Christmas Eve Reflection, 2006

It is fitting that iSHaH (Hebrew: 'woman', lit. 'from man') who was taken from the first AaDaM ("bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh"), and who was deceived by the evil one, and by whom the first man fell, should be that from whom the second man was taken (flesh of her flesh), who crushes the reign of the evil one, and thereby makes righteous the second AaDaM. In that way she who was the instrument of Satan by which AaDaM [all mankind in the one man Adam] lost righteousness is she who is the instrument of God by which Satan is crushed and the righteousness of AaDaM [all mankind in the one man Christ] is restored.

If God had taken Mary's rib, Jesus would not have been her seed, her son. (Eve was not Adam's daughter.) God took Mary's seed, for only in that way could she be truly His natural mother. In taking her seed to Himself in the hypostatic union, He truly became her seed. Did Moses know that women have eggs? Probably not. But these are God-inspired words, and they have layers of meaning. The most obvious meaning is the offspring of the woman, particularly Christ. But deeper still, that offspring includes all those in Christ, including you and I. There is enmity between us on the one hand, and those on the other hand whom Jesus described as having the devil as their father (John 8:44).

Yet there is still a deeper meaning. It is true that we should not think that "seed of the woman" means "ovum of the woman". But, "seed of the woman" implies something about the relation between the woman and the offspring to whom it refers, namely, that this offspring is generated from her natural reproductive system, just as a certain kind of seed comes from a plant, and as a certain kind of seed comes from a man's reproductive system. Seed is the natural product of living organisms; it develops naturally and organically from our bodies. And so it was with Christ -- the Logos is the Son of the Father but also, through the hypostatic union, the true seed of the woman. The child conceived in her womb was truly and genuinely her seed, not only flesh of her flesh (as Eve was of Adam), but "fruit" of her womb [and don't take 'womb' in some scientific sense as equivalent to "uterus alone"]. The term 'fruit' and the Genesis term 'seed' fit together. Jesus is not the fruit of Mary's womb in the sense that she was mere incubator or mere surrogate, as though Christ was like the fruit of a branch grafted onto a tree. He is truly and genuinely her seed, the actual fruit of her body. This taking of Christ out of Mary is parallel to Eve being taken out of Adam. And although we shouldn't force the two events to be the same in all respects, Christ's human nature is no less derived from Mary than Eve's human nature was derived from Adam.

Adam being the source of Eve was the basis for a hierarchical relation between them, as Paul explains. But Mary is Jesus's mother, and, in a certain respect, that makes Jesus subject to Mary, subject to her in the way made explicit by the fourth commandment. In another respect, of course, Jesus is God, and Mary is on that basis subject to Him, she being created by Him (in a very figurative sense, being 'taken out of Him', as Wisdom brings forth its treasures). But Mary's being subject to Jesus as her Creator does not cancel out or nullify Jesus's being subject to Mary as His mother. The two relations, each a hierarchical inversion of the other, remain juxtaposed eternally, in beauty and in love.