Tell them about “the cells”…

Today’s post is one of those posts which I’m writing purely for my own benefit. Who said this has to be selfless?! I’m hoping that, in the process of writing this, that the information will stay in my brain, or at the very least, make it easier for me to find when I forget it… 🙂

If any of you have heard Fr. Donald Callaway give a talk, you will have almost certainly heard him mention at some point something called Fetal Microchimerism, the biological process whereby cells from a fetus pass through the placenta into the mother’s own body (and vice versa).

The amazing thing about this process is that these cells have been shown to persist not only beyond pregnancy, but have even been found to remain in the mother’s body for decades afterwards. As far as I can tell, the scientific community is uncertain as to the consequence of the presence of these cells, with some suggesting that this is a source of potential disease, while others suggest that the child’s cells actually help to defend the mother.

When speaking about Fetal Microchimerism, Fr. Callaway reflects upon the intimate nature of the connection between mother and child. Even after a child has grown up, or even in the tragic cases of miscarriage or abortion, through Fetal Microchimerism, part of the child lives on in the mother.

Of course, where Fr. Callaway really goes to town is in the application of this biology to the area of theology. If this process is found in normal human pregnancies, then it is more than possible that this took place during the Blessed Mother’s pregnancy with Jesus. This would mean that some of the Saviour’s cells passed to His mother and remained there. The Lord’s human nature lived on in Mary’s body, even as He lay in the grave and even after He rose again and ascended into Heaven.

Not only that, if it is true that the child’s cells come to protect the mother from disease, then this has implications for Mary’s Assumption/Dormition, as well as providing a beautiful foreshadowing of the Eucharist, whereby Jesus gives us His Body, in the words of St. Ignatius of Antioch, as the “medicine of immortality”.