THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT, YEAR C

December 12, 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N.J.

Zephaniah 3:14-20

Canticle 9

Philippians 4:4-7

Luke 3:7-18

From Saint Paul’s Letter to the Philippians: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, Rejoice. Let all men know your forbearance. The Lord is at hand.” On account of these words, traditionally sung in the plainchant Introit (or Entrance Song) of today’s Mass, the Third Sunday of Advent is known as “Gaudete Sunday,” or “Rejoice Sunday.”

We encounter this motif of rejoicing in the Old Testament reading, from the prophet Zephaniah: “Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem!” Then Canticle 9, taken from the twelfth chapter of Isaiah, takes up the theme: “Therefore you shall draw water with rejoicing, from the springs of salvation … Cry aloud, inhabitants of Zion, ring out your joy …” And the Gospel reading concludes on the joyful note: “So, with many other exhortations, [John the Baptist] preached good news to the people.”

In keeping with this theme of rejoicing, today we light a rose-colored candle on the Advent wreath; we wear rose vestments; and we decorate the altar with a rose frontal and pink roses.

These biblical references to rejoicing are not, however, without an element of paradox. When he exhorts the Philippians to rejoice always, Paul himself is a prisoner in chains: not a situation we normally associate with rejoicing. The reading from Zephaniah, exhorting Jerusalem to sing, exult, shout, and rejoice, is set in the context of a book containing prophetic warnings of impending judgment and doom. And John the Baptist’s preaching of good news to the people consists of solemn warnings to bear fruit befitting repentance, to avoid the wrath to come.

The phenomenon of Christian joy amidst suffering sometimes proves puzzling to outside observers. The fifth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles recounts an incident in which Peter and the other apostles are arrested by the Sanhedrin, questioned, beaten, and then released. There follows the curious comment: “Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were found worthy to suffer dishonor for the name” (5:41).

Early Christian martyrs are reported to have gone to their deaths full of joy, singing hymns to Christ while the lions roared in nearby cages. Saint Francis of Assisi is well known for finding “perfect joy” in a life of itinerant homelessness and poverty. Such rejoicing in the face of hardship, rejection, persecution, suffering, and death has struck more than a few critics of Christianity as reflecting a fundamentally perverse and sick mindset.

We need to recognize, however, that the word “joy” has a special meaning in biblical and classical Christian usage. A great twentieth-century writer on the theme of Christian joy was C.S. Lewis. In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, Lewis defines the term as a feeling of intense longing he first experienced as a child, and which recurred periodically as he was growing up and throughout his life.

Lewis insisted that this experience was completely distinct from either happiness or pleasure. He described it with the memorable phrase: “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.” In this sense, joy means something very different from the present fulfillment of natural human needs. It’s more like what we might call “anticipatory joy”—that is, the excitement of looking forward to something that has not yet happened but is expected at some point in the future.

We all know what this feels like. Imagine, a student from, say, the Midwest who’s been away from home for her first semester at university in the East. As much as she likes her new life, she nonetheless misses her family and her hometown friends intensely. At last, final exams are over and she’s on her way to the airport to catch her flight home for the Christmas break. For days, perhaps weeks, her excitement has been mounting at the prospect of being back home to celebrate Christmas with family and friends once again.

Again, think of some of the most joyous milestones in people’s lives. When a couple announces their engagement, a large part of our reaction to the news is the joy of anticipation. (Assuming, that is, that we approve of the match and think that they’re good for each other.) We rejoice not only at what their engagement means for them now, but also at the future prospect of their wedding and subsequent life together. The announcement is an occasion of joy precisely because it gives us something to look forward to. 

When my daughter-in-law announced one evening at a gathering of the extended family in a restaurant that she was pregnant, the expressions of rejoicing were boisterous and raucous. Again, when a child is born, we rejoice not only on account of who this little baby is now, but also on account of the person we hope he or she will become in the coming years of growth and maturation. The joy, in other words, is both in the present gift and the future promise.

When C. S. Lewis finally converted to Christianity after years of spiritual struggle, he realized that the final fulfillment of his longing—that unsatisfied desire, which he experienced as more desirable than any other satisfaction—was none other than Christ himself. As Christians we discover that Christ is available to us here and now as a present reality and not just as a future hope; knowing Christ affords greater joy than any earthly pleasure or happiness. Still, we also discover that in this life our joy in the Lord always retains something of this quality of unfulfilled longing and unrealized expectation. 

Theologians describe the Christian life as lived in the tension between the “already” and the “not yet.” When we receive the Blessed Sacrament in the Holy Eucharist, for example, we really and truly receive Christ himself here and now. Yet the sacred meal always points beyond itself as a foretaste of the heavenly banquet awaiting us in God’s Kingdom. In other words, our joy remains in large part the joy of anticipation rather than that of consummation and fulfillment. But, to quote C. S. Lewis again, even as unsatisfied desire it remains “more desirable than any other satisfaction.”

Advent is the season when we anticipate our future—the new life awaiting each of us after death, and awaiting all creation when Christ returns to inaugurate the Kingdom of God in its fullness. For this reason, Advent is rightly described as a season of longing, expectation, and hope. But this Rose Sunday also reminds us that Advent, and indeed the entire Christian life, is also a season of anticipatory joy. Even amidst our present difficulties and darknesses, we dare to rejoice in the future that God promises us in Christ.