7 Ways the Joyful Mysteries Put Us in the Christmas Spirit

During Advent, most Christians long to find and fully embrace the Christmas Spirit. We hope to uncover it while engaging in festivities with our loved ones and while remembering cherished past Christmases we shared with our loved ones who are no longer with us. We look for it in Christmas carols, cards, warm greetings, seasonal treats and on colorful lights and ornaments hanging from Christmas trees. We even hope to catch a glimpse of it while shopping for Christmas gifts and while enjoying the serenity of snow-covered landscapes. And while we sometimes find it in all of these places, our immersion in the Christmas Spirit is usually a fleeting one. So, how can we sustain it through Advent and the Christmas season?

At least one way we can find and help sustain the Christmas Spirit can be found in the words of Saint John Paul II. Like most of our modern popes, he had a special, enduring devotion to the Rosary. He understood the powerful impact it has on our lives and our souls. “With the Rosary, the Christian people sits at the School of Mary and is led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depths of His love,” the former pontiff wrote in “Rosarium Virginis Mariae.” “Through the Rosary, the faithful receive abundant grace, as though from the very hands of the Mother of the Redeemer.”

Experiencing the beauty and love of Jesus through God’s grace is at the heart of the Christmas Spirit. And while praying the Rosary helps us to better understand the unequivocal beauty and love of Jesus, praying the joyful mysteries of the Rosary helps to put us in the Christmas Spirit. Here are seven ways it does so.

Focusing on Jesus

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The most wonderful way that praying the joyful mysteries helps us to find and maintain the Christmas Spirit as much as possible is that it helps us to truly focus on the reason for both the season of Advent and the Christmas season. The joyful mysteries help us to really focus on Jesus. They help us to set aside the stress, sadness and superficiality that creep into the holidays.

On Christmas Eve in 2016, Pope Francis gave a homily that beautifully described the Christmas Spirit. “With the shepherds, let us enter into the real Christmas, bringing to Jesus all that we are, our alienation, our unhealed wounds, our sins,” the pontiff said. “Then, in Jesus, we will enjoy the taste of the true spirit of Christmas: the beauty of being loved by God. With Mary and Joseph, let us pause before the manger, before Jesus who is born as bread for my life. Contemplating his humble and infinite love, let us simply tell him: Thank you. Thank you because you have done all this for me.”

Rejoicing in Anticipation of Christmas

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Praying the first joyful mystery, The Annunciation, helps us to embrace the beginning of the life of Jesus. It helps us to rejoice in the anticipation of Christmas. And it’s one of the most ideal Rosary mysteries to weave into our lives throughout Advent.

As we focus our minds and souls on the miraculous appearance of the Archangel Gabriel to the young virgin Mary, we can feel the excitement in his astonishing announcement to her – that’s found in Luke 1 – when he said “Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.”

Sharing Our Anticipation with Others

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Like praying the first joyful mystery, praying the second one, The Visitation, helps us to rejoice in the anticipation of Christmas. But praying the second joyful mystery accomplishes something else as well. It encourages us to share that joyful anticipation with our family, friends and neighbors. It also invites us to happily give of ourselves and share our gifts generously as we celebrate the seasons of miracles together.

As we pray the second joyful mystery and meditate on how Mary immediately began her journey to help her cousin, Elizabeth, prepare for the birth of John the Baptist, we can clearly see how selfless the mother of Jesus is. It’s a difficult journey, and she has so much to prepare for in her life, but she makes the journey and helps care for her much older cousin with love. And we can see how Mary, Elizabeth and John the Baptist are overwhelmed with jubilation.

In Luke 1:42, it is written that Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and cried out “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And how has it happened to me, that the mother of my Lord would come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord.”

Reminding Us of the Reason for the Seasons

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It’s obvious how praying the third joyful mystery, The Nativity, helps us to find and truly embrace the Christmas Spirit. It reminds us what Christmas is all about. And reflecting on the beautiful birth of Light in the darkness and the infinite joy which God gives to us through the birth of Jesus can also help us to set aside the aforementioned stress, sadness and superficiality and find peace, comfort and hope by entering into the Christmas Spirit.

“Gladness also fills the scene in Bethlehem, when the birth of the divine Child, the Saviour of the world, is announced by the song of the angels and proclaimed to the shepherds as ‘news of great joy’ (Lk 2:10),” St. John Paul II (then Pope John Paul II) wrote in “Rosarium Virginis Mariae.” He later added “To meditate upon the joyful mysteries, then, is to enter into the ultimate causes and the deepest meaning of Christian joy.”

Rejoicing in His Presence

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Praying the fourth joyful mystery, The Presentation, leads us to the Christmas Spirit by allowing us to meditate on the joy that members of the community experienced when Jesus was carried into the temple by Mary and Joseph to be presented to God. Through the Holy Spirit, both Simeon, a righteous man, and Anna, a prophetess, recognized Jesus as Our Saviour. They were overjoyed. And they were also grateful.

This mystery helps us to feel that rush of amazement and gratitude that they experienced because Jesus was with them. Simeon had waited his whole life to see God’s promise to him that he would see Jesus. And Anna’s excitement is also moving. In Luke 2:37, it’s written “She never left the temple, serving night and day with fastings and prayers. At that very moment, she came up and began giving thanks to God, and continued to speak of Him to all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.”

Reuniting with Jesus

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When we pray the fifth joyful mystery, The Finding of Jesus in the Temple, we can find the Christmas Spirit in a couple of ways. It’s in the tremendous sense of relief that Mary and Joseph experienced after finally being reunited with Jesus. But it’s also in reflecting on the discovery of Jesus that He is the Son of God.

In Luke 2:49, it states “And He said to them, ‘Why is it that you were looking for Me? Did you not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?’ But they did not understand the statement which He had made to them. And He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and He continued in subjection to them; and His mother treasured all these things in her heart.”

His humble response to this discovery also inspires us to be humble. And being humble during these two extraordinary seasons helps us to more fully experience the majesty of Christmas.

Finding Peace

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Finally, praying the joyful mysteries of the Rosary during the Advent and Christmas seasons can help us find the peace that’s part of the Christmas Spirit. Praying them can help us to accept the peace that God gives us through Jesus, and it can help us to be more at peace with those around us.

In “Rosarium Virginis Mariae,” St. Pope John Paul II wrote about how praying the Rosary can bring us peace. The saint wrote “The Rosary is by its nature a prayer for peace, since it consists in the contemplation of Christ, the Prince of Peace, the one who is our peace (Eph 2:14). Anyone who assimilates the mystery of Christ – and this is clearly the goal of the Rosary – learns the secret of peace and makes it his life's project. Moreover, by virtue of its meditative character, with the tranquil succession of Hail Marys, the Rosary has a peaceful effect on those who pray it, disposing them to receive and experience in their innermost depths, and to spread around them, that true peace which is the special gift of the Risen Lord (cf. Jn 14:27; 20.21).

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