Joyful Mysteries

Third Mystery – The Nativity

The Rosary relates the Christian life to that of Mary. The four great mysteries of the Rosary – the Joyful, the Sorrowful, the Glorious, the Luminous– are the brief description of earthly life contained in the Creed: birth, struggle and victory. The Christian life is inseparable from the joys of birth and youth, the struggles of maturity against the passions and evil, and finally, the hope of glory in Heaven.

Reflection

As the virgin conceived Our Lord without the lusts of the flesh, so now she brings Him forth in joy without the labours of the flesh. As bees draw honey from the flower without offending it, as Eve was taken out of the side of Adam, without any grief to him, so now in remaking the human race, the new Adam is taken from the new Eve without any grief to her. It is only her other children of the spirit, which she will bring forth at Calvary, who will cause her pain.  And the sign by which men would know He is God was that He would be wrapped in swaddling clothes. The sun would be in eclipse, Eternity in time, Omnipotence in bonds, God in the shrouds of human flesh. Only by becoming little likewise, do we ever become great.