by Michael Pakaluk

But first a note from Robert Royal: Several readers have recently written to ask what happened to our longtime columnist David Carlin. His son, Joshua, just contacted us to say that he passed away on December 12 (obiturary here). Dave was not only a forceful writer and thinker, as his work here consistently demonstrated. He was that rarest of rare birds: a pro-life Democrat. He kept up his work well into old age, and many of us remember him fondly. Requiem aeternam dona ei Domine.

Now for today's column...

Let's start with the "O Antiphons." They began yesterday. There are seven of them, and they end on December 23. Then, with Christmas Eve and Christmas, they make nine - a novena - which is a period of expectation, the same in number as the months of pregnancy.

So, the lead up to Christmas is like a leading up to birth.

It's fine and all to discourse about the O Antiphons, but to hear them in situ, it is necessary to go to Mass for those seven days, or to pray Vespers. If the first, and we receive Holy Communion, we repeatedly express our hope of receiving the Lord by, well, receiving the Lord.

If the second, we join Mary in celebrating the growing child within her, as she does in her Magnificat.

Moreover, since we are not Pelagians, and if we are sober and are convinced that through our own efforts we are incapable of giving rise to anything divine in us, we will also believe that the graces won from attending Mass those days, or praying Vespers, will change us, to make us more receptive to receiving the Child.

Then, everything about Christmas breaks down the barrier between born and unborn. Take the O Antiphons again. Famously, their first initials form an acrostic (Sapientia, Rex, etc.) which if taken backwards spell ero cras. You will hear it said that this means in Latin "tomorrow I will come," as if, "I come into the world."

Not so, it means "tomorrow I will be."

But (you say) He already is: before Abraham was, He is. (John 8:58) Indeed, and therefore it must mean "be for you," that is, become apparent to you, as for instance to the shepherds. Which is to say that in the womb he is saying that tomorrow you will see me, who now is unseen.

The statements about his life made by Zechariah in the "Benedictus," perhaps even in the Lord's presence (if Mary stayed for the circumcision) are all in the past tense - e.g. "he has visited his people." True, this priest is using the so-called "prophetic past" - to refer to something so certain in the future that it must be expressed with the necessity of the past. But at the same time, he is referring to what that two-week-old embryo has already done.

And then, Catholics hold that Mary did not go through labor, and there was no disturbance of the birth canal or of her virginal integrity, so that the infant appeared to us by passing through her body as the Lord was later to pass through walls.

I don't think that anyone ever claimed that someone changed from being a "clump of cells" to being human by walking into a room. Nothing could more clearly show the continuity and identity of born with unborn.

But Christmas tears down other justifications for abortion as well. "Every child a wanted child"? (Please take what I am about to write with appropriate reverence.) Jesus was not a "wanted child" by Mary. This is certain. She believed she would be a virgin. When the angel greeted her, she "was troubled at his saying, and thought with herself what manner of salutation this should be." (Luke 1:29, Douay-Rheims).

She asks, famously, "How shall this be done?" She did not say, "I have been planning to have a child," or "How providential that you arrive just when Joseph and I were thinking that we could afford a child!" But, yes, immediately the child becomes "wanted": "Be it done to me according to thy word." She denies any "autonomy" she might have claimed to have.

We often hear, "Who are you or I to say to a woman that she must accept all the burdens of raising a child?...