Gaudete! Rejoice... and keep getting ready!

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the 3rd Sunday of Advent, Year C

The theme of this Gaudete Sunday is joy. Gaudete is command in Latin… “Rejoice.” It comes from our entrance antiphon today, the verse assigned by the Church to set the tone as we begin our Mass. I read it before the Sign of the Cross, and this year the same text is found in our 2nd reading:

Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice!

We have been waiting for two weeks, and we have nearly two more to go, and the Church wants us to be encouraged in our waiting and anticipation, and even filled with joy. The result of spiritual preparation is a deep, lasting, and abiding joy.

One of the most vivid experiences of joy that I have myself experienced came two summers ago when I had the beautiful opportunity to accompany our diocesan pilgrimage group to World Youth Day in Madrid. We were led by Bishop Sample, and I was directly responsible for a group of our campus ministry students. With them I tramped all over Madrid, moving through enormous crowds of young Catholics from all over the world. I had expected that this profound immersion in the universal Church and the encounter with Pope Benedict would integrate head knowledge of the Church into their hearts, and our prayerful discussion each night demonstrated that this was in fact happening, both for each of them and for me. However, when I interviewed each of them weeks after we had returned home, what struck me was how so many of the young people made reference to the deep and lasting joy that was still present and tangible in their hearts. Having prayed, worshiped, sang, laughed and danced with millions of young Catholics from every nation under the sun and with the Holy Father, these college students were able to speak of the joy that was still informing their daily lives weeks later. I was humbled and impressed by their insight and the authenticity of their experience of God at work in His Church.

These same young people had often been exhausted, footsore, thirsty, and bewildered during those same days in Madrid. We had waited in lines for hours at a time, pressed into enormous crowds in the Spanish heat. It was clear that like us, many people were not recently bathed!  We slept each night packed together in rows in a stuffy school building which we shared with hundreds of other pilgrims, including a large group of Italians that didn’t even get home until midnight, forget about sleeping!

This is the mysterious of authentic Christian joy… it can coexist with and endure great hardship. It is not superficial happiness or a veneer of fake cheerfulness. The prophet Zephaniah exhorts Israel to “shout for joy” and to “be glad and exult with all your heart’ even as they are surrounded by enemies and the likelihood, humanly speaking, of failure. This weekend we all have heavy hearts in light of the terrible shooting in Connecticut, and we cannot help but grieve with the families of all those who died. Yet even into the midst of such circumstances, Paul’s message to the Philippians, and to us, still rings out:

I shall say it again: rejoice! Your kindness should be known to all. The Lord is near. Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Paul spoke to communities surrounded by persecution and misunderstanding… he’s not reminding them that the Lord is near for nothing. They have every worldly reason to be anxious, afraid, and discouraged. When we look around this mortal and broken world, even during this Advent season, we can find plenty of reasons to be discouraged. When we look even within our own families and recognized the brokenness and struggle that takes place between those who should love each other well, we can certainly find cause for anxiety. And, yet, there is more to the story. Our hope and our courage is not in this world alone. We are not called to be optimists who rely on positive predictable outcomes on our own schedule… rather we are called to hope in the Lord, and even to rejoice in the midst of sickness, sorrow, and struggle.

Hearing John the Baptist's call to repent and to begin anew, the people asked him, “What should we do?” In light of our coming commemoration of Christ coming in time, and our preparations to meet Him at the end of time, we too can rightly ask, “what should we do?” John the Baptist's reply is simple, but hard to live out: we should share what we have with those in need, we should treat others with fairness and justice, we should turn away from all sin. This is how we prepare to receive our Lord and King… and this preparation equips us to weather the storms of this life so that we might keep our eyes fixed on the calm joy of eternal life.

We have 10 more days to get ready… and we need them, as the struggles and tragedies of this world make all too clear. Please don’t jump the gun and skip the preparation. Prepare in prayer, in penance, in reflection now, so that your hearts might be truly open to the full joy of our coming feast!

+ A. M. D. G. +