The First Advent: Honoring Jesus in the Womb, by Dr. R. Jared Staudt

Advent draws us to contemplate Christ’s first coming, even as we expect his coming again in glory. The season contains an almost incomprehensible reality: God has become man, “infinity dwindled to infancy,” as Gerard Manley Hopkins put it. Israel’s centuries-long yearning for the Messiah blossomed in the first Advent as Our Lady became God’s tabernacle in the world. Even as we look toward the manger, Advent can become a time to honor Jesus’ time in the womb, when he initiated his sanctification of human life.

Life in the womb remains mysterious, even with the advancement of science. It is hidden, as new life begins behind a veil with an incomprehensibly small beginning. In the ancient world, it was believed that the soul did not enter the body until it was sufficiently developed to sustain it, an opinion that was abandoned by the Church as soon as conception was first understood in the late nineteenth century. Ideologically, some remain committed to this outdated position as a means to deny the personhood of the nascent child. Embryology confirms, however, that from the first moment of existence, a new and distinct organism of the human species immediately emerges. ….
in the womb and its greatest moment of sanctification. Let’s honor Jesus in the womb of the Virgin Mary and pray for all the unborn.

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