Third Sunday of Advent-Cycle A

My Dear Friends in Christ,

Today we celebrate the Third Sunday of Advent, traditionally known as Gaudete Sunday. “Gaudete” comes from the Latin word “gaudium,” meaning joy, gladness or delight. And so this weekend may properly be called “The Sunday of Rejoicing.” Now, we might be thinking, “All of Advent should be a time of rejoicing, shouldn’t it? After all we are preparing for the coming of Christ!” Well, yes, but with some qualification.

Traditionally, the Season of Advent was established as a parallel to the Season of Lent, a time of prayer and fasting in preparation for the ultimate sacrifice of love on the Cross, and the Resurrection of Christ which would shatter the bonds of death that held us captive. The Season of Advent was established with a similar intention. Advent was to be a time of increased prayer, fasting and repentance in order to prepare oneself for the coming of the Savior, Jesus Christ, born to die for the salvation of the world as the Magi’s gift of incense so wonderfully signifies on the Feast of Epiphany. If we look back on what we discussed in the first two Sundays of Advent, this theme of preparation and repentance becomes readily apparent. For instance, in the First Sunday of Advent, we were reminded to always be on watch for the Savior’s coming. And last week we were reminded that we needed to change our way of thinking, to repent, in order to be well disposed to receive the gift of God’s glory that is to come in the form of God’s unity with us, effected by the twofold mission of the Son and Spirit within us, which together make us partakers of the Divine life.

During the Season of Lent, the middle Sunday is celebrated as Laetare Sunday, taking its name from the Latin “laetitia,” meaning joy or delight, intended to be a reminder of the joy that was to come on Easter Sunday for the people in the midst of Lenten fasting and penitence. Gaudete Sunday is Laetare Sunday’s parallel within the Advent Season, meant to be a reminder of the joy we will experience at the birth of our Lord on Christmas amidst the difficult preparation for his coming we are to be making during this Season of Advent in the form of increased prayer, fasting, and repentance. It is for this reason that our readings for this weekend exhort us to remain steadfast to our preparations while reminding us of the joy that is to come.

We see the tension between patient endurance and the joyful expectation of salvation on clear display in our first and second readings for today. Our first reading comes from near the end of the first portion of the book of Isaiah. This is the part of the Book of Isaiah thought to have come from the historical prophet himself, in contrast to the latter two portions of the book thought to be later additions to the text. This section follows on the heels of those dealing with Isaiah’s prophecies against Israel, warning of the exile to come, as well as those which deal with the prophecies against the various surrounding nations. Thus, this portion of Isaiah’s work is meant to remind the people of God’s faithfulness despite the people’s disobedience. Speaking on God’s behalf, Isaiah tells the people yes, they will have to suffer the consequences of their misdeeds in the form of losing control of their homeland and being taken into foreign captivity. However, these punishments do not signify that the Lord will abandon or forget them, far from it. Instead, Isaiah’s words speak of something truly wondrous, depicting something on a much more grandiose scale than just the return of the people to their homeland. Isaiah speaks of something akin to a cosmic redemption when he says, “The desert and the parched land will exult; the steppe will rejoice and bloom. They will bloom with abundant flowers, and rejoice with joyful song” (Is. 35:1-2).

Some may think that Isaiah is just being rhetorically superfluous here. That he is merely depicting the psychological disposition of the people as they return home from exile, like the feeling we have when we can get together with a friend we haven’t seen in some time, or when we come home from vacation, everything just seems right, everything seems to sing! However, Isaiah is not merely being rhetorically flashy. Rather, through Isaiah, God is trying to tell us something more, and that something more is what Paul talks about when he tells us that “…creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God…in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:19, 20b-21). In short, Isaiah is speaking of the new creation which will be experienced at the second coming of Jesus Christ, when all of creation will be renewed through its restoration to perfect harmony with God. Thus, Isaiah exhorts the people to ‘Be strong and have no fear’ (Is. 35:4), for those whom the Lord will ransom will inherit that which the Lord intended them to possess from all eternity, here depicted as Zion (Is. 35:10). Those who are ill will have fullness of health, the eyes of the blind will see, the ears of the deaf will hear, the lame will leap and the mute will sing (Is. 35:5-6). And what has prompted all of this? The glory of the Lord has appeared. The splendor of God has been made manifest (Is. 35:2), and it is the dawning of this glory that has renewed all things.

It is with this renewal in mind that we hear James tell us in our second reading for today to ‘be patient and make our hearts firm in resolve until the coming of the Lord (James 5:7). He sets before us the example of the farmer, who patiently and carefully tends the soil and the growth of various plants, seeing that they have all they need until they finally yield the desired result in the form of life-giving sustenance (James 5:7). Moreover, he adds that we should not complain about our current situation, but maintain the attitude of the farmer. The farmer knows that it takes time for a plant to fully mature and bear its fruit (James 5:7). What’s more, the farmer knows that the time of growth is one of struggle and uncertainty. Never knowing when the weather may turn from pleasant to inclement, constantly staving off weeds which would choke off the growth of the crop and warding off any predators who would devour the crop before harvest time, and all the while patiently waiting for the crop to grow to maturity. Just so, James tells us, “You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near” (James 5:8).

We live in the growing period of human history. In our gospel for today, we hear that when he was arrested, John the Baptist sent some of his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (Matthew 11:3). Mistreated and imprisoned, the one who labored so intensely and urgently to prepare the way for the Messiah, who pointed Him out to his listeners, and who baptized Him in the Jordan, now sensing his own end at hand, wants to be sure that he has not labored in vain. In an effort to reassure his cousin and co-worker in the vineyard, Jesus sends a message back to John, no longer asking him to rely on word alone, but to trust in the manifestation of God’s glory and power now dawning. Jesus tells John’s disciples, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them” (Matthew 11:4-5).

Jesus knew John, and so he realized that better than a simple yes was the evidence of Jesus’ Messiahship. As last in the line of the prophets, Jesus knows John will recognize these phenomena as having been foretold by Isaiah (see 35:5-6) as signs that would accompany God’s salvific action on behalf of the people. Thus, as a sign of endearment, Jesus adds, “And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” (Matthew 11:6). It is as if Jesus is saying to John, “although many will reject me because I am not the sort of Messiah they expect or want, you, John are indeed blessed. You have run the race, fought the good fight. Well done, my good and faithful servant.” Despite Jesus’ words of assurance to John, we do not see the fullness of Isaiah’s vision realized. Why is that? To be sure, the Savior, the Son of God has appeared and won salvation for all of creation, and yet, everything from child to lily continues to experience the suffering of age and decay. The reason is that we are in a stage of tension, our salvation has been won, but the work of salvation is not yet complete. Put differently, we are in a state of already but not yet, a state of growth.

In order to explain this, St. Maximus the Confessor conceptually divided history into three ages. The first age culminated with the Incarnation of the Son of God. During the second age, those who had been incorporated into Christ’s life and death via baptism actively pursue deification. The third and final age Maximus described as one of passive deification. For Maximus, this is the life to come, when we will passively take part in the life of the Trinity (Ad Thalassium, 22). Maximus believed that by his obedient life the Son of God converted the use of suffering and death into tools for condemning sin and growing in conformity to the will of God (Ad Thalassium, 61). By patiently bearing our sufferings in participatory imitation of the Son we become increasingly deiform. For Maximus, our free cooperation with the grace of God enables us to utilize our suffering, in order to grow in virtue. This is of the utmost important for Maximus as for him the virtues are “types and foreshadowing of those future benefits” (Ad Thalassium, 22). Said differently, the virtues are the characteristic that will endure eternally in the life of Heaven. Accordingly, the various types of struggles and sufferings we undergo now as we strive for virtue are something like growing pains. Finally, and this is the most important part, he believed that through the exercise of virtue, “God, who is ever willing to become human, does so in those who are worthy” (Ad Thalassium, 22). Notice what Maximus is describing here, the more we conform ourselves to the will of God, the more God lives in and through us. In his own way, then, Maximus is reiterating what St. Paul tells us in his Letter to the Galatians, that to participate in Christ’s Passion is to leave the old self behind such that we too might say, “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who live in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). Like Maximus, Paul sees this taking place through the dynamic interaction between faith and grace in us. Moreover, both see the enduring of sufferings to have a healing effect in our lives, enabling us to conform ever more to the will of God. And this not because God is satisfied by our sufferings and rewards them, but because our sufferings indicate our fallenness, and thus prompt us to turn toward God, who is our only source of full life and happiness.

My friends, it is with this wisdom that the Church foresaw to make Advent a time of fasting, prayer and penance, for She knows, like Maximus and Paul, that our struggles have the ability to reorient our will towards the will of God. Moreover, we should not see this submission to the will of God as an imposition on our will that constrains us, but as liberating us to flourish as the creatures we have been created to be. We must remember that we are created ex nihilo, out of nothing, and that our only existence is in God, not apart from him. Apart from him, we can only experience death. This is what the Son of God came to remind us of and repair, and it is this very same message that the Church seeks to make us hyper-aware of during the Season of Advent. We have an opportunity over the next couple of weeks to immerse ourselves in this reality through increased moments of silence, prayer, self-denial, and contemplation. In this way, we can gain a deeper understanding of that End to which we together with all of creation moves. If, with the help of God’s grace we withstand the growing pains that come with the movement toward deeper communion with all of creation in the life of the Creator, we will begin to see a transformation take place, not only in ourselves but in everyone and everything around us. For, in the end, cooperation with the grace of God means living a life of love more completely. What would your life look like if you loved more perfectly? What would the people around you look like if they experienced such love? What would our world look like if we allowed the love of God to pervade every single second of the day, every action and interaction? We may look at these questions and immediately give up, knowing that we simply can’t live in such a way. But this is precisely the message of Advent. On our own, this cannot be done. But, “nothing will be impossible with God,” and we “can do all things through him who strengthens [us]” (Luke 1:37 & Philippians 4:13). This Advent season is an opportunity to allow God to pervade every moment of every day, so that a world so very broken might ever more fully see the glory of God reflected therein. Mary most beautifully shows us the way this happens, by echoing her fiat (Luke 1:38). We cannot control what everyone else does, but by God’s grace we can say yes to becoming “servants of the Lord” who are formed and animated according to His Word. When this transformation takes place in us, we become vehicles of the kind of joy that is lasting and transformative, the joy of salvation!

Your servant in Christ,

Tony