Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say: Rejoice.
You’ve likely noticed that it’s rose Sunday—one of only two times a year when we get these vestments. It seems to emerge in the tradition as a distinct lightening of the penitential violet. And this is meant to fit the tenor of the propers, for while they retain that note of judgment that is the theme of early Advent, they take on a decidedly more positive tone. Rejoice in the Lord always: Gaudete in Domino semper.
I want to hover over that word “rejoice.” It’s the word gaudeo in Latin, cairw in Greek. It occurs seventy-four times in the New Testament. Two of them we heard this morning: one from the Introit, out of Philippians, and the other from the epistle reading in 1 Thessalonians.
What, in the end, does this word mean? It’s a common word, especially in church. But the fact that we hear it a lot doesn’t mean that we understand it. Does it just mean “be happy,” or “be cheerful,” as some Bible translations have it? Does it mean something distinctly different from happiness, so that you can rejoice even when you’re not happy? To ask that assumes that we know what happiness means—which we probably don’t—apart from a vague sense of a feeling, or an emotional state, that is good. But there again it all depends on what good is, and whether it is possible to say anything rational about the good apart from our feelings. This is precisely the question that the modern world tells us we are not allowed to answer, so if we are to approach the question from the standpoint of today’s usage, we can really get nowhere.
But let’s look at the word in the New Testament. Rejoice. cairw. In St. Paul’s time, the word was most commonly known as a greeting. It’s how you started a letter. It’s kind of like saying “Hail!” or “Salutations!” That’s probably not how most people begin letters now, but then very few people write letters at all anymore. In any case, St. Paul has something of a famous variation on this custom. While in the Greek world, chairo was the standard greeting, in the Hebrew world—as in other Semitic languages—the standard greeting was peace, shalom. And so Paul, in his letters, combines them, but with a twist: Instead of the word chairo, he uses the word charis: hence, “Grace to you, and peace.”
These two words—grace and rejoicing—have the same basic root. And so “rejoicing” in the New Testament, whether it’s in Paul’s writings or in the Gospels, when Mary “rejoices in God her Savior,” means that finding joy becomes inescapably bound with finding grace, which is to say finding God’s goodness as a gift. So related to charis, then, we get something like charisma, in English, which effectively means “supernaturally gifted.” We get spiritual gifts, charisms. We also get another rather striking connection with what we do this morning and at every Mass. The sacrament of the Eucharist takes its name from those opening words of the dialogue: “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.” Giving thanks. Eucharist. But really the Greek word is a compound: eu plus chairo, which is to say to rejoice well. And if this is the case, then rejoicing in some sense goes to the heart of the Christian mystery.
One more word point is that some scholars think the Indo-European root of chairo is the same root that gives us words like carol, choir, chorus, court, and garden—or the Slavic word grad, which means “city.” What’s in common with those words? They all have to do with enclosure, with order, with a kind of bounded definition of social good. To have a garden rather than just a plot of land is to have something defined. To have a choir rather than just a random group of voices is to have a common defined good and order in singing.
This is arguably how we get the word rejoice, at least in a roundabout way. Because what we’re describing with this concept of joy is not merely a fleeting sense of physical or intellectual pleasure, something that may or not last—but a structural good, a good that makes sense, can be found, or understood, only within a certain kind of community.
So what? Why not just say, in a simpler way, as I’ve often heard, that happiness is fleeting, but joy comes of the Lord? Or that joy is a kind of spiritual happiness that can persist even in great suffering? Or that joy is the happiness of knowing and loving God?
All of those things are true, and worth saying again. But I find that often those lofty statements about joy are really just a fancy way of describing happiness. And so, to anyone who’s not particularly happy—who’s depressed, or facing real suffering or loss—the insistence that Christians are supposed to just put on a happy face and remember that Jesus is Lord is neither particularly helpful nor true. Because the joy of Christ isn’t just better than the joy we get from sinking our teeth into a delicious pecan pie; it’s of a different order entirely, because it’s not primarily about me and my personal feelings. It’s the happiness of being found in a body, in a community, in which my fleeting happiness and sadness and suffering and pleasure can all find their meaning in the story of how God is reconciling the world to himself.
So when St. Paul says, “Rejoice in the Lord always,” the emphasis really should be on in the Lord, which is to say in his body. This isn’t a matter of converting the world by our smiling faces (though that probably does have its place); it’s a matter of being bound to the other, to Christ and his Church, in such a way that a deeper happiness is, ultimately, possible, because it is the happiness of Jesus, not my happiness at all. And this is ultimately the point of the Eucharist as well: when we grow closer to Jesus, we receive his life as our own; we become bound to him, and he to us, so that his good becomes our good.
When John the Baptist preaches in the wilderness to “prepare the way of the Lord,” he tells people to repent. Repentance is not something contrary to rejoicing. Repentance is exactly the reconstruction and healing of those ties that bind us to one another and to God. That is the theme of this day: rejoicing and penance go hand in hand. If we want to find joy when the Lord comes, if we want to “keep the coming festival” as today’s post-communion collect says, we have to learn to find joy in him now by tending the garden that is his Church.
Go to confession. Pray the rosary. Practice the works of mercy. We can never will ourselves into true joy by an act of individual will, but we can plant ourselves in the place where it can find us and grow in us.
For as the earth brings forth its shoots,
and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up,
so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise
to spring forth before all the nations (Isa. 61:11).