What do we see in a human embryo who is tinier than a snowflake in his or her first days of life?

In that minuscule body we may “see and almost touch the hand of God,” Pope Benedict XVI said Feb. 27 to the participants in an international congress on “The Human Embryo Before Implantation.”

“Man was given a very high dignity, which has its roots in the profound bond that unites him with his Creator,” the Pope remarked. “In man, in every man, in any phase or condition of his life, shines a reflection of the very reality of God.”

The colorful frescoes of the Vatican’s Clementine Hall, picturing important scenes of the Church’s history, seemed to echo the Holy Father’s words. “The magisterium of the Church has constantly proclaimed the sacred and inviolable character of every human life, from its conception to its natural end,” Benedict added.

I had the privilege of participating in the Feb. 27-28 congress organized by the Pontifical Academy for Life. More than 250 scientists, doctors, bioethicists and theologians from various nations came to the Vatican to discuss the scientific updates and bioethical considerations of a human person in his or her very first week of life.

How does conception come about? What happens in the first 200 hours of an embryo’s life before he or she is implanted in the mother’s womb, which protects and nourishes him or her during the following nine months? How reliable is prenatal diagnosis?

Scientists and experts presented their latest findings on these topics in the Vatican’s well-equipped synod hall. Renowned Catholic philosophers such as Robert Spaemann discussed the human dignity of the embryo.

We enjoyed a family atmosphere. It was easy to make friends with men and women who are fully committed to the spread of what John Paul II called “the gospel of life.”

“I am glad to express my appreciation and gratitude to the Pontifical Academy for Life for its valuable work in research, formation and information,” Benedict said in his opening remarks. “Due to the urgency and importance of the issues studied, I consider that the establishment of this institution by my venerable predecessor John Paul II was providential.”

In his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love), Benedict recently reminded us that the Church is, by her very nature, committed to diakonia (the ministry of charity).” And what better diakonia can we have than protecting the life and integrity of the unborn, whom Mother Teresa called the “most defenseless of the defenseless”?

In their slide-show presentations, scientists showed us impressive pictures of a minuscule rounded body in its first hours after conception. How small and fragile that body is! Yet it has an infinite value. The reason?

“The love of God does not make distinctions between the newly conceived infant still in his or her mother’s womb, the baby, the youth, the grown adult or the elderly, because in each of them he sees the sign of his own image and likeness,” the Holy Father said. “This boundless and almost incomprehensible love of God for man shows to what degree the human person is worthy of being loved for himself, regardless of any other consideration — intelligence, beauty, health, youth, integrity and so forth.”

Unborn Jesus

We understand this truth better in light of the mystery of the Incarnation. God himself became once a zygote, a morula, a blastocyst — a tiny embryo before his implantation in Mary’s womb.

The brochure of the congress displayed the picture of an Eastern icon, showing Our Lady and St. Elizabeth embracing each other. Transparent in their wombs, a small Jesus — in the shape of a well-formed fetus — blesses a small John the Baptist, who is bowing to him.

When Mary visited her cousin, Jesus had been conceived only a few days earlier. “Elizabeth,” St. Ambrose once said, “sensed the arrival of Mary; John sensed the arrival of the Lord.”

The Gospel passage of the Visitation, Benedict noted, “gives witness to the hidden but active presence of two babies.”

It doesn’t matter that a human person is tinier than a snowflake at the beginning of life. He or she is infinitely loved by God.

In the end, he or she is as tiny as their Creator was when he became a human being for our redemption.

Legionary Father Alfonso Aguilar

teaches philosophy at Rome’s

Regina Apostolorum University.