Book contents
Chapter Three - Conception, Pregnancy, Birth
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2012
Summary
Openness
Having looked at celibacy and marriage in the previous chapter, I now turn my attention to pregnancy. The pregnant body is full of potent significance; figuratively and literally it embodies what Anne Elvey calls ‘hospitality, an openness to the other’. Hopkins believed that by opening ourselves to Christ we make room for him to enter (in conception), to embrace (in pregnancy) and depart (in birth). The mother embraces the foetus within her uterus, while the foetus feels her as its second skin. Eve came out of the body of her husband Adam, but the Second Eve gave birth to her son, the Second Adam. By extension, the Second Eve, the Virgin Mary, is a mother to a legion of believers who, like her, conceive and give birth to her son. Thus, Christ is at once our son, brother and lover. This paradox rivals that of the Incarnation and Eucharist, in which God loved the world so much that he was willing to be conceived and born, to die and be consumed.
Hopkins understood that if Mary could conceive Christ through the intervention of the Holy Spirit, then it would be possible for others to do the same in their hearts. In his undated Latin hymn to Mary ‘Ad Matrem Virginem’, Hopkins exalts and exhorts the woman who miraculously conceived, bore and gave birth to God incarnate:
Teach me about Him,
About the small sweet God.
How much did you love
The One you conceived –
Thing inconceivable! (Lines 3–7)
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- Information
- Touching GodHopkins and Love, pp. 67 - 82Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2012