December 14, 2024 // Perspective
On Gaudete Sunday, We Rejoice in the Coming of the Lord
Third Sunday of Advent
An atmosphere of delighted expectation overtakes this weekend’s liturgy. It is Gaudete Sunday, a name taken from the Latin rendition of the first word of the entrance antiphon, “To rejoice.” The Lord is nearby!
The Book of Zephaniah furnishes the first reading. It is a short book, only three brief chapters. This much is known about Zephaniah. He was the son of Chusi and traced his ancestry to Hezekiah, presumably King Hezekiah of Judah.
Evidently, the book was written between 640 B.C. and 609 B.C., or during the reign of King Josiah of Judah. Josiah was a reformer. His reforms were religious in intent and in impact. He was a good king. The kings saw themselves as representatives and agents of God. Aside from all else, their duty was to draw the people more closely to God.
Zephaniah believed that when the people were faithful to God, they brought peace and prosperity upon themselves.
This weekend’s reading is a very convincing exclamation that righteousness and devotion to God invariably produce joy and order.
The Epistle to the Philippians provides the second reading. Philippi was a city in today’s Greece, founded centuries before Christ and named in honor of King Philip, the father of Alexander the Great.
By the first century A.D., it was an important center in the Roman Empire and a major military base.
Immigration, to find opportunity or better circumstances, is nothing new. At the time of Christ and the apostles, people moved across the empire, to the great cities, coincidentally bringing their ideas and values, such as Christianity.
As was the reading from Zephaniah, this reading is filled with excitement. It predicts the coming of the Lord, and that the Lord will come soon. Such was the assumption of many of the early Christians.
They thought that when Jesus came, all wrongs would be righted, justice would prevail, the poor would find relief, and immoral economic, political, and legal systems would collapse.
To prepare, devout Christians sought to conform themselves as much as possible to the Lord. This required what is called “penance.”
The epistle told the Christians in Philippi that genuine spiritual transformation requires unselfishness and commitment.
St. Luke’s Gospel is the source of the last reading. John the Baptist appears, urging that the man with two coats to give one to the poor. The point is that addressing the bad effects of poverty is the duty of every individual Christian.
John also tells a tax collector to assess only the “fixed amount.” Roman taxation legalized extortion. A collector sent a prescribed amount to Rome. The rest went into his pocket, but the law required taxpayers to pay whatever the collector arbitrarily demanded.
Tax collectors were despised, seen correctly as crooks and, worst of all, as turncoats who willingly functioned as tools of a brutal oppressor, surrendering all personal honor and all loyalty to their own people for monetary profit.
Reflection
Dawn is beautiful. The darkness of night gives way first not to a burst of golden sunshine but to rose-colored skies that gloriously forecast the coming of day, with its warmth and light.
On Gaudete Sunday, the somberness of Advent pauses. The Church calls us to reinforce our wills. Waiting for the Lord is worth the effort. So are Advent reflection, prayer, and penance.
Priests may wear rose-colored vestments to symbolize that the brightness of the Lord’s coming already is creeping across the horizon. Night is ending.
This new day especially is commemorated on Christmas, remembering when Jesus literally came into this world, Son of God and son of Mary.
Christ brings God’s mercy and justice. He is the “Light of the World.” With Jesus in our hearts, sunbeams of hope and peace pierce even the darkest of moments.
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