The Invitations of Mary Series
©MS 2026

Before anyone else could see the Incarnation, Mary could feel it happening.

At first, there was nothing.

That might have been the strangest part.

Gabriel came.

Gabriel left.

Mary woke the next morning carrying a secret large enough to divide history into before and after—

and her body looked exactly the same.

For a little while, perhaps it felt the same too.

Then, gradually, it didn’t.

Maybe it began with exhaustion.

Not ordinary I had a long day tiredness.

Something heavier.

The strange fatigue of early pregnancy that can make a body demand sleep despite having done nothing that seems sufficient to justify it.

Perhaps Mary woke one morning after what should have been enough rest and already wanted to lie back down.

Maybe she was halfway through a task when suddenly she needed to sit.

And perhaps she found that irritating.

Why am I so tired?

Then she remembered.

Oh.

Maybe nausea came.

Maybe it didn’t.

Perhaps her breasts became tender.

Her appetite changed.

Certain smells became unbearable.

Her clothing began to feel different.

Her body started giving her small, private signals that Gabriel’s promise was no longer merely something she remembered hearing.

It was happening.

I wonder how Mary felt about that.

Because there is something deeply strange about pregnancy.

Your body remains yours.

And yet suddenly it is doing extraordinary things without consulting you.

Cells divide.

Blood volume increases.

Hormones shift.

Organs adapt.

A placenta develops.

An entirely new human body begins assembling itself inside your own.

You don’t consciously do any of it.

You don’t wake in the morning and think:

Today I should probably work on his nervous system.

Mary didn’t construct Jesus through effort.

Her body knew what to do.

And perhaps that was one of her earliest experiences of surrender.

We have to be careful here.

The Gospels tell us virtually nothing about Mary’s physical experience of pregnancy.

We don’t know which symptoms she experienced.

We don’t know when she began showing.

We don’t know whether her pregnancy was easy or difficult.

So when we imagine Mary noticing her body change, we aren’t recovering a lost historical account.

We’re doing something much simpler.

We’re taking seriously the fact that Mary had a body.

And that matters enormously in Christianity.

Because the Incarnation isn’t the story of God borrowing a woman’s body as convenient transportation into Bethlehem.

Jesus took his human flesh from Mary.

The body that would eventually walk the roads of Galilee began within hers.

The hands that would touch lepers began forming inside Mary.

The eyes that would look at Peter across the courtyard began there.

The feet that would be pierced began there.

The heart that Christians would one day call Sacred began beating beneath Mary’s own.

Before anyone else encountered the physical body of Jesus—

Mary did.

From the inside.

I wonder when she first noticed her clothing becoming tighter.

Perhaps she tied something as she normally did.

It didn’t sit quite right.

She adjusted it.

Tried again.

Still wrong.

Maybe she looked down.

There wouldn’t necessarily have been much to see yet.

Just a subtle fullness.

Something that another person might never notice.

But Mary knew her own body.

Women do.

She knew what her abdomen looked like yesterday.

She knew how her clothes normally rested against her.

Maybe she stood there for a moment with both hands against herself.

There you are.

I think that realization must have been extraordinary.

Until then, Jesus had been largely invisible even to her.

Gabriel had said he was there.

Mary believed.

Her symptoms may have suggested something was happening.

But eventually her body itself began changing shape around him.

The invisible became visible.

First only to Mary.

Then, eventually, to everyone.

Perhaps she smiled.

Perhaps she cried.

Perhaps she felt terrified.

Maybe all three.

Because a changing body didn’t only mean:

My baby is growing.

It also meant:

Soon everyone will know.

That part must have been complicated.

Pregnancy announces itself eventually.

Mary could not carry Jesus indefinitely as a private secret between herself and God.

Her body would tell the story whether she was ready for other people to hear it or not.

Perhaps every small change contained both wonder and dread.

A slightly fuller abdomen.

Wonder.

Would Joseph notice?

Fear.

Her clothing fitting differently.

Wonder.

Would someone ask?

Fear.

The first unmistakable curve.

Jesus.

And also:

I cannot hide this anymore.

We know Joseph eventually understood because Matthew tells us God intervened in his confusion.

But other people?

They didn’t receive dreams.

Gabriel didn’t visit every neighbor in Nazareth to clarify the situation.

Mary may have had to endure people looking at her body and drawing conclusions about her life that were entirely reasonable—

and completely wrong.

That must have felt incredibly vulnerable.

Her body was becoming evidence for something she could not prove.

Maybe there were looks.

Maybe there were whispers.

Maybe there weren’t.

Scripture doesn’t tell us.

But Mary lived in a community.

People knew one another.

Pregnancy was visible.

And eventually Mary couldn’t control who knew she was carrying a child.

I wonder whether that changed how she inhabited her own body.

Perhaps sometimes she instinctively covered her abdomen.

Not from shame.

From protectiveness.

This was Jesus.

Her son.

Her impossible secret.

And now the world was beginning to see him.

But perhaps there was delight too.

We shouldn’t let fear consume every imagined moment of Mary’s pregnancy.

Maybe she loved watching herself change.

Perhaps every new curve reassured her.

You’re growing.

Maybe she stood somewhere private and examined her abdomen with curiosity.

Not reverence.

Curiosity.

Pregnancy bodies are strange.

Things move.

Stretch.

Darken.

Ache.

Expand.

Perhaps Mary turned sideways once and laughed because suddenly—

there was definitely a belly.

Maybe she called Joseph.

“Look.”

Joseph looked.

Mary turned slightly.

“Do you see it?”

Perhaps Joseph, who valued his survival, answered correctly.

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Maybe he couldn’t see much of anything.

This is a dangerous moment for husbands throughout history.

But perhaps he smiled anyway.

Because Mary saw it.

And that was enough.

I wonder whether Joseph ever touched her belly before Jesus began moving.

That must have been strange too.

The first tentative hand.

May I?

Perhaps Mary took Joseph’s hand and placed it there.

Nothing happened.

Of course nothing happened.

It was too early.

Still, his hand remained.

And maybe that was one of the moments when Joseph’s fatherhood began becoming physical too.

He couldn’t experience what Mary experienced.

He couldn’t feel her body changing from within.

But he could witness it.

He could watch the woman he loved gradually become visibly pregnant with a child he had chosen to receive as his own.

There must have been tenderness there.

And awkwardness.

And laughter.

And fear.

Holy families are still families.

Then, one day, something happened that Mary could not mistake for anything else.

Movement.

The first flutter.

Women describe early fetal movement in different ways.

Bubbles.

Butterflies.

A flicker.

Something so subtle at first that you aren’t entirely certain it happened.

I wonder where Mary was.

Maybe she was walking.

Maybe she was resting.

Maybe she was working.

Perhaps she stopped suddenly.

Wait.

Nothing.

She waited.

There.

Again.

Maybe her hand flew to her abdomen.

Jesus?

That moment almost overwhelms me.

Before Mary heard Jesus cry in Bethlehem—

she felt him move.

Before his hand curled around her finger—

his tiny limbs moved within her.

Before anyone else in the world could physically encounter him—

his mother did.

Imagine Mary’s face.

Not the solemn Madonna.

A young pregnant woman absolutely stunned because her baby just moved.

Maybe she laughed.

Maybe she immediately tried to make it happen again.

She pressed her hand against the place.

Nothing.

“Come on.”

Still nothing.

Jesus, apparently, had already mastered the ancient tradition of babies refusing to perform on command.

Maybe later she tried to show Joseph.

“He’s moving.”

Joseph puts his hand there.

Nothing.

“Wait.”

They wait.

Nothing.

Mary moves his hand.

“Here.”

Still nothing.

Joseph begins to remove it.

Kick.

His face changes.

Mary laughs.

And for one tiny moment, the theological enormity disappears beneath something beautifully ordinary:

They felt their baby move.

I think we sometimes forget that Mary’s relationship with Jesus began long before Bethlehem.

We often visually introduce them together at the Nativity.

Mary.

Baby.

Mother and child.

But they had already spent months together.

Jesus knew the rhythm of Mary’s heartbeat before he knew anything else of earthly life.

He moved when she moved.

Rested when she rested.

Was carried everywhere she went.

When Mary walked to Elizabeth, Jesus traveled inside her.

When Mary laughed, her body moved around him.

When she sang the Magnificat, he was there.

When she ate, her body nourished him.

When she slept, he grew.

Before Mary ever held Jesus in her arms,

she had already carried him everywhere.

And perhaps her changing body was how she first learned him.

This makes me think differently about the Visitation too.

Elizabeth says:

“Blessed is the fruit of your womb.”

The fruit of your womb.

Not an abstraction.

Not merely a prophecy.

A child physically growing inside Mary.

Maybe by then Mary could already feel some difference in herself.

Perhaps Elizabeth, being further along in pregnancy, looked at Mary with the knowing recognition women sometimes give one another.

The strange intimacy of:

Your body is doing this too.

Two miraculous pregnancies.

Two women.

Two changing bodies.

Two babies nobody else could see yet.

And Scripture tells us one of those babies recognized the other before either was born.

John leaps.

Elizabeth cries out.

Mary sings.

Their bodies are part of the story.

They always were.

And perhaps Mary’s changing body occasionally frightened her.

Pregnancy can do that.

Something hurts unexpectedly.

Something feels different.

A symptom disappears.

A new one appears.

Is this normal?

Is the baby all right?

Mary did not have ultrasound.

She could not listen whenever she wanted to a fetal heartbeat.

She had no prenatal app telling her what size Jesus was this week.

There must have been periods of waiting.

Trusting.

Watching.

Feeling.

Perhaps one morning she hadn’t felt him move as much.

Did she worry?

Maybe she rested her hands against herself.

Waited.

Please.

Then—

a kick.

Relief.

Thank God.

I think we sometimes imagine that because Mary carried Jesus, she must have known nothing could happen to him before his appointed time.

But did she?

Gabriel gave promises.

He did not give Mary a complete timeline.

She still had to live pregnancy forward, one day at a time.

Perhaps she knew the same vulnerable love mothers have always known:

There is someone inside me whom I already love desperately,

and I cannot control everything that happens to him.

That may have been Mary’s first lesson in a love she would eventually experience in its most terrible form beneath the Cross.

And maybe there were moments when she simply hated being uncomfortable.

Her back hurt.

She couldn’t find a comfortable sleeping position.

Jesus had apparently discovered her bladder.

She dropped something and stared at it on the floor.

No.

Absolutely not.

Perhaps she stood there contemplating whether she truly needed the object.

Maybe Joseph eventually picked it up.

Perhaps Mary said:

“Thank you.”

With the sincerity of someone who had recently discovered that bending over had become an engineering problem.

Again:

Holy.

And human.

Those things are not opposites.

I keep thinking about Mary’s hands.

At the beginning, perhaps one tentative hand resting over a completely flat abdomen.

Then two.

Later, supporting the growing weight.

Feeling for movement.

Rubbing an aching side.

Holding herself instinctively when she stood.

Protecting her belly in a crowd.

Guiding Joseph’s hand toward a kick.

Month after month, her hands learning the changing geography of her own body.

And underneath them:

Jesus.

Perhaps that is one of the most intimate mysteries of the Incarnation.

God became someone Mary could locate.

Here.

Right here.

Beneath my hand.

Growing.

Moving.

Taking up more space every day.

Mary’s body changed because God had entered human history—

and human history suddenly required more room inside her clothes.

There is something almost wonderfully ridiculous about that.

The infinite God—

and Mary needs a looser garment.

We will never know exactly what Mary’s pregnancy felt like.

Perhaps she had an easy one.

Perhaps she struggled.

Perhaps she loved watching her belly grow.

Perhaps sometimes she wanted her old body back for an afternoon.

Perhaps she was fascinated.

Perhaps frightened.

Probably, if she was anything like most human beings facing enormous bodily change, her feelings weren’t consistent.

Why should they have been?

Wonder one day.

Discomfort the next.

Joy.

Embarrassment.

Curiosity.

Exhaustion.

Fear.

Love.

A body can hold many things at once.

Mary certainly did.

And somewhere during those months, she must have looked down and realized that the body she had known her entire life was becoming unfamiliar.

Not because it was betraying her.

Because it was making room.

Her ribs.

Her abdomen.

Her breasts.

Her blood.

Her posture.

Her balance.

Everything adapting around someone she could not yet see.

Perhaps she rested both hands over the growing curve and whispered his name.

Jesus.

Not Son of the Most High.

Not Messiah.

Not Savior.

Not yet.

Just—

Jesus.

Her baby.

And perhaps for a moment she simply stood there feeling the astonishing weight of him.

The Word had become flesh.

And before the world could see what that meant,

Mary felt her own body making room for God.