Sometimes I miss being pregnant. Despite any morning sickness and the extreme fatigue of the first few months, each pregnancy gave me a feeling of excitement and anticipation.

In my mind, and on a very small scale, I’ve often compared that feeling of anticipation with the little thrill you get when you receive a surprise package in the mail, or when a girl buys a five-dollar surprise grab bag from a store. “What’s inside?!”

I would wonder at the faces I would soon be looking at, the eyes that I would gaze into. Boy? Girl? Hair? No hair? Eye colour? What would make them smile and coo? Who were they, and who would they become?

When Andrew was born, I would look at him and wonder at the thought that this little human person, created in the image and likeness of God, was mine. My own body grew him and sustained him. I had no idea what it meant to be a mother, but still, somehow, he made me one.

When Madalen was born, my first and only girl, I had a slight feeling of terror. How could I be a mother of a girl? What did it mean? I had only had boys and had only had brothers. Could I give her what she, specifically, would need from me? In a strange way she made me try to become someone softer, someone even more adventuresome, and not quite, but almost, someone’s sister.

I suppose it could be wrapped up with words like wonder and awe. They each came to us, packaged with the challenge of discovery and change.

I sometimes wonder if, in the consumerism of Christmas, we have lost the wonder of gazing into the eyes of a child. Our nativity scenes are pulled out and placed on a shelf. Like us, your nativity may be a mass-produced scene with off-centred eyes, or maybe missing an arm, or donkey ear. The scenes are lovely, but somehow mythical and cartoonish.

If your nativities are still on display, as they should be during the season of Christmas, you may pass by without much thought for a mere part of the Christmas decorations. The Christ Child is lovely, but perhaps not quite living and breathing.

But the God-Child came to us specifically as a living and breathing infant. He came to us to be discovered, to share himself with us, and to change us and make us into something different, something more than we were before. He calls us to become more human, made in the image of God.

I think that he is asking us to hold him and to gaze into his eyes as we seek to truly know him. God the Son left behind his heavenly throne, so that we might know him. And as we look upon him with anticipation and wonder, we will also discover something new about ourselves.

I read these words, written by Cardinal Antonio Bacci, and feel that they are worth pondering over the Christmas season, as we seek to know Christ more deeply, and to know ourselves more truly:

“Like the simple shepherds, let us prostrate ourselves with faith and with love before the manger. Let us offer, as our gifts, our good resolutions; let us offer our hearts and ask God to change them and make them entirely his forever.

“Quite suddenly, the darkness of the night and the wretchedness of the cave was illuminated by a bright light from heaven.

“While men were unaware of, or indifferent to, the miraculous event which had taken place, bands of angels descended from heaven and sang: ‘Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace among men of goodwill’ (Lk 2:13-14).

“Joseph bent over the divine Infant and silently adored him, while the Blessed Virgin knelt at his Feet in loving contemplation.

“Let us too, learn to adore and love him, as his Mother and Foster-Father did.”