The Third Joyful Mystery of the Rosary is the Nativity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, more often known as Christmas. The fruit most commonly associated with the mystery of the Nativity is poverty of spirit, the first of the eight Beatitudes.
Meditation on the Nativity:
"And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him up in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn" (Luke 2:7). God has humbled Himself to become man, and the Mother of God gives birth in a stable. The Creator of the Universe and the Savior of the World spends His first night in that world lying in a feed trough, surrounded by animals, and their food, and their waste.
When we think of that holy night, we tend either to idealize it—to imagine it as neat and tidy as the Nativity scenes on our mantels on Christmas Eve—or we think of the physical poverty that Jesus and Mary and Joseph endured. But the physical poverty is merely the outward sign of the inward grace in the souls of the Holy Family. "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:3). On this night, Heaven and earth have met in a stable, but also in the souls of the Holy Family. The Beatitudes, writes Fr. John Hardon, S.J., in his Modern Catholic Dictionary, "are expressions of the New Covenant, where happiness is assured already in this life, provided a person totally gives himself to the imitation of Christ." Mary has done so, and so has Joseph; and Christ, of course, is Christ. Here among the sights and sounds and stench of the stable, their souls are one in perfect happiness, because they are poor in spirit.
How wonderful is this poverty! How blessed we would be if we, like they, could unite our lives so fully to Christ that we could see the fallen world around us in the light of Heaven!
