The Joy of the Incarnation

     When I was a little boy, my parents would sit us down for family Rosary time.  Now there is nothing more agonizing for a child, to be told to sit still and repeat a mantra over and over again.  There were better things to do, such as zoning out in front of the television, reading comic books, or even trying to be the champion at Super Street Fighter II (I was always Ken).  But, regardless, my parents tried to do family Rosary time.  Of course we would alternate on the Mysteries and such, and of course as a child, I'd want to pray the Joyful Mysteries, particularly #3, being the Nativity, since I could then zone out and think about what I wanted for Christmas.  And as a child, I thought that the Sorrowful Mysteries were juts plain...downers.  As usual, I'm leading somewhere, I swear.
     The Mysteries of the Rosary recap the major events in the lives of Jesus and Mary.  Our general nature is to prefer the Joyful events, the Glorious events, and maybe even contemplate the Luminous events.  The Sorrowful ones however are the most human of them all:  1. Jesus begs God to get Him out of this situation; 2. Jesus is beaten bloody; 3. Jesus is ridiculed; 4. Jesus walks the plank; 5. Jesus is executed. 
     These would be considered the embarrassing moments in the life of Jesus.  They show Him at His most human, broken, weak, and scared.  Jesus, while hanging on the Cross recites Psalm 22, whose wording in the first few verses actually questions whether or not God cares.  But then we have to remember the words of St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:23, that we proclaim Christ crucified.  Are we then proclaiming that our God is human?  In fact, yes.  This was an argument in the early Church that lead to heresies such as Arianism, eventually rectified by declaring that Christ was both fully human and fully divine. 
     By being fully human, Jesus shares in our human nature, both the best and the worst of it, in all things except sin.  The worst of it is outlined in the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary.  The Incarnation is the fact that God became man.  The joy that we as Christians have is that not only did God become man, but that, as a man, God experienced all the troubles and failings that we experience (except sin).  By experiencing these things, God in the person of Jesus shows us how to achieve our own salvation, not through abstract commandments and weird decrees, but through example.  Otherwise, John the Baptist would have been enough for us.  But our God became one of us to live as one of us and die as one of us.  So then, maybe the Sorrowful Mysteries aren't so sorrowful after all.  Maybe, they're the red badge of courage that we can proudly profess.