SAYING 79
A woman in the crowd said to him, “Blessed is the womb which bore you, and the breasts which nourished you.” He said to [her], “Blessed are those who have heard the Logos of the Father (and) have kept it and truly guarded it. For there will be days when you will say, ‘Blessed is the womb which has not conceived, and the breasts which have not given suck.’”
Here, Jesus turns the compliments of an unknown woman in the crowd into an opportunity to redirect our attention away from himself and back on what really matters most: our awakening into the reality of our Oneness with the All.
When the woman calls out a blessing to honor Jesus and his mother by saying that “the womb which bore you and the breasts that nourished you” are blessed, he gently corrects her train of thought by suggesting that the true blessings are to be found when we “have heard the Logos [Word] of the Father and [keep] it…truly guarded.”
In other words, the real blessed ones are those who have heard and received the Logos of God, which is not merely Jesus himself, but the transcending reality of God’s Divine and eternally-indwelling presence which permeates everything at all times.
If we hear and believe and internalize this Logos of God we become blessed, and when we keep and guard this truth within ourselves, and learn to live out of this reality, we continue to remain blessed perpetually.
In the final part of the saying, Jesus refers back to her use of the womb and suckling imagery to suggest a very different scenario; one where people might endure intense suffering and come to wish they had not brought children into this world at all. Or, it could refer to the need to reorient our minds around the notion that Divine connection is more desirable than earthly procreation.
As with our previous sayings, Jesus may be implying that we need to refocus our minds on spiritual reality rather than on temporal gains such as having children, raising a family, and settling down into domesticated life which is largely centered around accumulating wealth, possessions and status.
Perhaps what Jesus wants to communicate here is that true blessings do not come from childbearing but from fully embracing the reality of our Divine Oneness with God and one another.
Once we begin to live from this place of Truth, everything else will fall into place and our perspectives about who is blessed or not blessed will begin to radically shift.
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