Blessed Is Womb That Bore You

There was a holy jealousy among the women of Judea towards Mother Mary. It is different from the ungodly, selfish jealously. They admired and looked up to Mary for giving birth and bringing up a son who exhibits so much kindness and compassion. A woman seeing what Jesus was doing and saying, cries out in holy jealousy, blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that nursed you (Luke 11: 27-28). Blessed is the mother who gave birth to you and looked after you. It was in some sense the same words of Elizabeth, “Blessed are you among women.”

To be blessed is to be granted special favour by God with joy and prosperity as its result. From God's promise to Abraham that He would bless him and his children, to Mother Mary whom the angel of the Lord called blessed, to the thief on the cross to whom Jesus promised the paradise, all have received special favours from God.

In the New Testament in the light of the Beatitudes, however, the emphasis is more on spiritual rather than on material blessings (Matthew 5: 1-12). It means an inner peace, an inner bliss, an inner happiness, and an inward joy that is not produced nor affected by circumstance. It is this blessedness that empowered and strengthened Mary to go though every situations in her life.

This gospel gives us Mary as a paradigm of blessedness. There are at least three occasions in the Gospels where Mary is declared to be a specially blessed one. The angel Gabriel greeted Mary as the favoured one of God (Luke 1: 28). Elizabeth declared Mary as the blessed among women (Luke 1: 42-45). In this Gospel an anonymous woman announces the blessedness of Mary as the one who bore Jesus in her womb and nursed him.

Jesus hears the words of that anonymous woman and seems to tell her, Mary is blessed not just because she bore Jesus in her womb, and nursed him; she is blessed because she did the will of our father in heaven. Jesus elsewhere says that God can raise children for Abraham even from mere stones. But here Mary the stone is special and beautiful because this stone collaborated with the plan of God to raise God’s son. As some non-Catholics believe and spread around, Mary was not just the egg from which Jesus got hatched, and after the hatching Mary is not mere broken and useless eggshell. Mary through her fiat became the mother of the incarnate Son and a mediator of the salvific mystery.

In another narration of the same incident Jesus was even more blunt and said, who is my mother and brothers? Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother (Matthew 12:46-50). They are who accept, take responsibility, and live the Word of God. This perhaps is a parallel and more relevant genealogy of Jesus.

In the beginning of the New Testament, the spirit of the Lord hovered over Mary, the lowly Jewish girl from Nazareth, like the Spirit of Lord hovered over the waters in the beginning of time. Mary was told that she shall conceive by the power of the Holy Spirit and bear a child who is God. St. Augustine says, ‘The cosmos stood still’ to hear the response of Mary. She responded ‘yes’: yes to God, yes to life, yes to love, yes to suffering, and yes to God still unborn yet breathing. That saying yes to the will of God made Mary blessed, and would make us blessed.

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