Third Sunday of Advent, “Gaudete” Sunday
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice. Indeed, the Lord is near.” – Phil 4:4-5
These words of the entrance antiphon that gives today the Latin name of “Gaudete”, set the tone for this week of Advent. We are over half way to Christmas, and the celebrations of Christ’s Nativity have come that much closer to us. Yet, we may wonder, should the Church not temper the antiphon’s insistence this year. Does not the command to rejoice seem inappropriate, not only in an American, but in our global context? Perhaps. Yet, the question of appropriateness could have also been raised at the time of Paul’s writing to the Philippians this very command. He writes from prison. (Phil 1:7) He writes as one expecting the possibility of being executed. (Phil 1:20) We know that in the end he was executed while a prisoner. And still, the Church in Philippi kept his words, and shared them with other local churches, and now the whole world sings them in anticipation of Christmas. What did Paul know, even in chains, even when staring death in the face? What knowledge did the Philippians receive from Paul and hold as so precious, as the mysterious source of their joy in such dark times? “Indeed, the Lord is near.” (Phil 4:5)
It is the nearness of the Lord that leads John to move from his solitude in the desert to banks of the Jordan river and to begin crying out to the inhabitants of Judah: Prepare! This Lord who sends the Holy Spirit upon John gives him the message that we must get ready for the Lord God who is coming. And just as the people prepared for that coming by opening up to God’s grace in the waters of the Jordan, so too we as a whole Church do not assume that we are automatically open to God’s coming and the joy that the Lord brings. Instead, all throughout the world we ask the Lord today, “enable us, we pray, to attain the joys of so great a salvation”. Perhaps in some other time we could presume a superficial joy in this season. This year, however, we know better than we have known in quite some time, the real need of grace to prepare our hearts for a joy more solid than Paul prison bars and more certain than his death sentence. God is the one whose nearness we long to feel and to celebrate. Let us pray with the whole Church to know that He is indeed among us, even if we do not yet recognize Him. (Jn 1:26)
Let us pray for the faith Paul passed on to the Philippians, and that they shared throughout the Mediterranean; the faith that survived the persecutions of the first centuries and the thousands upon thousands of martyrdoms of the 20th century, the faith that brings joy which is stronger than death itself, because it is joy that finds root in nothing else than the Lord of life. This week let us pray with Paul in his chains, with our brothers and sisters in our sufferings around the world and across time, confessing again and again the cause of true joy that we pray will be our joy: Indeed, the Lord is near. Indeed, the Lord is near!