In her brave surrender, body forms. Flesh and bone knit together, fearfully and wonderfully, the perfect Sum of all humanity. Within her womb the cosmos and the cell are One. 

And she becomes the mother of the Church—for just so are we, strange mixtures of star and sinew, knit together across centuries into the Body of the living Christ. 

We are joined by water and blood into his own birth, passing through death and into his own life. And now we each raise our lives, dripping and screaming from their baptism, and pronounce them pathways to glory. 

Now we undergo this act of slow and hidden creation. Invisible threads are knotting corners of our hearts to the souls of long-gone years. It seems unthinkable that from these clusters of carbon and cell, growing in fits and starts and in seemingly opposite directions, will come a revelation of the Resurrection and the Life in full. 

In this dimly-lit surrender, the Body of our Lord still forms. 

Within the womb of centuries, the Cosmos and the cell are one.