Luminous Mysteries
One
Baptism in the Jordan: God is a Father who Delights
When St. John Paul II added a new set of mysteries to the Rosary, alongside the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries, he called them the Mysteries of Light. They’re called “mysteries of light” because light reveals what is hidden. It takes what’s dark or unknown and makes it clear. In the same way, each of these events in Jesus’ life reveals something about God, who He is and what He’s like.
In this first mystery, the Baptism of Jesus, something is revealed about God that He tells us about Himself explicitly, as explicitly as you could ask for. A voice thunders down from heaven and declares, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I delight.”
What an amazing thing to know about God! God isn’t some impersonal force. He isn’t just some pure, self-thinking thought. He isn’t just an impartial, indifferent ruler who governs all things. God is a Father. And a Father who takes delight in His children. This is the first and most fundamental truth about God. It’s the truth that grounds everything else. God is a Father who loves us.
As St. Paul VI once wrote, this was the foundational truth on which Christ Himself based his life, “If Jesus radiates such assurance, such happiness, such availability, it is by reason of the inexpressible love by which He knows that He is loved by His Father.”
So too with us, this first revelation of God’s character is the revelation that grounds the Christian life. God is a Father who loves us. Who likes us? God is a Father, and in us He is well pleased.
Two
Wedding at Cana: God’s Delightful Gifts
The first thing to know about Our Heavenly Father is that He delights in us. The second thing to know about Him is that He’s very generous to us. Jesus points out that God is a giver of good gifts. Even human fathers know not to give their kids stones when they ask for bread, how much more does God give generously to those who ask of Him! “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” James 1:17.
Jesus knew this better than anyone. He said that everything He had came from His Father, even His very life. As God the Son, He receives His divinity eternally from the Father’s generous love. At the wedding of Cana, we remember that God is the giver of even the natural gifts and joys we have. God is the one who gave Eve to Adam and Adam to Eve. And Christ began His public miracle at a wedding, which is fitting, because marriage is the most intricate and intense complex of natural loves and natural happiness that there is. And it all comes from God.
God is the one who gives grapes and the laws of fermentation and human ingenuity to make wine, wine, which, as the Psalmist says, gladdens man’s heart. And Jesus, who came to give us supernatural goods, doesn’t refuse a request even for this small natural good of extra high-quality wine at a wedding.
The wedding at Cana shows us that God is a good Father who gives us good gifts, because He wants us to be happy. He gives us the natural pleasures of the body and the natural beauties of marriage and family life. And these are only a foretaste, only a reflection, of the infinite delights and eternal love that He has in store for His beloved children.
Three
Sermon on the Mount: God’s Moral Perfection
In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ shows us that God is morally perfect. The mythological gods of the pagans were often immoral, childish, selfish, and intemperate. But the true God is good, patient, pure, merciful, loving, and truthful. And He wants us to be like Him. The whole Sermon on the Mount is an expression of the ways we are called to imitate God, which means it’s not just directions for us, but a revelation of God who is our model.
That’s why Jesus says, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The Sermon on the Mount is, above all, a celebration of God’s moral perfection. We admire and love holy, virtuous people, but what makes them holy and virtuous is that they’re like God. So realize how admirable, how lovable, God is, who gave us the Sermon on the Mount.
Four
Transfiguration: God’s Awesomeness
God is a Father who delights in us. He’s also a Father who gives delightful gifts to us. And He is a good, kind, merciful, and noble Father. But He is also an awesome God. He is infinite power, infinite strength. He is terrifying in His majesty and pulverizing in His energy. To see God is like being struck by lightning; to draw near to God is to swim in the sea in the middle of a hurricane.
And Christ reveals a hint of God’s awesomeness on Mount Tabor. He glows with the force that made and sustains the galaxies. He summons the dead from their rest, and a voice from Heaven declares His Authority, this is my beloved Son, LISTEN TO HIM!
We must love God, we must admire God, we must delight in God, but we must not forget to listen to God. And how do we listen to him? By Daily Meditation. Read or listen to the Word of God. Think about it and apply it to your life. See the gap between what he says and how we think and live. Make a resolution, a decision to practice some concrete good action today.
Five
Institution of the Eucharist: God’s Love
Finally, this last Luminous mystery reveals the extent of God’s love. Personal love always involves a desire for union. It always celebrates togetherness. When persons come together in love, in union, it’s called “communion” – and it is the astonishing sacrament of Communion that Christ institutes at the last supper.
God is a God of Love. He is a God of communion. The Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father, and the Holy Spirit is in both. The technical term for the way each member of the Trinity is “in” the others is “circumincession,” but essentially it means that God achieves in Himself that perfect union that is the goal of love. And He wants us to share that union of love with Him.
During the Last Supper, Jesus says that God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all wish to come and dwell in our souls. That we may be in them as they are in one another. And as a sign of this desire to dwell within us spiritually, Christ gives us the miracle of the Eucharist, so that He can even dwell inside us physically. The God who delights in us, who is so generous to us, who is both supremely good and supremely powerful, this God loves us and wants to be united to us more intimately than we could have ever imagined.
This is the God Christ has revealed to us. This is the God we’re praying to right now. Look how much He has loved us!
Dear God, you have shown us enough through these mysteries for us to love you back. You have given us reasons to love, now give us the will. You have given us the light of love’s fire in these luminous mysteries, now give us the heat!