Tim Staples addresses the common question about Mary’s experience of pain during Jesus’ birth. He explores scriptural references like Revelation 12 and Genesis 3, offering insights into their interpretation and the Church’s teaching on Mary’s childbirth.
Transcript:
It seems to be the general consensus that Mary did not have any pain at all during childbirth.
Correct.
Okay, all right. So I’ve got… I found two places in Scripture that I’m just kind of having a hard time resolving with that. I need you to help me out with that, if you don’t mind. Sure. So the first one is Revelation 12.1 and 2, sorry. Sure. It talks about the woman with the crown of stars and that she was pregnant and crying out with birth pain to the agony of giving birth. Yes. Which, this seems to be, you know, Marian typology here. You know, child seems to be Jesus.
Yes. All right.
And then the other one is Genesis 3.16. Yes. It’s actually Eve here. Yes. And God is telling Eve, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing.”
Yes.
So it seems to insinuate that there’s some, at least small pain there to begin with.
Real quick now, there’s two distinct questions here. First, that phrase, “I will increase your labor pains,” does not mean there were labor pains before. That’s a common misunderstanding. It’s an idiomatic expression that simply means there’s going to be a lot of pain. Right? That’s number one. I know it’s popular among Christians to say, “increase means there’s already something there.” It’s simply not true. It’s an idiomatic expression. But number two, when you talk about Revelation 12, one thing I point out, in fact, in my book, “Behold Your Mother,” I have a section on this, and in fact, I have more than one section on this. I have a whole appendix in the back of the book on this. Tell you what we’ll do is send you out a free copy of my book. You can read it, and then we can talk about it, because I do a lot more in the book than I can do here.
But one thing that I point out in the book is that there is no scripture scholar, no Protestant scripture scholar that I know of, and no Catholic scholar that I know of that adheres to the ordinary teaching of the church. And I should note here, this is not infallible teaching that Mary didn’t have labor pains. It’s never been defined infallibly, but it is a general teaching of what we call the ordinary magisterium of the church. But no theologian in either of these categories that I mentioned believes that the labor pains of Revelation 12 were caused by the head of a baby passing through the birth canal. Because you can go to all the—and I looked at many different Protestant commentaries on this, and they all believe these are spiritual pains, either of the people of God, the Old Testament people of God, but they understand that these are not literal, physical labor pains. So I say, why does everybody get in a tiff when the Catholic church says, “These are not literal pains caused by the head of a baby passing through the birth canal”? These are spiritual pains. And especially when you note that you have Romans chapter 8 verse 23, where St. Paul talks about how all of us labor in birth, right?
Awaiting the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the redemption of our bodies. We labor, and he uses that language of the birth pangs of labor. You have the prophecy of Simeon in Luke chapter 2 verses 34 and 35, where Simeon says to the Blessed Mother that she is going to suffer, right?
And, you know,
spiritual pains. She would be what we call a white martyr because she was going to suffer with her son, and those sufferings begin from before she ever gives birth to Jesus Christ. And so then you also have a prophecy like Isaiah 66 verse 7. And remember, Isaiah 66, this is the same chapter that has the New Covenant prophecy in verse 22 that’s quoted in Revelation 21, the first couple of verses, right? A new heavens and a new earth come down from heaven. That’s prophesied right here in Isaiah 66. But there’s another prophecy, and it says this, “Hark, an uproar from the city.” I’m quoting verse 6, “A voice from the temple, the voice of the Lord rendering recompense to his enemies.” And then there’s a quotation mark. “Before she was in labor, she gave birth. Before her pain came upon her, she was delivered of a son.” Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Now, if that’s not about the Blessed Mother, what in the world is it about? The fact is this is in the context of prophesying the coming of the New Covenant that the prophet says,
“We are going to see something that has never happened before, a woman giving birth without the payings of labor.”
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