Navitavis Domini (It's Jesus' birthday story)
Third Joyful Mystery
Nativitas Domini
The Nativity of Jesus Christ — The Word Made Flesh Is Born
A precise word first. With our understanding of embryology, the Word became Flesh at the moment of His conception, just as every human being is an individual life from the moment of conception; except, uh, here it is God who took on flesh, kind of a one-time thing. So the Incarnation itself belongs to the First Joyful Mystery, the Annunciation, nine months before. What we celebrate at the Nativity is the manifestation of what began at Gabriel's word: the hidden Word made flesh now shown to the world.
The Nativity scene we know and love, through church plays, local nativity sets, the Gospel passages, and above all the Christmas Vigil and Midnight Masses, tells how the Lord of Lords, King of Kings, He who has come to save us and return us to the Father, comes to us as a baby.
The newborn King is made known in two modes at once, a true theophany, God shown to the world. The angelic host proclaims Him to the shepherds keeping their night watch, the lowly and unlettered called first. And to the wise men of the east He is made known through the scholars reading the Messianic prophecies, so that the learned come seeking Him too. This second visit, the coming of the Magi, is traditionally kept on the feast of the Epiphany, or in some regions Three Kings Day. The manger draws both the shepherd and the scholar; no one is too poor and no one too learned to kneel there.
The Magi bring three gifts, and each one confesses something true about the child. Taken together they name Him King, God, and sacrificial Man, the very divinity and humanity the later heretics would deny.
The Holy Family, St. Joseph, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and Jesus Christ, went on their way, and when Mary's time came there was no housing to be had in Bethlehem. No Marriott Suites, no Days Inn, no Motel 6 stood open for them, so they relied totally on God to provide their needs. They ended up in a biblical-era stable, surrounded by animals, and there the Blessed Virgin Mary gave birth to Our Lord. The King of Kings enters His own creation with nothing, and that emptiness is the point: poverty of spirit is the soul that clings to God alone and holds all else with open hands.
Pray each verse, then the Ave Maria, letting the Gospel of the Nativity carry the decade.
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