On May 27, 1537, the bells of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London rang through the air. Bonfires were lit all over the city, and free wine was distributed to the poor. Spontaneous celebrations spread outward through the countryside. As far away as Oxford, people crowded into churches to give praise to God. And why? One Oxford preacher said it best from the pulpit. “Like one given of God,” he boomed, “the child quickened in the mother’s womb.”[i]
The mother of whom the preacher spoke was Queen Jane Seymour, wife of King Henry VIII. The child was the future King Edward VI, the prince for which king and country had forever longed. The identities are still well-known to us, but that verb is archaic. We no longer use it and may have lost its meaning: “The child quickened in the mother’s womb.”

Prior to our modern era, there was no more important or momentous occasion in a pregnancy than the quickening. It was the moment at which the mother first felt the baby move within her womb. Practically, until the age of sonograms, the quickening was the surest indicator that a woman was, in fact, pregnant. Legally, the quickening was a moment of distinction. For instance, a pregnant criminal could be executed prior to the quickening but not after. Philosophically and theologically, ancient thinkers as far back as Aristotle considered that the moment of quickening coincided with “ensoulment,” the animation of a fetus into a life.
But beyond even all of this, and even as the term has fallen completely out of use, the quickening alludes to something both more profound and intimate. In the eighteenth century, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote after the quickening of her child, “I begin to love this little creature and to anticipate his birth as a fresh twist to a knot, which I do not wish to untie.”
That resonates with me, though admittedly, of course, no father has ever actually experienced a quickening. That first flutter is an encounter solely between mother and child. Even so, I remember being slack-jawed and stupefied some weeks later, the first time Jill took my hand and placed it on her stomach, when Griffin shifted, and I felt within Jill a life. A fresh twist to the knot, indeed.
That feeling is more than joy, more than wonder, more than relief. Even though it is hoped for and expected, the quickening is nevertheless the stop-you-in-your tracks end of a world. With the barely-detectable brush of a tiny foot or elbow, everything that has gone before plummets in relative importance, and everything that lies ahead is miraculous with possibility. Though the child is still far from birth, every priority shifts in that moment. The focus of every concern changes. Where we were the center of our lives, we now see that we live to protect, support, form, and raise this child we do not yet see. The very what and why for which one lives alters radically, and all with a flutter.
Whether the womb is that of queen or pauper, Cathedral bells should ring. Wine should be shared (though not with the pregnant mother!) and toasts made. Preachers should proclaim the wonder and grace of God. With a quickening, something new has announced that it will enter into our world, and with each entrance the cosmos is made new.
It is the quickening of John that Elizabeth experiences in today’s Gospel. Luke the Evangelist tells us, “In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb.”
For Elizabeth, this moment has been a lifetime in coming. She was barren and far beyond the possibility of childbearing by any worldly means. Elizabeth’s and her husband Zechariah’s lives had long been lived through the hard experience of what the world offers and what it withholds. Yes, some months prior the angel Gabriel visited Zechariah and promised John to them, but the message was so unbelievable, the life-changing promise so impossible, that Zechariah literally had no words to voice it. Until this moment, the angel’s promise was ephemeral and unreal. Until this quickening.
Mary approaches, the baby leaps, and the world changes. Neither John nor Jesus is yet near birth. The pain of delivery is months away, the fearful flight to Egypt further away still. The parents’ apprehensive witness to Jesus’ precocious upbringing and John’s wild streak is on the distant horizon. John’s execution, followed by Jesus’ crucifixion, won’t occur for decades. Easter morning is still unfathomable. Yes, and yes, and yes. But it is at this moment that the world tilts on its axis. It is this moment when, for Elizabeth and Mary (and I daresay for Zechariah and Joseph, too) everything changes. You cannot un-feel the quickening. The child—in this case the both the harbinger John and the savior Jesus—have made known that they are alive, and gestating, and readying themselves to enter our world. And for those who love them, or who anticipate loving them, it is the quickening rather than the birth that reorients life. It is the quickening that grants the realization that the Messiah is not theoretical—not a theological concept or a vague hope, but actual, and real, and poised to incarnate God in our midst—that jolts us out of our old reality and into this stupefying new one. It is the quickening that opens Mary’s mouth and fills her lungs, that gives voice to the Magnificat.
Friends, this is what Advent is all about. As much as I love all the cozy preparations for Christmas, the right frame of reference isn’t hot cocoa and eggnog. The right frame is that completely unexpected, unpreparable moment when we feel the flutter and cannot deny it; when we know that, through the new hasn’t quite yet been born, everything is already different; when—on a dime—everything that long held value and our attention is meaningless compared to what we know comes next. Do you understand what I’m talking about? Every mother does. Every father does. Indeed, anyone who has ever placed a palm on a pregnant stomach and felt the uncanny, wondrous, eye-watering, Cheshire cat-grinning movement of new life knows how it changes everything. That’s where we are this day. That’s what we’re supposed to feel a week before the Nativity. The world we’ve been walking through until this moment isn’t the world in front of us. What that old world offers and what it withholds isn’t the whole story. To be sure, as in the lives to come for Elizabeth and Mary, there will be pain, and apprehension, and bewilderment, and sorrow. But there will also be revelation, and grace, and resurrection when we least expect these things. Because the Incarnate God is alive, and gestating, and preparing to be born among us. This is the moment that shifts every priority and refocuses all concern. Where we were the center of our lives, we now see that we live to serve this child we do not yet see. Let the bells peal! Pass around the wine! Light the fires! Let the preachers boom! This is the quickening.

[i] https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/05/the-quickening-the-momentous-pregnancy-event-that-became-a-relic.html. All descriptions of quickening come from this article, including the Mary Wollstonecraft quote.