Joyful Mysteries of Marriage

Recently a friend and I prayed a rosary specifically for our vocations of marriage. In the world today, it is clear that the institute of marriage is under great attack. As divorce becomes more and more prevalent, the perception of marriage continues to shift. The truth is that marriage is a sacrament and it orders man and woman to God for lifelong service to one another. The vocation of marriage is not easy, but it’s actually not supposed to be easy. It is supposed to be purifying. It is supposed to make us holy. Knowing this about marriage, my friend and I wanted to pray for our own vocations, in order to fortify our marriages.

The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.

Catechism of the Catholic Church 1601

The joyful mysteries guided our prayer that morning. As I meditated upon these mysteries in the light of the vocation of marriage, I began to realize that marriage can be likened to Jesus in each of these mysteries. 

It is the gift of the Incarnate Word in the womb of Mary that sets the stage in the first joyful mystery of the Annunciation. For those who are called to the vocation of marriage, we are gifted with this vocation from God. He is the one who created us, He has a purpose and plan for our lives, and our vocation is actually God’s will for our lives. Our vocation is the means by which God desires to redeem us. It is the call of a lifetime. When we see God as the Master Designer of our lives, when we can trust in His plan for us because He is good and He knows what will lead to our happiness, we can then begin to live a life of grateful surrender to God’s will.

We must pray for the desire to want what God wants for our lives. This is the beginning of how we can discern what vocation we are being called to, whether that be marriage, the priesthood, or religious life. If we are already living out our vocation, then we can begin to work on restoring this process of discerning your vocation by teaching others the importance of this very rest step. By learning how to discern God’s will for us thorough our vocation, we will learn how to open ourselves up to seeking God’s will in all aspects of our lives. At the Annunciation, there is nothing that indicates that Mary was caught off guard by the message of the Angel, this is because her whole life was already turned toward the Father. We can see in her response that Mary was a very prayerful young woman and that she was open to God’s will for her life.

Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

Luke 1:38

The next joyful mystery is the Visitation, which can be likened to the engagement period of the sacrament of matrimony. When man and woman commit to the one whom they want to spend the rest of their lives with, their vocation begins to grow within them. They begin to imagine their life with their future spouse and all the blessings that are promised to come with marriage and family. This type of foreshadowing and hopeful anticipation is what Mary and Elizabeth experienced in their initial encounter with one another. Both were pregnant with the gift of a new life with an entire future ahead of them. Mary and Elizabeth’s lives were about to change forever as they were on the threshold of motherhood. But Mary was also carrying the Son of God in her womb. This child was the promise of the salvation of the whole world. The future of all mankind was about to be changed forever by the Incarnate Word. Mary and Elizabeth knew this and they were not focused on themselves. They were rightly ordered in their glory and praise to God. Elizabeth’s response to Mary’s greeting, along with Mary’s Magnificat, reveal to us their hopeful hearts, which were ever turned toward God.

When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

Luke 1:41-55

How focused we can become in our world today on ourselves and our own needs, instead of focusing on God, on giving Him glory and praise. The engagement period between a man and woman is a time of hopeful anticipation. It is a time for the man and woman to order their lives toward God and the sacramental and lifelong union that they are getting ready to enter into with one another. Rather than the couple giving all of their time and attention to the planning of a perfect celebration, they can learn from Mary and Elizabeth and how they focused on and gave glorify to God in hopeful anticipation of the new life that was in store for them.

The third joyful mystery is the Nativity, which can be likened to the wedding where the actual marriage sacrament is celebrated. The wedding day is a great sign of the mystery of God Incarnate. It is a witness to all people, reminding them that just as God reached down from heaven, stepping into creation and uniting Himself with mankind in a most intimate way at His birth in Bethlehem, in the sacrament of marriage, man and woman are united to become one flesh;

‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Mark 10:7-9

Jesus gave of himself entirely to mankind in order to save us. He did the will of God, no matter what the cost; giving up His own life for the eternal life of all of mankind. Jesus birth, God being born into the world, shows us how to be completely other focused, instead of self-focused for our own benefit. It is actually the vows of the sacrament of marriage that confer the lifelong union between the man and woman. These words spoken by both husband and wife are covenantal because the two promise to give of themselves fully to the other. As man and woman enter into covenant with one another through the sacrament of matrimony, they receive the sacramental graces from God to serve one another. It becomes the mission of the husband and wife to help their spouse get to heaven. No longer are the two self-focused, but through the marriage covenant, they become other-focused.

As life goes on, they become not two compatible beings who have learned to live together through self-suppression and patience, but one new and richer being, fused in the fires of God’s love and tempered of the best of both. One by one, the veils of life’s mysteries have been lifted. The flesh, they found, was too precocious to reveal its own mystery; then came the mystery of the other’s inner life, disclosed in the raising of young minds and hearts in the ways of God;

(from “Three to Get Married” by Venerable Fulton J. Sheen)

The Presentation in the Temple is the fourth joyful mystery, which is when Mary and Joseph take the child Jesus to the temple to present Him as an offering back to God. If we continue to look at Jesus in these mysteries as the vocation of marriage, then we can understand how both husband and wife must surrender their marriage, the gift of their vocation, back to God as a sacrificial offering. What God has given man and woman through their vocation, they are called to offer back to Him in gratitude. By doing this, the couple entrusts their vocation to the providence of God; they order their marriage, their family and their lives toward God. In this, husband and wife make it clear that their lives are consecrated to God, and they give God permission to lead them, so that they may better serve one another and their children in charity.

This is an important part of marriage because it directs both husband and wife to God. As both spouses journey toward God, they actually grow closer to one another. While this may not always be the case, that both spouses make this commitment to God, we must remember that the two are one flesh. Where one spouse is stalled on the journey toward God, the other can and should persevere in this journey, not only for themselves, but also in order to bring their spouse closer to God by way of their own witness of self-sacrificial love.

Imagine a large circle and in the center of it rays of light that spread out to the circumference. The light in the center is God; each of us is a ray. The closer the rays are to the center, the closer the rays are to one another. The closer we live to God, the closer we are bound to our neighbor; the farther we are from God, the farther we are from one another. The more each ray departs from its center, the weaker it becomes; and the closer it gets to the center, the stronger it becomes.

(from “Three to Get Married” by Venerable Fulton J. Sheen)

Finally, in the fifth mystery, Mary and Joseph lose the Child Jesus, but after searching for Him they find Him in the temple. When thinking of Jesus as the vocation of marriage, this situation can be likened to the struggles of marriage; husband and wife can in fact lose sight of their vocation. This is when married couples can learn a great deal from Mary and Joseph. What was their response to losing Jesus? Mary and Joseph searched diligently for the child for three days, until they finally found him in the temple.

Marriage is a lifelong mission of service to your spouse. As a couple, when things get tough, husband and wife must search diligently for what it will take to renew their vocation. Just like Mary and Joseph found Jesus in the temple, the vocation of marriage can always be found in the Church, in the truths of the Catholic faith, in the sacramental grace that the Church offers through the sacraments of Confession and Holy Eucharist. There are many avenues for healing for marriages, many of which have wonderful solutions to some very tough problems, but ultimately we must also be looking to the Church for guidance and healing. No matter what therapy may be out there, ultimately it is the Lord who restores marriages. The sooner we realize this, the quicker a struggling vocation of marriage can be found and restored.

Marriage is a call to holiness. It is a call to joy through self surrender. There are other means by which we can become holy, but our vocation is the primary source, it is the meat. While the world tells husbands and wives to search for happiness in material things, jobs, experiences, and other relationships, God calls us to happiness right in the midst of our primary relationships, the marriage and the family. As we continue to prepare our hearts for the coming of Jesus at Christmas, let us pray for our marriages, for all married couples, or for our own future vocation if we are still discerning. May we take this time to draw nearer to the Lord, so that He can become our source of hopeful anticipation on our journey to heaven.