Joy is the echo of God’s life in us. ~ Columba Marmion
When asked why he convened Vatican II Pope John XXIII replied: “To make the human sojourn on earth less sad.”
Christian joy is not tied to a particular object, but to the experience of God’s unconditional love for us. Christian joy comes from knowing God and from trying to follow God’s will. Joy means rejoicing in God. But we can see from the Magnificat that, when Mary rejoices in God, she is also celebrating the liberating action of God in history. Mary rejoices in a God who is faithful to the poor. Our service of others must be wrapped in this joy. Only work embraced with joy truly transforms. ~ Gustavo Gutierrez
Today, the Third Sunday of Advent, is Gaudete Sunday, that is, Rejoice Sunday. The fact that today we celebrate with joy, that the liturgical color shifts for one day from violet to rose, signals that during Advent we are not merely play acting. When we read the stories of this season, when we look out on a world still plagued with irreverence, indecency, unkindness, violence, prejudice, hunger in a world of plenty, desecration of creation—the original sacrament of God’s love—we are not pretending that we do not know the end of the Story. We do. The end of the story is liberation, the fullness of joy, the joy of serving one another, and the foreverness of life in God. We claim this by faith. And yet, even still we cannot fathom what it will mean, what “the experience of God’s unconditional love for us” will be like in the never ending story of God’s extravagant love.
Today, halfway through Advent, in the midst of our waiting, preparing, yearning, hoping, we insert a hint of the joy that we will celebrate with more exuberance not only in two weeks but in the fullness of time. The mystery of the Nativity accentuated at Christmas is the one same mystery as the mystery of Creation, the Cross, Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost: the power and presence of the incarnation of love. With awareness of the salvific Story incarnated in Jesus, we acknowledge and remember ourselves to the mystery—about which legends are told—that the wood of the crib and the wood of the cross which bring ultimate joy were hewn from the one same tree. The joyful and glorious mysteries of life are what they are because of the sorrow that is still a constant companion for so many on earth.
When we enter more deeply along the way in this season of Advent with it’s emphasis on being still, patient waiting, journeying, yearning, trusting, beholding, and hoping, our joy is slightly restrained so that we can more fully leap for joy at the celebration of the withness of God—Emmanuel—on Christmas, the Nativity of the Lord. Now we prepare, then we celebrate in earnest. Now we recoil, then we leap for joy. First we fast, then we feast.
I am the fifth of six children. I remember well the protocol and the progression of Christmas eve and Christmas day instilled in us from our parents. It was just a simple thing, but it was meant to impress upon us the meaning of Christmas day. We had to get dressed for church before we could run to the living room and peer wide-eyed at the presents under the tree. We had to stop at the threshold between the dining room and the living room from one end or between the entryway and the living room at the other end. We were like panting dogs sitting in front of a bowl of food waiting to be told “okay.” But even after gazing at all the wrapped presents, we had first to go to Mass, and afterward to visit the manger and the babe in the crib before we could go home and open presents, and then only when all eight of us were present. The greatest joy is shared joy. First the waiting, then the fulfillment of the promise: I am with you.
Our joy is real but restrained also because we are mindful that for so many “Joy to the World” is still only words to a carol and not yet a daily reality enacted and experienced by all. So we wait in joyful hope, not just for the feast day of this December 25th when we will sing “Hodie, Christus natus est,” but also and especially for the full and forever coming of the One who alone can permanently alleviate our deep yearning. Even at Christmas 2019, when we give ourselves wholeheartedly to the joy that is a response to Emmanuel—God with us— it still is not completely full. Just as the joy of Gaudete Sunday alludes to a greater joy at Christmas, so too the joy celebrated each Christmas alludes to the everlasting joy that is a response to the gospel of the foreverness of life in God’s love. The rose of joy is tinged with the violet yearning for when all will be one, when every tear of sadness will be wiped away, when the madness of war, cruelty, callousness, and oppression will be no more, and when hatred, indifference, selfishness, greed, and the lust for power will be put to death. In the words of St. Paul,
“At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror,
but then face to face.
At present [we] know partially;
then [we] shall know fully, as [we are] fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12)
We wait in joyful hope for the final coming of the One who gave life, sustains life, and makes possible living in the foreverness of divine love. It is the incarnation of love that awakens us to joy, that makes our hearts glad for the birthing of God in our midst, that calls us to the joy of service, that makes our hearts sad because the world still suffers from the refusal of humanity to participate in making the kin-dom of God a lived reality “on earth as it is in heaven.”