‘When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman…’ (Gal 4:4).

We’ve heard it a thousand times. It can go in one ear and out the other without sinking in.

Do you know what this means? Woman is the earthly “opening” to heaven. Her body, her feminine mystery became the “open gate” through which the Lord of glory entered his creation.

There is something of the Infinite revealed in woman, something of heaven on earth, because in Mary, her body literally became heaven on earth: the dwelling place of the Most High God.

This is why the enemy’s hatred is aimed at woman (see Gen 3:15). This is why he wants to “devour her child” (Rev 12:4). This, too, is why our world is immersed in a pornographic distortion of the body.

Porno-graphy means “perverse writing” or “perverse story.” But the body is not in itself porno-graphic. The body as God created it to be is theo-graphic. The story it tells is the story of God: the story of the God who in the fullness of time sent his Son born of a woman.

If our minds and hearts have been distorted by the “perverse story” (porno-graphy) of the body, how can we allow the Incarnation (the miracle of Christmas) to restore the divine story (theo-graphy) of the body?