Tag Archives: Nativity scenes

Doubting Midwife

Posted on by
Reply
In these icons of the Nativity (on the left, a 12th century fresco from Cappadocia; on the right, a Coptic icon), we see the newborn Christ being washed by the midwives (lower right corner of the Coptic icon). In many depictions of the midwives washing the newborn Christ-child (as above), the cistern or tub they use looks similar to the paten on which the Holy Bread is offered in the Eucharist to become the Body of Christ. Jesus as identified as the Lamb of God offered to the Father from the moment of his birth. In the Coptic icon, we also see the shepherds around the midwives watching a flock of white sheep and black goats–the righteous and the sinners Christ is born to save.

“Doubting midwife?” Where did she come from? There is no mention of a midwife in Matthew’s or Luke’s account of Christ’s nativity. This woman is the “Doubting Thomas” of the Nativity cycle.

According to the Protoevangelium, Joseph brings the Blessed Virgin to Bethlehem but as there is “no room at the inn,” he settles her in a stable–a cave, not a barn–as her labor begins. He goes to find midwives to assist in the birth.

Joseph quickly finds a pair of local midwives and brings them back to the stable-cave but none of them can enter because of the brilliant light shining within. As the light gradually fades, they are able to see the Virgin and the newborn baby. They enter and begin to tend to mother and child.

The first midwife washes and examines the new mother and is startled to discover that Blessed Mary is still a virgin. She reports this to the other midwife who doubts this and reaches out to examine Blessed Mary herself. But her hand withers as it nears the Virgin’s birth canal and even feels as if it were burning. She quickly withdraws her hand but it remains paralyzed and withered; as she struggles to assist in washing the newborn baby, she is healed by touching the child or by the water splashing from the tub–different versions of the story report both styles of healing. This second, doubting midwife proclaims that the new mother is indeed still a virgin and that the miraculous withering-healing of her hand is the sign of this and the miraculous nature of the new baby.

The midwife–who is eventually identified as Salome, possibly the same Salome that brings myrrh to Christ’s tomb with Mary Magdalen–has the same experience as Moses at the burning bush. Moses’ hand withers and is struck with leprosy because he asks for proof that it is truly God who is speaking to him. Isaiah is purged by a burning coal from the heavenly altar, just as the midwife’s hand feels as if it is burning. The midwife exclaims, “Woe is me! Because of my lawlessness and unbelief!” just as Isaiah exclaimed, “Woe is me! I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips!” The midwife’s healing is also an allusion to the healing of the woman with the 12-years issue of blood who is healed simply by touching the hem of Christ’s garment in the crowd.

Just as the Apostle Thomas says he will not believe that Christ is risen unless he touches the wounds in Christ’s hands and side, the midwife cannot believe the report of the first midwife unless she also touches the evidence of the miracle. The disbelief of the apostle and the midwife is healed by touch; both Thomas and Salome testify to the truth of God’s action in the world because they have handled the evidence themselves.

Why is it important that the Mother of God remain ever-virgin? Her perpetual virginity is a safeguard of our status as brothers and sisters of Christ; if she had other biological children who were biological relatives of Christ, it would relegate Christian believers to second-rank status in the Church. Some members–the biological relatives–would be MORE the “brothers and sisters of Christ” than other believers who were not biological relatives. In order to avoid this two-tier system in the Church and to prevent a dynasty of Christ’s relatives from ruling the nascent Christian community, it was important that Mary have no other biological children. (We see in the Gospels themselves that she had no other children or Christ would not need to commend her to the care of St. John, the Beloved Disciple, at the Crucifixion. Those people the Gospels refer to as Christ’s brothers and sisters were his cousins or stepbrothers and stepsisters, the children of Joseph’s first marriage.)

Read my prior post about the stable-cave in which Christ was born here.

Read my prior post about the goldfinch often seen in portrayals of the Virgin and Child here.

Nativity of Christ in Early Christian Literature

Posted on by
6
The Martyrdom of St. James, who was thrown from a parapet of the Temple (where Jesus was tempted by the Devil) and then clubbed to death—Mosaic from St. Mark’s in Venice.

Much early Christian literature, the so-called “apocrypha” of the New Testament, are collections of Christian folktales and sermonettes that are meant to make connections between the Old Testament and the experiences of the early Christian communities. The audience of these collections were not stupid people; they knew what was an exciting novella based on the experiences of the martyrs and what were the scenes made up to fill in the gaps of the story.

One example of such “midrash,” the homiletic-style of telling a Bible story with commentary included, is the Protoevangelium of James which tells the stories of the birth and childhood of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. The Protoevangelium is said to have been written by the Apostle James, the author of the epistle with his name in the New Testament. James was the step-brother of Jesus; he was the youngest son of St. Joseph, who was an older man who had been married before. The stories in the Protoevangelium make explicit what the New Testament implies and underscore-reiterate what the Gospels tells us of Christ.

The Protoevangelium was written approx. AD 150 but incorporates much older material, including the memories of the Jerusalem community of Christians. Long thought by Western scholars to be a complete fiction because of its unusual details, many of these details in the Protoevangelium have been proven correct by recent archeological discoveries (such as the dormitory of a women’s community that lived adjacent to the Temple) and the discovery of other manuscripts that reveal previously unknown 1st century Jewish practices. So, rather than making up fairy tales about Christ and his mother, we now know that the Protoevangelium has preserved long-forgotten details that the original readers would have been familiar with.

Beginning next week, and continuing for the next three-four weeks, we will examine some of the stories in the Protoevangelium about Jesus’ birth and discover what these old stories, meant to supplement the Gospel accounts, can tell us about Christ’s nativity.

Wise Men Finally Arrive–Only 2 Years After the Shepherds!

Posted on by
4

Master of Vyšší Brod, a Bohemian master, c. 1350. The influence of Italian Byzantine painting was strong in the court of Charles IV.

According to the New Testament, the wise men arrived in Bethlehem when Jesus was already two years old! By then, the manger had been put away and the shepherds had all gone home. But the wise men (“magi”) had seen the conjunction (“star”) in the sky and had travelled from Babylon to Palestine to bring their gifts to the newborn King.

“We have seen his star in the East,” the magi told King Herod. “We have come to worship him.”

This news was a surprise to King Herod. He had no idea that a new King of the Jews had been born and had clearly NOT seen the star the magi had. What was the “star” which the magi claimed they had seen and which had told them to come find the newborn King in Judea? Since no one in Jerusalem seems to have seen it, the star could not have been a bright light in the sky or they would have noticed it. Since the Gospel text says that Herod later had all the boys aged two years or younger killed in his attempt to kill the Christ Child, the “star” must have been an astronomical event of some sort rather than a bright light or all the other parents whose children were butchered by Herod’s soldiers would have pointed out the house and said, “No! Not our children — the boy you want is in that house! There!” Also, the magi evidently had seen the star at least 2 years before and it had taken them that long to travel to Jerusalem.

When the wise men did finally arrive in Bethlehem, they are shown presenting their gifts to the Christ Child in the lap of his Virgin Mother. The oldest of the wise men is always in such a hurry to bow down before Christ that he trips and steps on his crown, as in the altarpiece below. (Click here to see a stunning collection of Nativity scenes, some with the shepherds and some with the wise men.)

I remember reading reports in December 1975 (my senior year of high school!) that the “star” was in fact a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the constellation Pisces — and that this conjunction occurs once every 800 years! The magi, being astrologers, would have understood this to mean that a great king (Jupiter) who would usher in the End of Days (Saturn) was being born in Judea (Pisces). This conjunction occurred in December 1975, according to these reports, but I was unable to see it as I was not sure exactly where to look in the sky or on which date(s) to look.

Gentile da Fabriano, Adoration of the Magi, 1423 (Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi)