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A friend tells me about an experience he had in prayer recently. He was meditating with the Visitation, when Mary visits her cousin, Elizabeth, who was thought to be barren, but is now in her sixth month.

You know the story: “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb’” (Lk 1:41-42).

As my friend is imagining himself in this scene, he is first an outside observer, but then Mary turns and looks directly at him. In an extraordinary moment of intimacy and tenderness, she invites him forward. As he draws near, she takes his hand, and places it gently and precisely on her belly — and just then, as you might guess, Jesus kicks. In his imagination, my friend and Mary laugh together at this notion: the Savior of the world kicking his holy mother. My friend is moved by the holiness of this moment and is renewed in the knowledge that Jesus wants him to be part of his family.

I am struck by the inherent nobility that is bestowed upon humanity in this moment, and that the invitation to enter into it comes to us from Jesus through Mary. We are invited to touch him and know him in his humanity and vulnerability.

The theologians call it our “ontological nobility,” the fact that our very being is exalted because we are creatures created by the Creator. And that because God chose to take on human nature and walk among those created in his image and likeness, all humanity is exalted. In “Jesus Christ, Fundamentals of Christology,” Father Roch Kereszty writes, “In Christ human nature has reached its highest, freely bestowed actualization. … This has radically changed not only the situation but also the concrete nature of every human being. Because of the incarnation, to be a man or woman means to be a brother or sister of God the Son and to have a right to be loved by him as his own brother or sister.” (Emphasis mine.)

In other words, Jesus has bestowed upon you the right to be loved, even and perhaps especially in your humanity and vulnerability. The source of this nobility rests solely in God.

If I believe this, then the question becomes, do I live in the awareness of such nobility? Do I live nobly? Do I help others around me to recognize their intrinsic nobility, and treat them as though they are in fact royalty, whether or not they recognize it? And most important, do I see in the vulnerability of the Infant-King that vulnerability itself is exalted?

Ignorance on this point cannot be overstated. Whether willful, malicious or honest, it results in abortion and euthanasia, harvesting the organs of the vulnerable, and every kind of taking advantage of the poor and the needs of others.

As the world rails against the Almighty Creator and espouses the eradication of social ills through human effort and do-goodery, a thin kind of humanitarianism, Christians must live a radical nobility, one that vigorously, tenaciously protects the truth of life from conception to natural death and the exalted reality of the human person, especially when he or she is vulnerable.

In this holy season of waiting for that bright Infant to pierce the darkness, don’t forget your nobility. Don’t forget where it comes from or who gives it to you or what it is meant to accomplish. It’s the greatest Christmas present you will ever receive.

O Come, Emmanuel, ransom us from every evil that attacks our right to be loved.

Kelly is the author of nine books, including “Your Heart, His Home Prayer Companion” (2019) and “Love Like a Saint” (2021). Visit her website at lizk.org.