myself growing closer to our Blessed Mother and coming to know her as not only the Mother of God, but as a fellow mother who experienced pregnancy and birth and the trials of motherhood. Sure her Child was God and infinitely perfect and her labor and delivery has been described by theologians as “light passing through glass” , but nonetheless she was a mother, like me.

I have been thinking more and more about how she would have been pregnant at a time with few household conveniences or comforts. The bubble baths I like to take to relieve lower back pain and the Zofran to relieve nausea were not options for her. Even though her delivery has been long believed to be pain-free due to her lack of original sin, her pregnancy would have been completely human. She likely would not have been spared the trials of swollen ankles, Braxton Hicks, hiccups, heartburn, and rushing to the bathroom three times a night.  Just as Jesus experienced all the pains of the Crucifixion, Mary would have experienced all the discomforts of pregnancy.

Now this is where I’ve been feeling sheepish for my actions these past few months. Yes, my circumstances have been difficult. But did they really warrant my selfishness and complaints? Did I ever fear my husband would leave me, or that I might be stoned to death for this pregnancy? Did I ever have to report for a census riding a donkey across the countryside?  No, my God has graciously supplied all that I need to trust in His goodness and love for me. I have no reason to bemoan my beautiful crosses. I cannot imagine that Mary would have complained about hers.

I have been really bad at giving up my body for the greater glory of God. I’ve struggled to keep my eye on the bigger picture of spiritual growth through adversity and trial. So it is with great confidence that I humbly beg Mary, who also experienced the trials of pregnancy and understands my temptations at this time, to pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

 

[author] [author_image timthumb='on']http://www.ignitumtoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Leah-Jacobson-e1318950563716.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Leah Jacobson is passionate about John Paul II’s “New Feminism” and teaching women about the amazing dignity and worth of their bodies. She founded the Guiding Star Women’s Center in 2009, a non-profit focused on uniting the pro-life movement in Duluth, MN, and coordinates a national effort called The Guiding Star Project whose vision is to create a Culture of Life by creating greater unity and collaboration of pro-life groups. As a homeschooling mother of four (soon to be five!) young children, and a lactation consulting graduate student, she feels she understands better than most the pressures and stresses facing women and families in our current culture.[/author_info] [/author]

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Category: Married Life, Mary, Uncategorized

About the Author ()

Leah Jacobson, foundress of The Guiding Star Project, is dedicated to creating a Culture of Life through the implementation of Guiding Star Centers nationwide. These centers will promote New Feminism and Natural Law and are the next stage for the pro-women and pro-life movements to collaborate in a holistic, comprehensive approach.
  • http://www.catholicland.blogspot.com SWP

    Pain in childbirth is one of the explicitly stated consequences of Original Sin. Being immaculately conceived, Mary would have been free from original sin and therefore unlikely to have experienced any pains that you or my wife have described. Christ on his Cross would have experienced such pains, but not Mary.

    Mary, as the New Eve, would have experienced pregnancy and childbirth as God intended it for Eve, but as a result of Eve’s disobedience is not how women experience it today.

    I know that takes the wind out of your sails, that you would like to think of Mary as feeling your pain, but it would be more appropriate to see Mary as sharing in your pain in the same way she did as she watched her Son groan in his agony, also a result of our sins. It’s not a pain she KNEW, though it was one she would have acutely felt in compassion.

  • Leah Jacobson

    SWP, I appreciate your comment so much. My husband and I have been debating these very points over pillow-talk the last few nights too. It’s all such a strange concept when you really delve into it and think it through.

    It is not so much that I need to believe Mary experienced the pains of pregnancy like I do, but that she certainly would not have been exempt from the physical conditions of pregnancy. Physiologically her body would have gone through all the same changes mine and all pregnant women go through. Whether she experienced these changes the way I do, as painful and annoying, is really where my mind has been wandering. Mary, being completely in communion with God’s will and free from the burdens of original sin would not have experienced these discomforts at all in the same way I do. She would not have had to choose not to complain, it wouldn’t have even bothered her because it was all part of God’s will for her, and she had already given herself completely over to His Divine Will.

    So I’ll repeat it here, I wish I were more like Mary. More fully in line with God’s will for my life and my body and not tempted to complain about the conditions that come with it.

  • http://www.catholicland.blogspot.com SWP

    I had a really great pillow-talk conversation with my wife about this too!

    After I posted my comment, I asked her about it, since she was awake to go potty. She said pretty much the same thing you did-

    that, yes, Mary did not experience it in the same way, because no woman has experienced it like she did, but that-

    She must have had something in it to offer up to the Lord, because that’s how God relates with us, and Mary would have been different, as one of us.

    It led to a fascinating discussion and I thank you for the provocation. I really wish my wife would post her thoughts in reply, but she’s the one working all day while I stay at home with our daughter, so blogging is not high on her priority list. Suffice it to say, I am so much more in love with her now than I have ever been.

  • http://www.catholicland.blogspot.com SWP

    oops- I meant to type, “and Mary would have been no different”

  • http://thepulp.it/ Tito Edwards

    SWP,

    Why not add a Gravatar?

    Go here.

  • http://www.catholicland.blogspot.com SWP

    Because it requires that I assign a username/password for ONE MORE THING, which I don’t need more of in my life.

  • http://www.catholicland.blogspot.com SWP

    @Leah–

    Here’s the URL for a really thorough article on the subject aforementioned:

    http://newtheologicalmovement.blogspot.com/2011/12/what-was-it-like-to-be-pregnant-with.html

    The author seems a little quick to pronounce anathemas, but he raises some excellent points for consideration. I prefer the response of you and my wife who have actually borne a child: Mary must have experienced discomfort, but that does not mean she experienced pain, and she would have borne the discomforts gracefully, so as to offer them up to the Lord. That’s something we can all do better, not just pregnant women!

  • http://www.catholicland.blogspot.com SWP

    http://cantuar.blogspot.com/2010/12/marys-painless-delivery-of-christ.html
    http://newtheologicalmovement.blogspot.com/2011/12/birth-of-jesus-revealed-to-st-bridget.html
    http://cantuar.blogspot.com/2011/12/merry-christmas-gift-to-you-from.html

    I’m not certain how I feel about these assertions. far be it from me to contradict the Patristic scholars, but they do seem overwrought with pietistic sentimentality. I’m inclined to be a little more realistic about the nature of Christ’s humanity and these reflections seem to weigh too heavily towards the divine side of Jesus.

    Is placenta a consequence of original sin? Is it necessary to assert that Mary’s hymen remained intact in order to assent to the dogma of perpetual virginity? What portion of Christ was biological function and what part was without sin? To what extent is our biological nature and bodily processes corrupted by sin and to what extent is it created precisely as God intended? The idea that Mary did not have to push at all seems…implausible, but I am no denier of her perpetual virginity. I don’t believe a rupture hymen is a real indicator. A teenage girl could stretch a muscle and rupture her hymen and it would have nothing to do with penetration. That fixation seems terribly antiquated and unnecessary to faithful assent.

    Yet- who am I to snub my nose at St. Thomas Aquinas?

    What does the Theology of the Body have to say about these platitudes? haven’t we outgrown some of these musings, and to what extent are they unimpeachably dogmatic?

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