Homily: 3rd Sunday of Advent - Gaudete Sunday - Waiting in joyful hope

On the first Sunday of Advent we asked God for the grace to prepare well during this holy season.  On the Second Sunday, last week, we heard John the Baptist urge us to make straight the pathways for the Lord, and we asked God for help in removing from our life all of the attitudes and behaviors which hinder and obscure or even deaden the divine life within us.

For Advent, like Lent, calls us to turn away from our sinful and selfish behaviors and strip away the things that get in the way of living our faith.  And so for most of Advent, the priest wears the liturgical color purple, just like he does during Lent.  Three out of the four advent candles are purple to remind us to repent.  This third Sunday of Advent however, focuses not so much on repentance but rejoicing.

I began mass reciting the words which have begun this third Sunday of Advent since the time of Pope St. Gregory the Great in the sixth century: Gaudete in domino semper, rejoice in the Lord always.  For today is known as Gaudete Sunday.

On this Gaudete Sunday Advent purple, the color of waiting, the color of the spiritual night of the world before the coming of Christ, the color of repentance, is replaced by the rose-colored vestments, and the rose-colored candle is lit on the advent wreath.  The color Rose reminds us of the color of the horizon at the very start of a sunrise.  The Sun is almost arisen, Christ is almost here at that is the reason to rejoice.  The cause for our rejoicing isn’t of course that there will be presents under the tree or that most of us get the day off of work.  We rejoice because the one who saves us from our sins is coming.

This is one of my favorite Sundays of the entire year.  Because it really sums up the whole of the Christian life.  There is a permanent Gaudete Sunday quality to the whole Christian life.

As Christians, we aren’t in the same position in history as the people of the Old Covenant who awaited the Messiah’s first coming.  The promises and prophecies have been fulfilled.  Emmanuel—God-with-us— was born in Bethlehem, he conquered mankind’s most ancient enemies namely sin and death on the cross, he established His Church, his kingdom on earth; God fulfilled his promises that the sick would be healed, and the dead would be raised.  So the period of waiting for a Messiah is over; the first Advent, which lasted from Adam and Eve to the Birth of Christ is over.

There is a permanent Advent quality of waiting; from the time of Jesus’ ascension to his second coming we are in a second advent, waiting for the final and definitive return of our Messiah at the end of time.

Waiting.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t usually enjoy waiting.  Waiting in traffic, waiting in the doctor’s office, waiting in line at the grocery store. 

However, Gaudete Sunday really challenges us to consider the type of waiting which should be characteristic of the Christian life.  Waiting in joyful hope, waiting in joyful hope.

In the second reading, Saint James in his letter gives us a key to waiting in joyful hope.  “Be patient, brothers and sisters” he writes, “until the coming of the Lord.  See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.  You too must be patient.” 

Americans are not known worldwide for their patience—it is not our culture’s strongest virtue.  Patience with elderly relatives, patience with the kids, patience with spouses, patience in traffic, patience during particularly verbose homilies at Mass.  Impatience is probably the most common sin I hear in the confessional.

The saints teach us of the importance of patience in the spiritual life.  St. Margaret Mary said that there is no other remedy for your ills but patience and submission to the will of God. 

St. Francis de Sales said that Jesus endured scourging and ill treatment; he endured so many blasphemies and cruelties without saying a word, precisely to teach us patience.

One spiritual writer said that each of us has enough trials and sufferings in our life to make us saints, if we but knew how to suffer them patiently.

Patience is one of the most necessary of the Christian virtues because the sufferings and trials of life are inevitable.  We will inevitably be stuck in a room with someone we find irritating, we will inevitably be stuck in traffic, father will inevitably go a little long in his homily from time to time, we will inevitably suffer the sorrow of the illness and death of a loved one, we will inevitably have a disagreement with a family member, we will inevitably be stuck in line at a grocery store where it seems like the person in front of us has never in their life written a check before, we will inevitably be faced with forces which are beyond our control and throughout all of that we need to practice patience.

Some of our impatience definitely stems from a sense of self-importance.  How dare they make ME wait.  Don’t they know the important things that I have to do?  Instead of offering up our frustration we stand there and ruminate on our sense of self-importance.

We live in a culture increasingly based on the idea that whatever we want, we deserve — and we should have it, right now! It’s a recipe for disaster! Technology is great and all, but with the Advent of portable electronic devices, we attempt to fill those waiting periods with little worldly distractions, and that keeps us from learning true Christian patience.

So many of us really fail to grow in our prayer life because of impatience.  Sitting down in a quiet room and turning one’s heart to God seems like a waste of time, when we could be stimulating our senses with a tv show or internet site or video game or gossip session.  Yet, for those who have discovered how to sit and be quiet with God, those moments of patient prayer with the Lord are more important than the rest of the day.

I remember back in 2001 when I entered seminary.  8 years of seminary seemed like such a long time.  But those years of waiting and preparing, letting the tradition of the Church sink in, developing the habit of prayer, those were good years, joyful and mostly patient years.  Seminary formation is meant to change a man in preparation for a lifetime of priestly service, and sometimes that change was hard, and you want to resist the change.  And sometimes, it was like my prayer life wasn’t going anywhere.  But joy came when I surrendered and realized the Lord’s way is a lot better than my way. 

And so during this life, this Advent period of waiting, the Lord changes us, if we let him, he remakes us, and forms us, and tempers us like gold in the furnace and makes us how we are meant to be.  He teaches us how to wait in joyful hope.

St. Cyprian said, “Patient waiting is necessary that we may fulfill what we have begun to be, and through God’s help, that we may obtain what we hope for and believe.”

May the Holy Spirit teach us patience, as we joyfully await the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.