3rd Joyful: The Nativity of Our Lord

There was no room. The Word through whom the stars were made is laid in a feeding trough for animals. The shepherds come — the unwashed, the unimportant — and they are the first to be told. Heaven is not afraid of poverty; heaven seeks it out. We meditate on a God who chooses smallness, and on the cradle that already foreshadows the cross.