The Empty Manger: A Powerful Image For Lost Children
By Carolyn Ferguson
There was a lot of blood and guttural sounds. A heart broken, a faltering will. Sweat and tears. Maybe that’s the cost of heaven, whether that’s for ourselves or paying the price for someone else.
And as I felt her slip from my body, riding a low moan, I birthed her right into eternity.
The moment your baby passed from your arms or trickled from your body in an agony as dark as the garden, she was received by an intimate corner of heaven reserved for such little ones like your own.
Jesus’ delicate fingers unwrapped themselves from His father’s thumb, and He turned from His mother’s caresses. He got up from the snugly warmth, the linens still softly imprinted by his little precious body with a scent lingering of Him. Jesus left the safety of His mother’s soft curves, moved out of His father’s protective shadow, and offered His cradle as a final resting place for those whose breaths could be numbered.
And during the season of Advent, my does this image of an empty manger wreck me. It’s everywhere: a cradle but no baby.
Your child might not have a name, may never have taken a breath, she may never have a stone on the earth in memory of her, and some may even dispute her existence…but she has a home. And she is eternally known.
And so now the most Blessed Mother of all mothers offers her own milk; she gives her own arms to perpetually hold, and shares her own veil to swaddle this little soul. St. Joseph keeps watch, as if this baby were his very own. The importance is embedded in the dark circles beneath his eyes, even as he tucks the baby’s little arms into the swaddle and drapes his arm around his wife’s shoulders. Together, they gaze at the little one entrusted to them.
I close my eyes, still bleeding, my womb no longer a tomb. She’s risen.
A tender love pours out of the Blessed Mother’s heart, and she delights in her and holds her close. She kisses her ear and whispers little mementos of immaculate love, sometimes sharing what you yourself whispered in prayer. Choirs of angels sing lullabies and lull her to sleep.
And Jesus? He left the warmth and safety of that domestic love so that your little one might have a home. The manger is empty because Jesus has offered it as an eternal resting place for little souls, just as He offers us His cross. And that’s where we find Him now, pinned like thumbtacks to a death warrant—His arms wide, conquering the very death that took your little one.
My arms may be empty, but at every single Mass, I take our daughter Noel and offer her as my greatest and most precious offering. And the manger now serves to remind me of that great hope: that our Savior lives and will come again. That the Lamb of God was filleted and pummeled and crucified so that we too might live, both in this life and the next.
Even in the midst of the miscarriage or abortion or the infant’s final breath or the trauma that roars to life years later, we know that abundant life is found on the other side of that Cross. That our babies are there: sleeping in the manger. Protected. The war of the womb can no longer touch these souls. Jesus came for and by and through and because of the love you have for your child.
Blood and guttural sounds. A mutilated heart, a desperate will. Sweat and tears. Maybe that’s the cost of heaven, whether that’s for ourselves or paying the price for someone else.
I began writing this piece after my friends lost their baby minutes after giving birth. Two weeks later I become pregnant with my first child. This piece sat dormant for five months, and then upon losing our daughter, I finished it during the season of Advent.
