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12/12 - 3rd Sunday of Advent 2021 - GAUDETE SUNDAY
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Dear Parish Family,
Rejoicing even when our eyes tear up!
Today is called “Gaudete” Sunday because today’s Mass begins with the Entrance Antiphon, “Gaudete in Domino semper” (“Rejoice in the Lord always”). Today we light the rose candle of the Advent wreath, and the priest wears rose vestments, to express our communal joy in the coming of Jesus, as our Savior. Advent’s themes of happiness and hope can annoy someone who is hurting. When you are burdened with the chaff of ego or the weight of anxieties, forced joy and canned happiness disgust the best of persons.
Yet it is nothing but our diminishment, our losses, our sadness, our weight of sin that Advent confronts and calls us out of. Somehow it is the pathos of our own melancholy that must be cheered away. It is our sense of exile, our cramped confinement, the weight of our psychic baggage that must be burned off by the fire of love. It looks like mere utopia. But it is real. The crowds John encountered had, themselves, little reason for joy. Aware of their own need for deliverance, they felt a glimmer of anticipation that he might be the messiah. He counseled justice and rectitude, but the promise that John spoke of was something far more than they might have suspected or wanted: The one who is coming will give them power to overcome all odds! “He will baptize you with Holy Spirit and fire.”
John the Baptist, the stern and uncompromising preacher, translating his message to our times would challenge our superficial attempts at change, demanding that we take a deeper look at ourselves. Obeying the commandments is a good start, but we must then examine our relationships with others. We must mend ruptures, ease, or eliminate frictions, face family responsibilities, work honestly, and treat employees and employers justly. Start where you are, John says. Our domestic and social lives must be put in order. John’s voice is sober and runs counter to the intoxicating voices around us. We must abandon our selfish thirst for consumption, and instead, be filled with the expectation of Jesus’ coming.
In the light of John the Baptist’s advice, we might consider what we can share with others this Christmas. John does not ask us to give everything we have but only to share - to offer a meal to a hungry person, or to visit a sick neighbor, or to share in the funeral expenses of a poor neighbor, to practice active love and compassion, and to have social awareness. Further, we must do an honest job in fulfilling our vocation. So, a teacher should value his\her students and reach out to them, doctors and nurses should treat their patients with attentiveness and understanding, attorneys should be defenders of justice for all, citizens should exercise their right to vote justly, workers should do a just day’s work for their pay, employers should pay fair wages without discrimination, a married man or woman should give his/her spouse the first place in his/her heart, an employee should treat his\her customers well, working honestly for the hours he/she is paid, and we should help the rest of our countrymen by paying our local, state, and federal taxes honestly.
Let us remember that conversion is an ongoing process effected by our daily cooperation with Jesus, whom we encounter in the Sacraments especially the Eucharist. Regular monthly Confession makes us strong and enables us to receive more grace in the Eucharist. Forgive those who offend us and pray for them. Share our love with others as selfless and humble service. “Do small things but with great love” (St. Teresa of Calcutta, “Mother Teresa”). Thus, Christian joy and Advent invitation to rejoice, does not come from the absence of sorrow, pain, or trouble, but from an awareness of the presence of Christ within our souls through it all.
Blessings,
Fr Tom, C.O