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It is almost too extraordinary for her to believe that, young and inexperienced and unremarkable and female as she is, through her Jehovah will "help his servant Israel."

Mary will need the exhilaration of these days to balance the pain of the next 33 years and beyond. For God's trust of her is deep enough not only to fill her with his heavy glory but also to draw her into the agony of Incarnation, to share with her the inevitable clash of spirit with flesh, of infinite with finite. There was as much pain as there was promise in that moment when Mary became a mother-to-be.

In the biblical account Mary seems more mother than wife. And like all human mothers, certainly like me with my children, Mary knew not only pride but pain. I think I'm like my son John, who as a young boy once asked me, "Why did God make me so I feel hurt so easily?" I thought a bit before I replied, "Because he knows that your capacity for beauty will only be as deep as your sensitivity to pain."

I wonder, sometimes, about young people today who choose to be childless. In their concern for career, comfort, convenience, for personal self-development, may they be depriving themselves of one of God's most effective teaching tools? Had I lived without the singing joy as well as the devastating pain of being a parent, my understanding and appreciation of God the Father would have been drastically limited.

Mary didn't close herself off from God in such a way; she said yes without knowing all that parenthood would involve, but with trust that God knew, and that he was the Parent who loved her.

Mary. Her name means bitterness. From the hour of Announcement on, dark pain lay ahead—friends' incredulity, lack of understanding, accusations of promiscuity and her son's illegitimacy, to begin with. She also faced the possible loss of her betrothed, Joseph; until the angel reversed his direction through a dream, Joseph had resolved to break the contract between them and leave Mary to carry and bear her baby alone. After she had returned from Elizabeth to her own village, to make her home with Joseph, Mary experienced the weariness of months of pregnancy—an unsensational hardship, culminating in the long, southward journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. She and Joseph were poor, and even if they had a donkey to ride, a blanket on the back of an ass is no easy seat for a woman nine months pregnant, her body cold and stiff from sitting on the plodding animal for hours at a time.

Bethlehem, in turn, seemed so harsh and unwelcoming in the winter night. Perhaps her first uneasy cramping of labor had begun, and the panic of helplessness as the busy innkeeper turned them away.

From the way Luke 2:4-7 is written, there is no indication that the baby born so infelicitously to Mary is anything unusual—just another out-of-wedlock child born to a teenager on the road. It is the shepherds who receive the birth announcement who express amazement, who see and identify this newborn as someone unique. Talk about light shining out of darkness! Talk about paradox! That red, squashed, baby face is the brightest thing a manger has ever contained.

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December (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50