Holy Week starts with Palm Sunday, when Our Lord rides into Jerusalem on the donkey. The crowds are heralding him and showering him with praise and glory. Isn't that how the end of pregnancy is as well??? Everywhere you go, onlookers delight in the sight of you. Friends and strangers alike can't help but ask you about the precious treasure you are carrying. Your bulging belly at the end of your pregnancy makes you akin to a celebrity. There are baby showers thrown in your honor. The phone calls and texts come in with greater frequency, as people want to check in and see if the baby has arrived or how you are holding up as your delivery date draws near. It's all very exciting.
Then we move into the Triduum. On Holy Thursday, we find our Lord preparing for and celebrating the Passover with the disciples. We, as mothers, are like Our Lord as we prepare our homes for the new baby. Our Lord saw to it that everything was ready for the Passover meal, and we clean and tidy and prepare freezer meals to see to it that everything is ready to bring our new baby home. Then Our Lord eats the Passover meal. He spends these last hours enjoying the company of those closest to Him and talking to them about important things. I know, as I get closer to delivery, and especially with this delivery, (as my water broke on Thursday morning but I didn't actually start contracting until 9:00 at night) I spent those last hours tidying my home (scrubbing bathrooms and making the needed calls to make sure everything was situated for when the time came for me to go to the hospital) and then hanging out with my children talking to them about when they were born and answering any of their questions about the new baby's arrival. It always is a special time, those hours before delivery. I enjoy that time with my children and husband immensely. We reminisce and talk about the excitement of what is to come. It's a beautiful "Last Supper."
But as in the real Last Supper, when the Lord goes to the Garden to await what is to come, I too, have to leave the quiet of our home and head to the hospital to await the birth of our baby. All of our prayer warriors (our kids, family, and close friends) I am sure fell asleep as I labored into the wee hours of the morning, as did the disciples as our Lord labored in prayer. As labor intensified and the contractions came in crashing waves trying to overtake me, I shared our Lord's plea, "Lord, if it be your will, take this cup away from me; nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done." And as the Lord had the angel to comfort him in his distress, I had the support of my husband and the midwife by my side to help me through each contraction.
The cross of Good Friday is akin to transition!!! Labor gets so painful and intense that you feel like you can't breathe and there is no way you can make it through. It's the pain of the moment, but even more is not knowing when the pain will cease. It's that looking forward that makes the pain even more unbearable. I know our Lord is outside of time, but as I contemplate my labor and delivery, I wonder if that is what made Christ cry out on the cross, "My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?" Was He seeing the foreverness of the lost souls? Knowing that these souls would be separated from him forever....the unendingness of it. When we are faced with suffering (whether physical, like labor and delivery, or emotional) that is often what makes it so hard to bear; looking too far forward or dreaming of the past and "what was or what could have been." It is in the surrendering of our suffering that we are able to bear it. Christ surrendered His will and His whole being to the Father; and in his surrender, we are purified. It is the same with our pain and suffering. In labor and delivery, we surrender our bodies. We lean in. We breathe through. And we allow our bodies to change. So much so that we open up and bear new life from them. And that is the cross of Christ- from it, new life...ETERNAL life is borne!
And it is in that surrendering, and the bearing of life that comes the JOY of the resurrection. After all the pain of labor, the joy of delivery is the glory of Easter. We have an empty womb. The disciples found the empty tomb. We hear the cries of new life in our newborn babe. And the disciples can cry, "Alleluia He is Risen," heralding the opening of the gates of Heaven and our hope of eternal life!!!
But as the disciples did not recognize the risen Lord immediately, sometimes in the whirlwind of sleepless nights, and nursing around the clock, and learning how to die to self and serve the needs of this helpless wee babe we can find it hard to find the "glory of the risen Christ" in our first weeks at home with a newborn. The disciples maybe had it in their mind of how things should be or what was to happen with our Lord, so that even when He was standing right before them in His glorified body, they didn't even realize it was Him! We too, as mothers, often have ideas of how our days "should" look or ideas of what we want to happen after the birth of our baby, which can make it hard to experience the fullness of joy that a newborn baby is. It was "in the breaking of the bread" that the disciples were able to recognize their Risen Lord. In a moment they were drawn out of themselves and into the truth, beauty and hope of the resurrected Lord. They were able to "see." We too, even in the midst of these crazy newborn days have moments where we are drawn out of ourselves and time seems to stop for a moment and we can really see the glorious beauty of our life. It could be in a newborn snuggle, the showering of love of the siblings upon their newest brother or sister, or those few and far between moments of quiet. These moments of grace, when the veil is lifted and the gift of life and love we have been given is clear, the hope and joy of all that is before us and is to come is revealed... THAT is the glory of the Resurrection!!!!
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| Welcome to the family, Joshua Thomas!!! |
