The Joyful Mysteries - Meditations by Abp. Fulton Sheen
The Annunciation
In the Annunciation, the birth of the Son of God in the flesh is made dependent upon the consent of a woman, just as the fall of man in the gardens of Paradise depended upon the consent of a man.
God, in His power, could have assumed human nature through an act of force, analogous to a human hand plucking a rose. But He did not wish to invade His great gift of freedom; He desired man's voluntary response. Through the angel greeting Mary with the words that became the first part of the Hail Mary prayer, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you,” Mary was asked whether she would give God to man!
Mary, learning that she would conceive without human love, overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, gives her consent, which gives rise to a new humanity; Mary becomes the new Eve, and Christ the new Adam.
The Annunciation is the Mystery of joy flowing from freedom. Our free will is the only thing in the world that belongs to us. God can take away everything else-our health, wealth, power-but He will never force us to love Him or obey Him. The grace of the word “yes” lies in the possibility of saying “no.”
Mary teaches us to say our fiat to God. “Let it be to me according to your word.” But God Himself teaches us that since He would not violate the freedom of a woman, a man should never do so either.
The Visitation
The Gospel tells us: In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!”
(Lk 1:39-42)
The first miracle performed by our Lord on earth took place while He was still in His Mother's womb. He moved the unborn John and made His presence known to Elizabeth, Mary's kinswoman. In this way, long before Cana, our Lord shows that He performs His invisible miracles in hearts through His Mother, and that it is also through Her that He comes to human souls.
The joy of the second Mystery is the meeting of the Old Testament with the New, and the greeting of an old woman by a young virgin, who sang the Magnificat-the most revolutionary song ever heard, foretelling the day when rulers would be brought down from their thrones and the humble exalted.
Yet at that moment, when Elizabeth is the first to call Her the Mother of God, even before the birth of our Lord, Mary responds to her with a song stating that she owes her greatness to Him, and that she was chosen because of her lowliness. Perhaps Mary was chosen to be the Mother of God because, in her promise, she renounced honors. Though she was greater than Elizabeth, she visited her in her hour of need. Only when we humble ourselves do we become greater in the eyes of God.
One of the most beautiful moments in history was the meeting of expectancy with expectancy, when future mothers became the first heralds of the King of Kings.
The Nativity of Jesus
All love becomes like the object of its love. God loved man, and therefore He became man. Thanks to human nature, He could take upon Himself our misery and pain, and He could also feel the effects of sin as if it were His own sin.
But all this depended on Mary, who gave the Son of God human nature. Without Her, He would never have had eyes to see the hungry crowds in the wilderness, He would not have had ears to hear the plea of the lame man in Jericho, He would have had neither hands to embrace children nor feet to carry Him in search of the lost sheep.
For nine months, Her own body was a natural Eucharist; now Her joy is to form Christ in our souls. In this Mystery, let us pray that we may become pregnant with the spirit of Christ, giving Him new lips through which He can speak of His Father, new hands with which He can feed the poor, and a new heart with which He can love everyone, even enemies.
The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple
Every child is an arrow shot from a mother's bow, and its target is God. Children come through mothers, but they do not belong to them. Mary recognizes the Divine right by offering Jesus back to God and sacrificing the temple of His Body in a temple built by human hands.
In this act, Mary foreshadows the joy of every mother who brings her child to the baptismal font, where God can claim His right of ownership. However, in Mary's case, the Child was to be sacrificed, for-as the aged Simeon said-He was to become a sign of contradiction, because the cross is contradiction.
Mary even heard that a sword would pierce her own soul. This was to happen at the moment when the Heart of Her Son on the Cross was pierced with a spear. His Body and Her soul were to be pierced by the same thrust of the sword. She was the only mother who ever brought a life into the world so that it would go to its death.
God does not want gifts from us; He desires our presence, He desires us to sacrifice our lives to Him.
The Finding of Jesus in the Temple
There are two kinds of souls in the world: those who hide from God, and those from whom God hides. When God hides, He does so to be sought all the more, as if He wanted to draw a deeper love out of us.
During those three days in which the Divine Child was lost, Mary became the mother of sinners. The essence of sin is the loss of God, and Mary lost God-not in a spiritual way, but physically. During those three days, Mary experienced the loneliness of the sinner, the solitude of the guilty person, the sense of abandonment characteristic of frustrated people. Twenty-one years later, Her Son Himself was to experience this loneliness on the Cross, when He asked God why He had forsaken Him.
Let no sinner doubt God's mercy, because Mary understands the tortures of the heart, and above all-because She knows where to find Christ. She also knows how to bring the sinner to Her Divine Son. As the Madonna of the Empty Arms, Mary is always waiting to embrace you.