Third Sunday of Advent
Gaudete Sunday
Isaiah 61:1–2a, 10–11
1 Thessalonians 5:16–24
John 1:6–8, 19–28
The well-known English author G.K. Chesterton wrote in his book Orthodoxy, “Joy is the gigantic secret of the Christian.” It is indeed the distinguishing atmosphere of Christian life. It is the very heart of our vocation as a child of God. The root of joy is in our relationship with God. Joy is the expression of one who is loved by God and lives in God. It is not accidental to the relationship with God; it is fundamental. Joy flows out of one who knows they are loved by God. In a deeply real and personal way they have known that God delights in them. And that delight of God in them spills over, as it were, into joy.
Joy is a gift. It is a gift that is ours because we believe that God has reconciled everything and everyone to himself in and through Christ. God creating and reconciling means that God has restored everything and then lays it at our feet because he delights in sharing this gift he has wrought with us. Who is it that cannot rejoice when they become aware of this gift of wholeness and shalom that has been poured into their lap–given out of love?
Paul commands us today to rejoice, not once, not for a while but always. We as Christians, as those who have been incorporated into Christ are to live in joy and to communicate joy. Paul shares his joy with his community and wants them to live in it and to communicate it. We are to communicate the joy of being one in the Body of Christ, joy in believing, joy in the midst of suffering, joy in spite of suffering. Joy always. Joy is to illuminate the circumstances of life. For the Christian the shear happiness of being in relationship with God forever makes it possible to stand in every situation that would seem to separate us from the love of God. But as Paul says nothing can separate us from God’s love. Believing in that finds its expression in joy.
The contemporary spiritual writer Henri Nouwen described joy as “the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing–sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war and even death–can take that love away.” This joy is the fruit of the Spirit. It frees us from anything related to fear. It holds before us our identity as people who are created good, redeemed from ourselves, called by name and then made holy.
This Sunday has traditionally been called Gaudete Sunday. The word Gaudete means ‘rejoice’. It is the first word in Latin for the antiphon sung at the entrance of the liturgy for this second Sunday before Christmas. Its grammatical form is imperative!It is not a polite request; it is a command, just as Paul puts it to the Thessalonians and later to the Philippians. And it is one that we must also take to heart.
How can we have joy, you might ask, when we are surrounded and threatened by a pandemic, with economic hardships, fires, hurricanes and a very divisive and polarized political system. How can I have joy when sickness and death threaten or take the environmental crisis seriously or find the world I grew used to falling apart and slipping away? Fair enough questions. And those circumstances and questions will remain. The Christian has never said that life is without pain or the cross. But the Christian has always had God and Christ before him or her. God and Christ have always been within, poured there by love in the Spirit. The Christian knows the “always” of these relationships. The promise of Jesus echoes in our ears: When you walk through the pain, the joy you will have no one can take from you. Jesus did not mount the cross out of fear, he climbed the tree of the cross for the joy that lay before him. For the Christian affliction and joy seem to together. If we don’t hold them together, then we have lost the secret.
Here we are these days, perhaps, in the midst of what sometimes looks like loss after loss, death after death, change after change in a directionless movement. And yet the command this Sunday is “rejoice, always.” We do that precisely because Christ is coming; Israel did it because God was up front moving toward the community. We rejoice this Sunday because what we hope for is near. We do not look behind to see what is lost or how much ground we have covered, but look ahead to what is coming.
Two people in Scripture share and speak to us today about their experience of God and what calls them to rejoice and be joyful. The Spirit-filled prophet rejoices heartily in my God. Why? Because he sees that God is about embracing the poor and marginalized; he is about healing the broken hearted; he is about release from the past and from every injustice. Release, healing, seeing grace in the days ahead, trust and simplicity. The prophet sees all that coming and in it sees God’s faithful love.
Mary sings to us today her Magnificat: “My soul rejoices in my God.” For Mary and the prophet their joy is rooted in their relationship with God, “my God” they say. Mary experiences in God’s choice of her his favor, his personal love, which she will personalize by carrying the child in her womb. And she sees that love as transforming society: filling the hungry, emptying the pockets of the rich, helping his beloved community and above all showering mercy or put simply, loving. The prophet and Mary are joyful because they see God and Christ coming and continuing his creating and redeeming work. Not as something apart from them but as an expression of his love in which they are gifted to share. They are joyful because, as Paul says, the one who called them is faithful. When you know someone is there, simply there for you and with you, you, too, can be joyful.
“Rejoice always,” Paul says. But he goes on: “pray without ceasing” and “give thanks in all circumstances.” This is the triad of activity. This is the Advent ethic, what must be done. It is all command because it is all God’s will. It is want he wants. This behavior is what he loves and if you stand in it, you will be delighting in his love and the Father will be delighting in you as one of his own. Rejoice, pray and give thanks, not once or sometimes or when it is opportune, but “always, without ceasing and in all circumstances.” Doing this would be a real profession of faith that Jesus has come and that he is coming; that God has done great things and he is doing great things even now. Rejoice, pray and give thanks—do this and each of us will be a John the Baptist giving witness that light has come into the world and that humanity and God are at home with one another. And that is Christianity’s “gigantic secret.”
~Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB