Made for This. Mary Haseltine
better able to be who he made us to be, women created body and soul. It might be tempting to skip over talk about the spiritual significance of birth, but I encourage you to enter in. Understanding the deeper meaning of birth allows us to experience and integrate our unique births and motherhood in a powerful way. If we are hoping to approach our births as women of faith, it only makes sense to see what the Church and Scripture have to say about it. (And both have said a lot!) Perhaps God has something to share with you as you come to a better understanding of his design for birth and the amazing design that is you.
We have different gifts than men, and it is beautiful to acknowledge and celebrate that fact. The Catholic Church, especially through Pope Saint John Paul II, has spoken clearly and often about the “feminine genius.” God imprinted on our souls something unique and beautiful, and our uniquely feminine souls glorify God and are a gift to the world. While it is becoming culturally unacceptable to say so, we know he created us differently, and he did so intentionally, out of his infinite love. That difference is both physical and spiritual.
The physical differences in our bodies teach us something about who we are, who we are meant to be, and what God’s design is for us. Of course, the most significant difference is our ability to conceive and bear new life. Our wombs, our breasts, our organs, our hormones, our genitalia, our menstrual cycles are designed to bear and nurture new life.15 Whether or not she ever becomes a physical mother, a woman is designed to bring new life into the world, and our bodies are a reflection of that soul-deep reality.
We also differ from men in our souls. Women are often more in tune with others. We bring tenderness to situations. We tend to be stronger multitaskers. On the whole, we are more intuitive than men. While there is much diversity in how we reveal these feminine gifts, women are created by God to love in a unique way, and we offer gifts to the world that our men cannot. Womanhood reflects unique characteristics of the love and care of God.16 In her essays on women, Edith Stein (Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross) speaks of a woman’s stronger tendency to sympathize; to serve another life; her more acute sense with children; her greater drive to cherish, guard, and preserve rather than fight and conquer; and her greater awareness of the needs of the creatures around her.17 Women possess within themselves a unique and powerful strength that can change the world.
Physically and spiritually, every woman’s femininity, by its very nature, points to motherhood. We know instinctively that there is no other relationship like that between a mother and her child. Motherhood calls for great sacrifices, and it holds a place of honor and distinction not only in the Christian tradition, but also in many other cultures. This respect for motherhood is written deep in the soul of mankind. As Saint John Paul wrote in his 1994 Letter to Families: “On the human level, can there be any other ‘communion’ comparable to that between a mother and a child whom she has carried in her womb and then brought to birth?”18
As the tiniest seed of a person grows within her, the mystery of that union is soul deep, and she is forever changed into a mother, called to love, protect, guide, nourish, and give life. Not only do we acknowledge this transformation on a spiritual and emotional level, but researchers have recently discovered that the cells of an unborn baby, containing his or her DNA, can be found in the mother for the rest of the mother’s life.19 Even in the case of miscarriage, abortion, or the mother placing her baby for adoption, motherhood has transformed her down to a cellular level, and she is forever united to that child.
Our feminine souls and bodies are intrinsically united, and together they fully reflect our feminine genius as we become mothers: birth is a necessary part of that.
While he was on Earth, Jesus made clear in his actions that women are equal in dignity to men. In his apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem, Saint John Paul writes, “It is universally admitted — even by people with a critical attitude towards the Christian message — that in the eyes of his contemporaries Christ became a promoter of women’s true dignity and of the vocation corresponding to this dignity.”20 Christ responded to the needs of women. He looked them in the eye and saw them for who they really were: beloved and precious daughters of his Father. Saint John Paul goes on, “Jesus of Nazareth confirms this dignity, recalls it, renews it, and makes it a part of the Gospel and of the Redemption for which he is sent into the world.”21
We can and should demand that every single woman in the birth room be treated with the dignity that Christ himself has bestowed upon us. She should never be shamed, manipulated, coerced, lied to, laughed at, ignored, or disrespected. Quite the opposite, she should be reverenced, deferred to, cared for, and treated with the utmost respect.
The Lord wants our feminine hearts to be fully awakened and alive. In birth, our feminine genius can be brought to new heights. Our remarkable strength, determination, beauty, and self-sacrifice are all exemplified in the act of birth. For those of us called to physical motherhood, Christ certainly wants to be a part of the process. When women are treated with dignity and worth, especially in those profound moments that mark womanhood, they are “liberated” and “restored to themselves: they feel loved with ‘eternal love,’ with a love which finds direct expression in Christ himself.”22 It is a beautiful and transformative force for the woman’s understanding of herself and her role as mother when this type of care and reverence marks her birth, and it should be considered a tragedy when it doesn’t.
Every person is called to make a gift of himself or herself, and a woman partakes of that call in a unique way as she enters into the role of mother.23 In pregnancy and birth, we experience at a raw, intrinsic level the reality that we only find ourselves through the gift of ourselves.24 As she takes on the role of mother from the very moment of the conception of her baby, a woman becomes something new, and she experiences her womanhood in a deeper way. “Motherhood involves a special communion with the mystery of life, as it develops in the woman’s womb. The mother is filled with wonder at this mystery of life, and ‘understands’ with unique intuition what is happening inside her. In the light of the ‘beginning,’ the mother accepts and loves as a person the child she is carrying in her womb.”25 Becoming a mother can awaken within us a new strength, a deeper love and self-gift, and a greater awareness of the mystery of God’s plan.
We have a God who is deeply in love with each one of us, calling us to our own unique motherhood. He is a loving Father, and we can come to him in our pregnancies and births. After all, this is the vocation he has called us to. We don’t have to be ashamed of or feel silly for asking him to be a part of it, and we can freely ask that our births be beautiful and holy and happy for us as mothers, for our babies, and for our whole family. We can also feel confident demanding that our dignity as his daughters be respected by our providers and others with us during birth. Our God is not a stingy God. He can and does want to be involved. He can and does want us to come to him in our need, especially in this most poignant time of our womanhood.
Your birth can be a beautiful moment of honoring and experiencing the feminine genius God has given you. He loves each of his daughters deeply and intimately. Not only does he want to meet you in your birth; he wants to work in and through you to bring both physical and spiritual life into the world.
With all my births, I’ve experienced birth as a sort of “thin space,” a place where time seems to stand still … a moment in which I can feel that participation in creation. I get to bring into the world a bit of heaven, pure innocence, which can only come from God. With all my sinful nature and ugliness, I get to help do that. I feel him. I feel God working through me to create another person, another soul, a unique individual. And I know I couldn’t have done this on my own. When the head crowns and it hurts like nothing I’ve ever experienced and I push till the baby is out, and in the sensation of relief afterwards, I know, I just know, I was part of a miracle.
— Megan Lyons, mom to four
The Theology of the Body: A Theology of Birth
“This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”— Luke 22:19