Who Held Him First?

On the hands that welcomed the One who first held us

If Mary held him first, imagine the strength. After nine long months of growing, changing, stretching, and becoming someone new (by growing a changing and stretching someone-new), you have the courage and grit to know you can see this whole labor through. What began with a startle from an angel ends in your own two trembling hands, no one more fitting to hold him first than the one who has held him all along. Oh, it’s you, of course it’s you! Knowing the one you have never met, loving the one you have never seen. Once upon a time you might have thought it all impossible, but now you know better, wider, stranger, stronger. You have done what you thought you could never do, what no one imagined could be done. Why would God not give you such a small-great gift, to let you hold alone the one who has held Everything and Everyone?

Mothers can be the ones to pull their babies forth. Did you know that? I did not until a midwife once told me—in her warm strong voice I had come to trust, when I asked in wild despair is he coming yet?—“Why don’t you reach down and pull him out yourself?” And instead of sounding like the strangest, scariest question anyone had ever asked, it suddenly clanged true as the most natural next thing, as if I had been waiting all along for someone to give my body permission to do what it knew to do. I reached down with two hands and pulled him onto my chest, hot and wet and squawking, the most miraculous unfathomable ordinary, the womb-warm creature who has never known air or noise or cold, writhing into the shaking, loving arms of the one who carried him from the first spark of being. Here was the holy I held first, before anyone else’s hands touched him, for split seconds before nurses reached out with towels to rub and warm his skin, before his father bent down with tears and trembling hands like prayer, before we held each other, the three of us a trinity.

If his mother held him first, what power and privilege. What honor to complete the work she alone had been asked to do: to bear and birth and bring the Son of God, the God of the universe, into a weary world, rejoicing. What exaltation of women and their labor—all kinds, not just bodily: the caring, the holding, the tending, the knowing. What a gift for a mother who would lose everything (only to gain it back a hundred-fold, a heaven-fold) in his suffering and death, to hold him first and closest in his birth. Scripture tells us she was the one who acted: she brought forth her first-born son, she wrapped him in swaddling clothes, she laid him in a manger. Hail Mary full of grace, hands full with the newest human. Whether you held him first or not, all the truth was held.

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If Joseph held him first, imagine the humility. Imagine taking a child you did not conceive into your arms and call this helpless one your own, contrary to what everyone you know believes you ought to do. Imagine being part and present at a birth unlike any other, unlike anything you had witnessed before, but despite not knowing what to do, when she asks you to reach out your hands, you receive the greatest gift. Imagine your rough hands calloused by hard work, now caressing softest skin, a baby so brand-new you would never have held him under any ordinary circumstances. Imagine your pounding heart leaping to know he is yours, even if you do not understand how. Imagine giving him the name an angel gave you, a holy name that claimed him as your own and set him free to set us all free.

Fathers can do what you would never believe they could. I learned this when I sent the man I loved from my side in surgery, to take a paper cup into the NICU where our brand-new daughters would later die, and baptize them with the tiniest drops of water on their tiniest bodies. He held them with me as they left this world, just as we held each other when we welcomed them in. The holy circle of life completes itself, sometimes in the strangest ways. What if Joseph his father were the first to hold him at birth, fresh from his mother’s womb and ready to be swaddled, and then Joseph his follower were the first to hold him after death, fresh from the cross and ready to be wrapped in linen clothes again? The first in the last, and the last in the first; the birth in the death, and the death in the birth. The Author of Life writes the stories of our deaths, too. Perhaps there could be no more fitting way than to start and finish in the arms of a Joseph who followed to his own end.

If his father held him first, what beauty of beginning. The birth of a family created from chaos, out of nothing in the dark, changing the course of human history (and the whole cosmos) from the simplest words: Let it be. Let there be light. Let it be done to me. Let her be your wife, let him be your child. Scripture tells us Joseph gave the name Jesus, adopting him as his own (and ours, too). What true strength of man, to nurture with tenderness what is meek and mild. To know that adoption means more, never less. To embody foster as a lifelong vow to care and protect, to love and honor. To cradle the child who would labor alongside him, the carpenter who would one day mourn him. Hail Joseph, Guardian of the Redeemer, watching over the Son of God who never slumbers nor sleeps. Whether you held him first or not, all the truth was held.

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If a midwife held him first, it would mean God was touched first by a stranger. What a remarkable way to enter the world, into the hands of someone just like us: a sinful, singularly delightful human tasked with the holiest labor. What trust and timing, to come forth and know you will be caught, to leave the safe world you have known for the cruel one that will wound you. But never to resist, regret, or long for return: simply to release into the waiting arms that attend you, the welcome of a stranger who does not know your family but will never forget you.

Midwives birth more than babies; they birth mothers, too. You do not realize this until one is cradling you to her chest, rejoicing with pride at your beautiful birth (and the baby’s, of course). Or weeping with you when everything goes wrong, when everyone’s best efforts and hopes and prayers are still no match for the heart-breaking mysteries of mortality. I have never felt such love and care at the hands of anyone in my weakest moments until I knew a midwife like this, and she put skin on the face of God in a way that few humans ever have. She gave me a whole new way to pray.

If a midwife held him first, what honor of humanity. For a wise father to know when to seek help—and not to stop until he finds the best. For a stranger to answer the call in the night, in starkest need. For a woman to care with compassion for another she has never met. For ordinary tools of kitchen and home—linen clothes, a towel, a pitcher, a bowl—to become the sacred vessels of nativity’s liturgy. Scripture stays silent on the subject of who might have helped deliver the baby Jesus, but traditions and devotions outside the Gospels tell of Joseph seeking midwives to help Mary in her hour of need. Bless the untold stories, the forgotten heroes, the names lost to history. Whether you held him first or not, all the truth was held.

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Others held him later, Scripture says. Stories we still tell and stories we’ll never know. Simeon and Anna, prophets dumbfounded and delighted at the actual awaited one before their dimming eyes, the mewling messiah in their arms, the savior whose arrival ushered in their own ends. Mary and Joseph’s family and friends, too, learning to welcome an unexpected child in every ongoing sense of the word.

Others held him even later. Stories we still tell and stories we’ll never know. Who held him first after death? It might have been Mary in the painful, poignant Pietà we honor and heartbreak to behold, a mother with a lifeless child cradled on her lap. It might have been another Joseph, this time of Arimathea, along with Nicodemus, the men of the Myrrhbearers come to care for their leader and Lord after his death, to wrap his body again with swaddling clothes and lay him down, not in a manger but a tomb. Or it might have been a stranger again: a soldier strong-armed by a centurion or someone roped into helping the disciples touch the Jewish body the Romans scorned.

But always there is the heart-pounding, head-shaking question of what came next, what lasts forever. Stories we still tell; stories we’ll never know. The women embracing his feet, now standing again but bearing scars. Thomas placing his shaky fingers inside his still-warm wounds. Maybe his mother met him first in the morning. Maybe his friends clung to him before he left again. All we know is that so many tales of glory could be told, it would spill over the whole world with good news.

We are left with a single truth: he was held. From beginning to end and beyond.

Some of us know one side of the story, what it means to hold fresh life in your arms. And some of us know the other side, how it aches to hold fresh death. If you have done either, the memory will never leave you. The warmth. The weeping. The wonder. The wanting. Watching a body doing what it has never done yet knows how to do, driven by instinct and mystery, deep down in flesh and blood and cells and soul.

His favorite stories to tell were parables, a simple story with many meanings. A tale with a treasure hidden inside. A paradox that cracks open ordinary life to reveal the extraordinary tucked within. Perhaps the parable of Who Held Him First has no single right answer. It could have been mother, father, or stranger. Either one teaches us something true.

Imagine the warmth of that wet body in the cold night. Imagine the comfort of swaddling clothes and loving arms. Imagine whoever was there, beholding the mystery of the one who had beheld them first, all life long. Imagine the bold brash wonder, the wild birth of Incarnation, the jawdrop glory of Resurrection. Imagine any of us, all of us, holding him first.

Once in a blue moon, I start writing something in my head (like this piece, sparked to life on the drive home last night) and when I scurry inside to write it down, the whole thing pours out in one breathless start to finish. Rest assured that the vast, vast majority of everything is never ever as easy as this! But this one rushed out like my fastest labor (and took only about half the time). So I decided: maybe I was meant to give an early Christmas gift. Enjoy.

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If you want to savor the scant Scripture on Jesus’ birth, see Luke 2:1-7 (more about Mary) and Matthew 1:18-25 (more about Joseph). On the question of whether a midwife might have attended, the Protoevangelium of James makes a clear case. But I chose not to link it (though you can read the whole work on the New Advent Encyclopedia online) because the description of a second midwife’s physical interaction with Mary after birth is simply too jarring to share. (There’s good reason this source didn’t become Gospel truth.) But for more midwife images from Scripture, see Psalm 22 (verses 9-11 in NRSV or 10-12 in NABRE), Genesis 35:17, and Exodus 1:15-21. Orthodox and Byzantine icons often show a midwife caring for Mary or Jesus after birth, as this lovely reflection notes: The forgotten story of Mary’s midwife on Christmas.

However you hold Christ this Christmas—in communion or community, in prayer or hope—may you, too, trust that you are held.