A
ccording to a French obstetrician,
Michel Odent, motherly love
is the prototype of all kinds of
love: brotherly love, romantic
love, love for a country, love for God, a
love for animals, inanimate objects, etc.
Odent says a person’s capacity to love, to
fall in love and to stay in love is largely
dependent on conditions surrounding a
baby’s birth.
Eric Ericson, a developmental
psychologist, says that life is
predominantly made up of eight stages.
During each of these stages a basic set
of values or attitudes is shaped that
impacts dramatically on the rest of the
person’s life. According to Erickson the
period between birth and infancy is the
prime time to develop the ability to trust
or to mistrust. If a baby feels safe and
secure and close to the mother, hope
and drive are hardwired in the brain. If
a baby feels separated from its mother,
mistrust is born that supports sensory
distortion (hyper- or hypo-sensitivity) and
withdrawal.
Against the theoretical background
of the work of Odent and Erickson it
is exquisitely humbling to take a 21st
century look at the birth of Jesus. The
scene and the story are widely known
as a birth in a stable in the presence of
an ox and a donkey. Odent in his book
The Scientification of love writes: My
vision of the Nativity is inspired by what
I have learned from women who have
given birth in privacy. It has also been
inspired by ‘Evangelium Jacobi Minori’,
the protogospel of James, the brother
of Jesus. This gospel was saved from
oblivion in the middle of the nineteenth
century by the Austrian mystic Jacob
Lorber, who wrote Die Jugend Jesu (The
childhood of Jesus).
When he becomes a man, this
child will judge the world
according to Love and not
according to Law!
According to these texts Mary had
complete privacy when giving birth,
because Joseph had left her to find
a midwife. When he returned with a
midwife, Jesus had already been born.
It was only when a dazzling light had
faded that the midwife realised she was
facing an incredible scene: Jesus had
already found his mother’s breast! Then
the midwife said: “Who has ever seen
a hardly born baby taking his mother’s
breast? This is an obvious sign that when
he becomes a man, this child will judge
the world according to Love and not
according to Law!”
On the day when Jesus was ready
to enter the world, Mary was sent a
message – a non-verbal message of
humility. She found herself in a stable,
among other mammals. Without words
her companions helped her to understand
that on that day she had to accept her
mammalian condition. She had to cope
with her human handicap and disregard
the effervescence of her intellect. She
had to release the same hormones as the
other parturient mammals, through the
same gland, which is the primitive part of
the brain that we all have in common.
The environment was ideally adapted
to the circumstances. Mary felt secure
and, because of this, her level of
adrenaline was as low as it could get.
Labour could establish itself in the best
possible conditions. Having perceived
the message of humility and accepted
her mammalian conditions, Mary found
herself on all fours. In a posture like
this, and in the darkness of the night,
she could easily cut herself off from the
everyday world.
Soon after his birth, the new-born
Jesus was in the arms of an ecstatic
mother, as instinctively as a non-human
mammal can be. He was welcomed in an
unviolated sacred atmosphere and was
able, easily and gradually, to eliminate
the high level of stress hormones he had
produced while being born. Mary’s body