Rejoice Always! Again, I Say Rejoice!
Third Sunday of Advent. Fr Andrew Brookes preaches on the true meaning of Gaudete.
‘Rejoice always! Again, I say rejoice!’ Those words of St Paul are the entrance antiphon of today’s Mass. This is Gaudete Sunday, named after the first of those words in Latin. The priest wears pink joyful vestments to emphasize the point further. The Church wants us to rejoice and keep rejoicing.
It might sound attractive but joy is not an easy disposition to maintain. Even the most exuberant of personalities have off-days! And many of us do not have naturally optimistic upbeat excited personalities. But, of course, Paul and Mother Church are thinking supernaturally: ‘Rejoice in the Lord and by the power of the Spirit of the Lord! Joy is named by Paul second in the list of fruit of the Holy Spirit after love. Joy is the happiness we find in the love of God for us, and in living a life of love.
Sometimes we feel aware of the love of God for us, and our soul fills and even overflows with joy. But we will not always experience such consolation, and to ‘Rejoice always’ or even to ‘Rejoice most of the time!’ we need to put down deep spiritual roots into the foundations of our faith. We need to know and have a strong and steady faith in the loving presence of God, and firmly hold the conviction that nothing need separate us from that love.
For sure, plenty of challenges will come against that simple and attractive truth claim about the enduring presence and power of God’s love for us. And that is true however blessed we have been in the past.
Today’s Gospel provides us with a striking example: St John the Baptist. He has had the privilege if also the responsibility of going ahead of Jesus and preparing the people by his ministry. He even baptised Jesus and saw a vision of a dove descend upon him.
But we find him now in prison. And by this time, he has been in prison for several months. He had announced the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God, of the Day of the Lord in which God would fulfil all his promises to his people. Most probably, John, like the Jewish people more generally, expected it all to happen very quickly once the Messiah made his appearance. Public judgement of all was expected and the transformation or confirmation of the just as holy by the gift of the Holy Spirit to them.
But upwards of six months on from his baptism, Jesus was travelling from village to village, welcoming prostitutes and tax collectors, forming disciples for community and mission, whilst hostility was rising up against himself. Meanwhile, John faced the threat of execution, not escape and exoneration. Perhaps John was wrong. Perhaps he had misunderstood either the plan of God or who Jesus was. In his dark dungeon, this was also a dark time for him, perhaps even a dark night for his soul. Scholars debate whether this should be described as a faith crisis, or doubt or just a testing time. These possibilities make it possible for a variety of disciples today to relate to John’s situation.
Whatever the exact spiritual challenge, John reaches out to Jesus who points him to the clear evidence of God at work through Jesus, and then exhorts him to maintain his faith, and to trust God to deliver the fullness of the Kingdom in his own time, however long that made the ‘Day’ of the Lord’.
It worked. The praise Jesus then heaps upon him points strongly to John deepening his faith and rejoicing again in Jesus. Made strong through joy in the Lord, John is soon able to face his death with courage and joy. So John goes ahead of the Lord in dying for the sake of the Kingdom, as he had first gone ahead of him in announcing its arrival.
If John was tested, we can be sure we will be tested. On occasions we will ask ‘Is this really the plan of God for me?’ ‘Why has God allowed this to happen?’ ‘Is Jesus really who the Church says he is?’ ‘Should I really believe and trust in him – and rejoice in him?’
At such times, Jesus, through the Holy Spirit and perhaps human agency around us, will remind us of the truth of himself, of the constant teaching of the Church about him, of his miracles over centuries (often carefully investigated and approved), and of the ways he has actually blessed us in our lives.
Our faith is founded on truth – on facts, not feelings. We should hold onto such truths, remind ourselves of them, put deep roots down in them, and then, though the winds of life may buffet us, they will not knock us over, and rip us from our faith and from the presence of Jesus with us. Rather we will rejoice in his presence – a loving, forgiving and empowering presence – in a spiritual and largely constant way, even in the storms of life, and find strength to walk by faith, hope and love in him each day. Such joy will also help us to wait upon the Lord patiently and positively, rejoicing in him now and trusting the future to him, as James reminds us. So, joy in the Lord can always be our strength! Let us today renew our faith and hope so as to rejoice always in the Lord!
Readings: Isaiah 35:1-6,10 | James 5:7-10 | Matthew 11:2-11
Image: detail from John the Baptist visited by Salome in Prison by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, photographed by Lluís Ribes Mateu (CC BY-NC 2.0)
