Deacon Michael's Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Advent December 12, 2021

Here's my homily for the 3rd Sunday of Advent reflecting joy for this Gaudate Sunday.

You can find the readings on which this homily is based linked HERE

You can find Pope Paul VI's Exhortation "On  Christian Joy" HERE

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Welcome to Gaudate Sunday, “joyful Sunday” which the church celebrates each 3rd Sunday of Advent.

 It is offered to remind us in midst of our quiet, contemplative and maybe even penitential waiting for the Birth of the Lord

…to remember the joy that is at the heart of this waiting

…and to remind us that joy is actually at the heart of the Christian message.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember this. 

Many Christans, Pope Francis has reminded us, look and act like they just ate a very sour pickle. 

Some Christians have also gotten the rep for being censorious scolds on this issue or that…maybe a bit unfairly.

And when you look out on the broader social and cultural landscape there just seems to be no end to the people who are at each other’s throats.

Joy just seems elusive to many these days in the face of stress, division and anxiety

…things that can make it harder to find and experience joy

…to be open to and tuned into its sources and origins at the core of our faith.

Pope Paul the VI, in 1975, toward the end of his tumultuous and eventful Pontificate, offered exhortation addressed to the whole church entitled “On Christian Joy”

…reminding us just how central joy is to Christian faith and life.

Aquinas, he noted, sees joy as experienced when we at the level of our higher faculties, find our peace and pleasure in the possession of a known and loved good. 

We find joy, for example, when we experience deep harmony with nature

…or especially in encounter, sharing and communion with other people

…which Genesis itself tells us were all created “good”.

Our advanced technological and materially wealthy society has created, manufactured, a multitude of passing pleasures, distractions and titillations

…which are kind of cheap knock-offs or substitutes, for real joy.

For many comfortable living, good health and hygiene and economic security prevail

...but often side-by-side with boredom, depression, sadness…even anguish and despair.

Loneliness and isolation are also prevalent, to the degree that Mother Teresa called in the “leprosy” of the West

…offering that the sick and poor in her Kolkata were in this regard often better off.

This in particular has probably all gotten a bit worse during these COVID times that have heightened the isolation and anxiety of so many.

As Christian believers we should sense more easily that the ultimate source of joy is beyond ourselves and we can sense this in many of our life experiences.

Pope Paul offered several important examples to consider:

-the elating joy of existence and life itself which we can often sheer unfiltered joy of life naturally so often expressed by exuberant young children

-the joy of chaste and sanctified love

-the peaceful joy of nature and silence

-the joy of work well done

-the joy and satisfaction of a duty well and rightly fulfilled

-the joy of service and sharing

-the demanding joy of sacrifice for others

-the joy of charity in meeting another’s real needs

-and the joy of seeing justice realized, one that rightly supports the genuine well-being and development of others in need and provides a stronger basis for others experiencing less hardship and greater joy as well.

But even these are but glimpses, proximations or slivers of the larger joy at the heart of Christian faith

…that of what Aquinas points to when our spirits enter into what he calls the “possession of God” 

…known and loved by us as the “supreme and immutable” good.

This is the joy that we anticipate during Advent.

It is realized for us in a deep and specifically Christian sense at Christmas in recalling and celebrating the coming of this “supreme and immutable good” 

…come among us in Jesus Christ in the flesh

…flesh shared with him by his Mother at Bethlehem.

It is the joy of Mary as she anticipates this birth in the words of the Magnificat

…“my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my savior.”

It is in the words of the angel to the shepherds “I proclaim to you good news of great joy” that left them glorifying and praising God.

It is anticipated in the words of Zephaniah the prophet in today’s first reading encouraging Israel to “shout for joy” as the King of Israel is in your midst”.

Saint Paul today reminds the Philippians to rejoice as “the Lord is near”.

The birth of a child among us provides a warm light of joy in a vast and seemingly impersonal universe.

In and by his life he reminds us that self-sacrifice and love are true sources of ultimate joy

…joy ultimately realized and fulfilled in his triumph of the Resurrection 

…and without end in the life of the world to come

…offered to us as his disciples.  

The birth we await reminds us that human life, our lives, shared by Him, has ultimate value, meaning, direction and purpose

…now and forever. 

These are indeed tidings of comfort and great joy.