Did the Virgin Mary suffer the trauma of labor and its pains? Not a few preachers at Christmas Mass speak as if Mary did. But a long tradition in the Church presents a very different picture.
First, what does Scripture say?
“She gave birth to her son, the first-born, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger.” (Luke 2:7). As the Catholic Encyclopedia observes, such language implies that Mary did not go through ordinary labor. Moms after labor are not in a position to stand up, get swaddling clothes, wrap their baby, and walk across the room to place him in a manger. Others must do this for them. Joseph is conspicuously not mentioned.
Luke also changes his language, from Elizabeth’s case to Mary’s. The change is not easy to see in English. He says about Elizabeth that “the time for Elizabeth to carry was completed, and she begat (egennēsen) a son” (1:57), using a word which means that this son sprang from her. But about Mary, Luke writes: “the time for her to carry was completed, and she bore (eteken) her son” (2:7), using a softer and ambiguous word, which in Greek is used for the gestation as well as parturition.
Besides, there are words in Greek for labor (see Matthew 24:8, Galatians 4:19). Wouldn’t Luke the physician have deliberately employed these words, if Mary went through labor? For clearly, her labor would have been significant.
Then there are the Old Testament passages interpreted by the Fathers to mean that Mary’s virginity was a like a gate, or a wall, through which nothing went in or out.
Consider Ezekiel, 44:2: “And the Lord said to me, ‘This gate shall remain shut; it shall not be opened, and no one shall enter by it; for the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered by it; therefore, it shall remain shut.’” Of this verse, St. Ambrose says (Letter 42):
Why is it hard to believe that Mary gave birth in a way contrary to the law of natural birth and remained a virgin, when contrary to the law of nature the sea looked at Him and fled, and the waters of the Jordan returned to their source. . . It is not past belief that a man came from a virgin when a rock bubbled forth a flowing stream, iron floated on water, a man walked upon the waters. If the waters bore a man, could not a virgin give birth to a man [hominem virgo generare]?
The mode of birthing for a virgin bearing the God-man must be miraculous, St. Ambrose insists, just as her mode of conception of the God-man is miraculous.
Or consider Song of Songs, 4:12: “A garden locked is my sister, my bride, a garden locked, a fountain sealed.” Of this verse, St. Jerome says (Against Jovinian, I.31, “That which is shut up and sealed stands for the mother of our Lord who was a mother and a Virgin.”
Surely, we detract nothing from Mary’s motherhood if we say she did not suffer labor. She was already fully a mother when she conceived Jesus: “And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:43), said most probably when Jesus was a blastula in a fallopian tube of Mary.
In God’s intention for Creation, childbearing did not involve any trauma or pain: these are part of the penalty of the Fall. (Genesis 3:16) Then why should Mary, free from Original Sin from the moment of her conception, be subject to this penalty, any more than she was subject to disordered concupiscence?
Sometimes a Christian woman will choose to give birth without anesthesia, in solidarity with their sisters in the past, or to embrace some of the due penalty for sin – but not because she’d be less of a mother if she took pain relief. Similarly, no one believes that a mother who gives birth by C-section is thereby less of a mother.
Nor can one say that Mary’s pain of childbirth was meant to be a pattern for us. Catholic hospitals place crucifixes over birthing beds, not pictures of Mary in labor. His own crucifixion, Our Lord says, is the proper pattern for a woman’s throes of labor. (John 16:21) And wasn’t Mary’s role to suffer precisely in “giving birth” beside the Cross, as Simon prophesied? (Luke 2:35)
The traditional sorrows and sorrows of Joseph include his sadness over the poverty of the stable, and his joy upon the appearance of the Magi, but noticeably not (if the birth were ordinary) his distress over Mary’s labor, and joy when the baby was safely delivered.
The Church in insisting on the mystery which we celebrated yesterday, that Mary is the Mother of God, never insisted as well – as presumably it would have needed to do, if these were part of her maternity – that she went through labor. Rather, the Church in Ephesus insisted with equal fervor on the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary: that Mary was a virgin before the Lord’s birth; that Mary was a virgin after His birth; and that Mary remained a virgin in the very act of His birth (CCC 499). If Mary was Mother of God, she bore him without any trauma or corruption.
St. Thomas Aquinas quotes the Council of Ephesus on this point:
Whosoever brings forth mere flesh, ceases to be a virgin. But since she gave birth to the Word made flesh, God safeguarded her virginity so as to manifest His Word, by which Word He thus manifested Himself: for neither does our word, when brought forth, corrupt the mind; nor does God, the substantial Word, deigning to be born, destroy virginity. (ST III.28.2)
And St. Augustine: “To the substance of a body in which was the Godhead, closed doors were no obstacle. For truly He had power to enter in by doors not open, in Whose Birth His Mother’s virginity remained inviolate.”
