Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent, Year C
Brothers and sisters:
Rejoice in the Lord always.
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.— Phil. 4:4-7
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice! The apostle tells us with an imperative and reiterated command to rejoice—always.
But is it possible to be rejoicing always? Are we not often enough bored or anxious or pained or indifferent or just plain sad? How could we possibly rejoice at all times? It would seem to be impossible.
My daddy always hated it when in the seventies waiters started saying “enjoy your meal.” He would reply, “Is that an order?” Enforced enjoyment is almost a contradiction in terms. We all know the kind of family or social situations in which there is the impression that we have a command performance to “put on a happy face.”
Now, obviously the sacred scriptures and the apostle Paul cannot enjoin on us something unreasonable, so it must be possible to rejoice at all times. How so?
The Italians have a saying that gives us a hint of how it is possible, no matter what the circumstances. They say, mal commune mezzo gaudio: “A shared evil is half a joy.” I heard this for the first time after waiting forever for a Roman bus, and all the would-be passengers began to murmur among themselves, and I could tell that the complaining was actually forming a kind of bond among people who normally stood quietly waiting to go back to the office after their pasta and siesta.
The apostle tells us also in the letter to the Hebrews that Christ, “for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame.”
St. Thomas teaches us that joy is the immediate response of the rational soul when it perceives that it has laid hold of some good thing that it loves. Love equals joy: a very simple equation. Now, love has many forms and states. Sometimes it is full possession, sometimes it is just around the corner, sometimes it is longed-for and far off. Love stretches from this world to the next. Love includes the future and the past as well as the present. Love even includes those who do not love us, at least yet. Love can reach to things we have lost and it can find new things to love in the midst of our losses. But when we have love we have joy.
Are you sad? Then mourn over one whom you love or long for one you want to see and you will have joy. Granted, it might be a joy that is bittersweet, but this kind of love, the companion of sorrow, has caused a lot of joy throughout the ages.
This season of Advent is the season of joyful expectation, but a waiting, longing of the ages groaning under the weight of sin and death and exile. C.S. Lewis used the beginning of a poem of Wordsworth for the title of the tale of his conversion, Surprised by Joy. The poet had lost his three-year-old daughter and had turned in a moment of unexpected joy in his sorrow as though she were still there.
Surprised by joy — impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport — Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind —
But how could I forget thee?
In his writings, Lewis used an interesting German concept to explain his meaning of joy, and it is one which is very appropriate to our present state in this vale of tears. The Germans call it Sehnsucht, longing.
If we all long for the love of God and his holy ones, for our reunion with those whom we have lost in death; if we long to be set free by his grace from our defects and sins; if we long to return to the childlike happiness of Christmases past; and if we all long together, we will have joy at all times, and we will have the next gift: the peace of which the apostle speaks in today’s epistle, of which St. Thomas says, Now peace implies these two things, namely, that we be not disturbed by external things, and that our desires rest altogether in one object.
May the Holy Child grant us this rest in himself and in each other in the coming holy time.