Why Christ compared Christian joy to giving birth
Our Lord did not promise that his followers would be free from sorrow. But what kind of sorrow?
Our Lord did not promise that his followers would be free from sorrow. But what kind of sorrow?
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How Christ reveals that sorrow itself—not merely its removal—is transformed into joy by divine grace.
That this law of his Kingdom was first fulfilled in the Passion and Resurrection, and repeats itself in every true disciple.
Why Christ compares apostolic anguish to childbirth: the very cause of pain becomes the very cause of joy.
He shows us that Christian suffering is not simply borne and then forgotten—it is transfigured into glory.
For more context on this episode, see here.
Parting Words
Passiontide, Part III, Chapter VI
Chapter VI
St. John xvi. 16-33, Story of the Gospels, § 156
Burns and Oates, London, 1886
His explanation
As our Lord wished to be invited to explain Himself more fully, He took their desire that He should speak more, as a direct request that He should do so.
‘Jesus knew that they had a mind to ask Him, and He said unto them, Of this do you inquire among yourselves,’ as it is said above, and without telling them exactly what was to happen to Himself, He spoke sufficiently plainly of its effect upon them.
‘Amen, amen, I say unto you, that you shall weep and lament, and the world shall rejoice, and you shall be made sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.’
He goes on to explain how true His words were to prove, for He had said not that joy should succeed unto sorrow, or overwhelm it, or be substituted for it, or make them forget it, or have any similar effect to do away with or efface it, but that their sorrow shall be turned into joy. That is to say, that the very elements of their sorrow were to become the elements and causes of their joy. He illustrates this by an example within the common experience of all.
God turning sorrow into joy
It is the characteristic of God in redressing sorrows and afflictions, that He turns sorrow into joy, instead of substituting the one for the other. The image which our Lord uses is very apposite, because in the troubles of childbirth it is the presence of the unborn child that causes the pains of the mother, and when the birth has taken place, that which has been the cause of pain becomes itself the cause of her joy, and the joy caused is greater than has been the pain. It is not so with ordinary sorrows, in which the sorrow is removed but nothing more—it is exchanged for joy, not turned into it.
Where there is well-founded Christian hope, indeed, there exists some anticipation of this, as when we have to mourn for the loss of a parent or child or friend who has died happily and holily, and we have the remembrance of his happy end to dwell upon instead of the spectacle of his sufferings and last agony.
A mother losing an only child is comforted after her loss by the consolations of religion, especially when the last illness has, by the mercy of God, been made a succession of evident proofs that the sufferer has been continually aided by grace, and has been able to show that he has died in peace with our Lord.
It is needless to say that no sorrow of an ordinary kind could equal that of the Apostles at the loss of our Lord under all the circumstances under which they had to part with Him, for never was there affliction like that which then fell on our Blessed Lady and our Lord’s friends, but it is equally true that never was there joy on earth like that into which the sorrow was turned. There was no single feature of His humiliation which had not its own corresponding reward of joy and triumph.
And what then was repaid for the afflictions of the Passion to Him and them, has ever been repeated in principle since to those who have anything to suffer for Him, so that it has become the law of His Kingdom that sorrow shall be turned into joy.
‘A woman when she is in labour’
‘A woman when she is in labour hath sorrow because her hour is come, but when she hath brought forth the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.’
The pains and anguish of the childbirth are, under the present rule of God’s government, the natural and necessary conditions of the entrance of the child into the world, and for the sake of that they are loved by the mother.
‘So also you now indeed have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man shall take from you.’
The source of the anguish of a mother is short, and the joy remains long, for a child is born into the world, and that will remain true, and a comfort to the mother, as long as the child lives. The sorrow of the Apostles for our Lord’s Death was indeed greater than the sorrow of any mother in her travail could be. But it came to an end at the moment when He manifested Himself to them after the Resurrection.
Moreover, the joy of their hearts was in proportion to the bitter sorrow they had undergone at the death of their Master, made perfect by their perfect faith in His Divinity, and their intelligence of the greatness of the redemption which had been wrought for them and for all mankind by the death which had been the cause to them of so deep, though momentary, a pain. It was a joy that could be felt, in its fulness, only by holy hearts which had been made partakers of the graces which that redemption conveys and is based on, shared by them in proportion to their love for Him, and their charity to all who with them are made glad thereby.
And He adds a last touch, too, when He says, ‘Your joy no man shall take from you.’ For all earthly joy can be taken away, but this joy cannot cease, because that on which it rests for its foundation can never cease, that is, the victory over sin and Hell and death which was accomplished in our Lord’s Resurrection. St. Paul may have had these words in his mind when he wrote the glowing passage in the Epistle to the Romans:
‘What then shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or persecution, or the sword? But in all these things we overcome because of Him that hath loved us.
‘For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor might, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’1
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Romans viii.