On the New Calendar, today (12/8) celebrates the conception of the Birthgiver of God, when Joachim and Anna conceived Mary, the girl who would grow up to become the Mother of God.
How hard it must be for modern men and women to understand the beauty of this feast. For them, attention would be drawn to the manner of the conception (sex) rather than to the creation of a human that would eventually bear the uncreated Creator in her womb. Just a couple of cells that had the soon-to-be-realized potential to become the vehicle through which humankind would be saved. What a glorious day!
Perhaps I am being too quick to judge. Just because our society has embraced sex apart from marriage; just because nearly half of all babies created here are unwanted by their parents; and just because one out of every five babies is intentionally killed before it is born; does NOT mean that people cannot celebrate the intentional conception of a baby that would become the mechanism of our salvation, right? Well, maybe not.
Every baby created, from the time of the union of sperm and egg, has the unique potential to become the mechanism of the world’s salvation. The Gospel is not just that Christ came into the world so that we might be saved, it is that we are called to be Christ to the world; we are the way God has chosen to bring the Gospel to “all the nations.” “Acquire the Holy Spirit and thousands around you will be saved;” said St. Saraphim of Sarov to Motovilov. God manifested Himself in a unique and wonderful way through the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. I hope you do not think that I am trivializing this when I point out that every man and woman that come into this world have the calling to manifest God to the world in a unique and wonderful way.
This includes all those that were unwanted and accidental… it even includes those that this world slaughtered before they could even breath air. The blood of the martyrs cries out to God, so He is still served even in the midst of such madness… perhaps their prayers may soften the hearts of their parents so that they learn to love God and the spreading of His Gospel more than their own personal convenience… perhaps their prayers will soften the heart of a culture that cares more about sex without consequence than it does life… perhaps their witness will bring all of us who are complicit in this holocaust to Maloch to repentance… perhaps we will all come to our senses and see the zygote for what it is: not just a miracle of new life made in God’s image, but the hope for the salvation of this world.
