Daily Reading for June 24 • The Nativity of St. John the Baptist
According to legend, Anne yearned in vain for a child until she was well advanced in years. Then, miraculously, she became the mother of Mary. . . . Anne’s legend fits comfortably into scriptural tradition; it is a repetition of the familiar story of the matriarchs, our foremothers. It is a variation on the theme of barrenness over against the divine promise of fruitfulness. Sarah, the mother of Isaac; Rebekah and Rachel, the mothers of Jacob and Joseph; Hannah and Elizabeth, who bore the prophets Samuel and John the Baptist late in their lives—these are the women of our family history, our direct ancestors. . . .
These are stories about women who want children desperately and who feel ashamed and deficient because of their childlessness. There is a quality of expectancy about them; it is vital that they bring forth new life. Without children, they are nothing. Their plight is accentuated by the presence of “lesser” women around them who bear children easily—slaves like Hagar, Bilhah, and Zilpah, or Leah, the unloved and unwanted wife. “Why,” the barren women must have asked, “are they rewarded so undeservedly while we are denied what is rightfully ours?”
Human fertility is a powerful metaphor. I would in no way minimize either the almost numinous experience of birthgiving or the suffering of those who yearn in vain for children. Some women choose not to give birth, and men can be fathers but not mothers. Hence for some of us, the imagery of childlessness is painful, and for others it seems irrelevant. It remains, however, a compelling evocation of spiritual barrenness.
In the fourteenth century, Meister Eckhart, the learned Dominican mystic whose personal life must have been far removed from the intimate concerns of human reproduction, preached compellingly of the birth of God in the soul. Again and again he drove home his point: we can all become pregnant with God. Conversely, man or woman, old or young, we can also share in the barrenness of Sarah and her sisters. . . . A barren landscape is colorless, bleak, and dry; so, perhaps, is a barren person. Yet there is, albeit hidden, the potential for new life awaiting the right conditions for fertility—perhaps darkness, moisture, or enriching nutrients. Perhaps the acceptable time. Perhaps the gracious action of God.
From Toward Holy Ground: Spiritual Directions for the Second Half of Life by Margaret Guenther (Cowley Publications, 1995).