Our priest said that Our Lady did not suffer the normal labour pain when she gave birth to Jesus in Bethlehem, but that she did suffer great pain when the church was born at Calvary. I didn’t quite understand this. Can you please explain?
I wrote in my book Question Time 4, question 475, that a scriptural passage which speaks about a woman giving birth without pain is in the prophecy of Isaiah: “Listen, an uproar from the city! A voice from the temple! The voice of the Lord, rendering recompense to his enemies! Before she was in labour she gave birth; before her pain came upon her she was delivered of a son. Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things?” (Is 66:6-8). Among the Fathers of the Church who applied this text to Our Lady are St Irenaeus, St Gregory of Nyssa, and St John Damascene.
Later, the Roman Catechism issued after the Council of Trent taught: “To Eve it was said: In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children. Mary was exempt from this law, for preserving her virginal integrity inviolate she brought forth Jesus … without experiencing, as we have already said, any sense of pain” (1, Art. III, 45-46).
If Mary did not suffer pain in giving birth to Jesus in Bethlehem, she did suffer great pain at Calvary, when the church was born. Scripture scholars have applied a text in the book of Revelation to this pain: “And a great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and cried out in the pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery… [She] “brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne…” (Rev 12:1-2, 5).
One of the reasons for applying this text to the birth of the church at Calvary, rather than to Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, is that the Greek word for “anguish” (basanizō) is not used for the pains of childbirth anywhere else in the Greek Septuagint Bible or in the writings of the Fathers. What is more, the fact that the new-born child was immediately “caught up to God and to his throne” is not applicable to Jesus’ birth, since he lived for thirty-three years before ascending to heaven. It does make sense when applied to Christ’s death on the cross and his ascension to heaven soon after.
At Calvary, Mary suffered great pain, accompanying Jesus in giving birth to the church. The Catechism teaches: “The church is born primarily of Christ’s total self-giving for our salvation, anticipated in the institution of the Eucharist and fulfilled on the cross. The origin and growth of the church are symbolised by the blood and water which flowed from the open side of the crucified Jesus. For it was from the side of Christ as he slept the sleep of death upon the cross that there came forth the “wondrous sacrament of the whole church. As Eve was formed from the sleeping Adam’s side, so the church was born from the pierced heart of Christ hanging dead on the cross” (CCC 766).
At Calvary Our Lady suffered unspeakably, fulfilling the prophecy of Simeon that a sword would pierce her heart (cf. Lk 2:35). Jesus himself seems to allude to his mother’s suffering when he tells the apostles in the Last Supper: “When a woman is in labour, she has pain, because her hour has come; but when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a child is born into the world. So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (Jn 16:21-22).
Pope St John Paul II spoke beautifully about Mary’s suffering at the birth of the Church on Calvary: “On Calvary, Mary united herself to the sacrifice of her Son and made her own maternal contribution to the work of salvation, which took the form of labour pains, the birth of the new humanity… The Evangelist himself [St John], by saying that Jesus had to die ‘to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad’ (Jn 11:52), indicates the Church’s birth as the fruit of the redemptive sacrifice with which Mary is maternally associated” (Audience address, 17 September 1997).