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Classical

Carols are much weirder than we think

14 December 2024

9:00 AM

14 December 2024

9:00 AM

Why, my sharp-minded colleague Tom Utley once asked after a Telegraph Christmas Carol service, should anyone think God would abhor the Virgin’s womb? He was talking about the line in ‘O come, all ye faithful’ that goes: ‘Lo, he abhors not the Virgin’s womb.’ Wasn’t it a bit weird?

At last I found the answer in a book, Redeemer in the Womb, by the theologian John Saward, which brilliantly explores the unusual subject of what writers in the early Church thought about the months spent by Jesus in the Virgin Mary’s womb.

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