The soul and heart are regulated by humility and charity. The next step to be taken in the way of perfection is to remove the obstacles that lie in that royal road. These are principally temporal, goods, corruption of the senses, and self-will. To this effect we find three virtues successively proposed to us in the last three Joyful Mysteries of the Holy Rosary- namely, detachment, purity, and obedience.
Let us go to the crib of Bethlehem and give ear to its teaching. Jesus is born in a stable, is laid upon a little straw, is poorly covered by scanty swaddling clothes. The heart of His Mother is wrung with grief because She has not for Him even what the poorest mothers ordinarily have. Bear in mind, dear Christian, that it is not fatality or the caprice of fortune that imposed on the Infant Jesus this great misery; He voluntarily took it upon Himself. Master of all things, He could have been born, like earthly kings, in a grand palace decorated with the richest tapestry; He could have surrounded Himself with servants ready to move at his beck; He might have been provided abundantly, even luxuriously, with everything necessary, useful, or agreeable. He preferred to be despoiled of all to teach us to despoil ourselves.
The crib is the first pulpit of the Christian teacher. Listen, it says to us, listen, O Christian! and learn that the goods of this world are not made for you; they are brittle and uncertain; they are without honor; they are burdensome and dangerous!
Today you possess them, but tomorrow capricious fortune may snatch them from your hands. And even when you have taken every precaution to hold them till the last moment of your life, the hour will come at length when you will be separated from them for ever and present yourself before the tribunal of God empty-handed!
You possess them, but of what value are they to your heart and soul? May not a man be the most ignorant, the most silly, the most ridiculous, and the most contemptible of men, and yet have money in abundance? Can grace and virtue, the only treasures that are never lost, be bought with gold?
You possess them; but how many anxieties, cares, troubles, plans, labors, unquiet desires, how many inconveniences to increase them or preserve them as you received them, weigh down your soul and body!
You possess them; but you should know that they have a fatal power of fascinating you and of engendering in your heart a mad love which dries the sacred sources of compassion, petrifies the heart and makes it hard and unfeeling to the poor. Riches produce an insatiable thirst for more; criminal desires also which make a man ready for shameless injustice. They beget a spirit of vain ostentation, which in turn produces extravagant and scandalous luxury. Riches multiply temptations, and open to the human soul all the avenues of corruption.
This is the reason why our divine Master chose to be born in poverty, want, and misery; this is why the saints, after His example, have generally stripped themselves of all worldly goods.
In presence of the crib let us detach ourselves from all worldly and sensual desires.
If we possess nothing, let us not envy those who are rich. Let us not give to the world the ridiculous and wretched spectacle of those poor for whom God has prepared and made easy the road to perfection and salvation, yet who encumber themselves with restless and feverish desires.
If we possess something let us resolutely detach our hearts. Let us be of the number of those of whom our Blessed Saviour speaks: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Let us possess riches only to carry out good and noble works, representing herein the providence of God towards the poor. Let us endeavor to open for ourselves an avenue to the hearts and souls of the wretched who murmur against their hard lot; thus we may become to them pioneers of God's truth and grace and make for ourselves friends in heaven.
If we are detached in this manner we will see, without the least regret, the approach of our supreme and final deprivation; we will turn the vulgar and precarious goods of this world into the eternal goods of heaven; we will live tranquilly, sweetly abandoning ourselves to the holy will of God; we will keep steadily in the path of perfection, our hearts being closed against the seduction of riches; then will we have a true claim upon the caresses and benevolence of Jesus, the King of all the poor.
- text taken from Fruits of the Rosary, by Father Jacques-Marie Louis Monsabre, O.P.