Eucharistic meditation, Fourth Advent

Micah 4:9-10: Now, why do you cry loudly? Is there no king among you, or has your counselor perished, that agony has gripped you like a woman in childbirth? Writhe and labor to give birth, Daughter Zion, like a woman in childbirth.

Micah 4-5 is a prophecy about the restoration of Jerusalem through the intervention of a king from Bethlehem who shepherd Israel and put Assyria to flight. The irony here is that the nations that want to snuff out Israel become the very means for redeeming Israel. The anguish that Israel suffers during the Assyrian invasion and the later Babylonian exile is the anguish of childbirth, not the anguish of death. It’s an anguish that issues in a new birth for the people of God.

This natural paradox of childbirth is part of the Christmas story. Mary is the embodiment of Mother Israel, or of Daughter Zion, who labors and writhes in pain, but whose pain ultimately brings forth the one who will be ruler in Israel, the one called “Jesus” because He will save His people from their sins.

This too is the paradox celebrated at this table, because the pattern of Jesus’ coming and birth is the same as the pattern of His redeeming death and resurrection. This table commemorates the cross of Jesus. The cross is an instrument of torture and death; on the cross Jesus was in anguish. On the cross, God the Son suffered a human death.

But that anguish was not the anguish of death, or not of death only. On the cross Jesus writhed and labored, but He writhed and labored in anguish in order to give birth. His pangs were not death-pangs but birth-pangs, the birth-pangs of a new creation, which began with His resurrection from the dead. It’s not for nothing that some medieval mystics thought of Jesus as Mother. From Micah and other places, the Jews had long known that they would be restored only through Messianic woes. On the cross, Jesus suffered those woes.

And by participating in this meal, we are called to a similar ministry. We are called here to take up our cross and follow Jesus. We are called to suffer in and with Him. We are called to suffer the pangs of child-birth, so that God can form the new creation among us. This is the paradoxical good news of the cross, which is likewise the good news of Advent, the good news that Mary suffers in anguish to give birth to the one who will be ruler in Israel.