The First Christmas: Our Lady’s Perspective
By JOHN YOUNG
When the angel Gabriel appeared to Our Lady at the Annunciation and delivered his startling message, it must have taken her some time to adjust to its implications. She who had intended to remain a virgin was told that she would bear a Son, and that He would be Divine!
She was married to St. Joseph, but the implication is that they did not intend to have sexual relations. Otherwise her words to the angel when told she would have a Son, “I know not man,” would hardly make sense.
They were not engaged; they were already married. There were two stages in a Jewish marriage, with the bride moving into the husband’s home after the second stage. Had they not been married Joseph could not have considered a divorce, since divorce presupposes marriage.
Did she know from the first that her Son was God? She had the words of the angel Gabriel: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the Child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Luke 1:35).
With the outstanding gifts of grace and knowledge given to her, the holiest of creatures, and the fittingness of knowing who her Son was, we can conclude that she knew she was giving birth to God made man. So she would have adored him as God, even before His birth.
Thoroughly familiar as she was with the Old Testament, with the unique insight given by her unique holiness, her mind penetrated the Sacred Writings more deeply than even the best scholars, and she read there the prophecies about her Son. There must have been joy for her in that reading, but also sadness, because the prophecies show the coming Messiah not only as a great King but also as a Man of Sorrows.
This was confirmed for her later in the Temple when Simeon predicted that a sword of sorrow would pierce her soul.
She and Joseph saw the coming fulfillment of one prophecy when they found they had to leave Nazareth and journey to Bethlehem for the Roman census. Otherwise Jesus would have been born in Nazareth. But Old Testament prophecy had revealed that the Messiah, the Son of David, would be born in David’s town of Bethlehem.
The Jewish scribes knew this prophecy and repeated it to King Herod when he inquired from them where the Messiah would be born. With that information, after he had been frustrated by the Magi not returning to him, he set about slaughtering the Holy Innocents.
Mary and Joseph were saddened when they had to resort to a stable for the birth of Jesus, but perhaps they were not altogether surprised: not only because of overcrowding due to the census but because of their awareness of the prophecies that predicted a suffering and lowly Messiah.
For example Isaiah 53:5: “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our inequities; upon Him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with His stripes we are healed.”
In her Magnificat, spoken when she visited Elizabeth, Mary proclaimed that God has “. . . Put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away” (Luke 1:52, 53).
After the Savior’s birth the rich and powerful were not invited: only the poor shepherds, who were a group despised by the priests and Pharisees. Later came the Magi who presumably were reasonably wealthy, judging by the gifts they brought.
They were not kings, although sometimes represented as such, but were something between astrologers and astronomers. Frank Sheed remarks that scholars might believe Herod when he told them he wanted to go and worship the new king, but kings would not have believed him!
Although their visit is commemorated at Christmas it must have occurred at least several weeks after Jesus’ birth because Herod would have wasted no time in slaughtering the Holy Innocents when the Magi did not return to him; but the Holy Family were in Jerusalem for the Presentation in the Temple 40 days after His birth. So it was after the Presentation that the angel warned Joseph about Herod, and told him the Holy Family must depart into Egypt.
Mary pondered these things in her heart, as St. Luke tells us, and their meaning would have become clearer to her with the passing of the years and the growing of her Divine Son to manhood.
