You may have noticed the advertisement on the left of the page for the book “Unborn Jesus, Our Hope.” I just received a review copy from the author today.
The book begins from the very correct premise that the Incarnation of Christ began not at the Nativity, but at the Annunciation. (I’ve suggested in the past that we should rename March 25 the Feast of the Incarnation.) And thus for the first 9 months of His existence as fully God, fully Man, the Son of God was an unborn child. What does that mean for us? To find an answer Peate embarks on a nine-month meditation on the pregnancy of Mary and the gestation of Christ. Peate spent about 15 years researching and writing this book in his spare time.
He’s also the author of the Litany of the Unborn Christ Child which he wrote in 1985. Their web site is Unborn Word Alliance.
One subtle way the liturgy expresses the Incarnation begins with the Annunciation is that we genuflect, during the Creed, that day, and nine months later.
Ian:
We do it in Piqua. The priest leads everyone in doing it (I realize not everyone actually kneels—what can I do? Have the ushers whack them?)
Ian:
Well, in fairness to those priests, I got that mailing about “NFP Week”—by the time I got to the mailing, in all that’s on my desk, and read it, it was two weeks after.
Ian:
Well, you got me. I preached about the sinfulness of contraception last week, tied it to the Eucharist, but I didn’t say anything in my homily about NFP.