Dear Sisters and Brothers,
Today is Gaudete Sunday – the halfway point in Advent. The vestments are a rose color in order to relieve the more somber purple or violet which is the color of Advent. They will be used again on the middle Sunday of Lent – Laetare Sunday. Our Advent period of waiting is half-through but there are all types of waiting, aren’t there? There is the joyous waiting of young parents-to-be which can be tinged with some anxiety for the birth of a baby; there is the almost uncontainable waiting of young children for the arrival of Santa Claus on Christmas Day or there is the waiting of a family for the return of a loved one in the military. Then there is more somber waiting: perhaps waiting for the news that a loved one has had a serious diagnostic testing or waiting to hear that a friend has been called from this world.
In Israel two thousand years ago, they too were waiting. They were waiting for the Messiah, a wait which still continues in some contemporary Jewish circles.
That hopeful waiting comes across in the first reading from the prophet Zephaniah: “Shout for joy, O daughter Zion, sing joyfully O Israel, be glad and exult O daughter Jerusalem…” St Paul, centuries afterward, evokes the same emotions as he wrote joyfully to the Christian community he founded at the Greek city of Philippi: “Rejoice in the Lord always, I shall say it again rejoice…” “Rejoice always”. In Latin “rejoice” is “gaudete” and it gives its name to this third Sunday of Advent: “Gaudete” Sunday. It’s “rejoice” Sunday halfway through Advent. That’s why the vestments today are rose – they lighten the usual Advent violet – the candle in the Advent wreath that we light this week is also rose. Have no anxiety, the Lord is near. Wait joyfully.
Prophets don’t have their own agendas but they most certainly have their own way of doing things. Last week the Gospel passage from St. Luke introduced us to one of the most bizarre prophets – John the Baptist. This Sunday Luke continues his narrative about John. John certainly was not to be found in the company of the high and mighty. He did not hobnob with the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, nor with the members of the Supreme Council in Israel, the Sanhedrin. He was odd even by the standards of his time. Yet it is to this unlikely character, who clothes himself in the roughest of garments – a camel’s pelt, and ate what he could catch or collect – honey and locusts – to this man the word of God comes.
John is single-heartedly devoted to one thing – get things ready for the coming Messiah. Personal appearance and diet were not big on his agenda. Yet he was so straight-forward and uncompromising that he excited the interest of even the leaders in Jerusalem. Even, we are told Herod Antipas, a not especially religious man, enjoyed hearing John speak and was filled with curiosity about this decidedly peculiar but oddly attractive person.
When we encounter John in today’s Gospel, he is with a large curious crowd and many of them ask: Are you the Christ, the messiah? No! Are you Elijah, an ancient prophet who was thought to return from the dead in order to herald in the age of the
Messiah? No again, although later Jesus would describe John as such. Are you the prophet? Possibly also a figure in Jewish tradition thought to herald in the messianic age. No! So then who are you?
Because the expectation was so high, some thought John was the Christ. It’s a credit to him that they would think that this unusual man was the Messiah but it is also a credit to him that he had no delusions about himself. John would have known the history of his people – he came from a priestly family – his father, Zechariah, was a priest, who served his turn in the temple at Jerusalem. Since Jewish priesthood was inherited, John himself could have claimed to be a Jewish priest. John knew that the prophets were driven to proclaim God’s word though they themselves may not have been perfect. Even a casual glance at the pages of the Old Testament reveals that Moses killed a man; it reveals the fanaticism of Elijah and his slaughter of the 400 priests of Baal; it does not hide the major faults in David’s life including collusion to kill another man in order to steal his wife.
The New Testament makes no attempt to hide the oddity of John, who we think of as the last of the prophets. John describes himself in the words of the prophet Isaiah: “the voice crying out in the desert make straight the way of the Lord”. He is the road repair man. In ancient times the roads could be brutal but if a king or someone of importance were to visit, the whole community would muster to repair the roads – fill in the potholes. We do the same when some famous personality visits, like a head of state or the Pope. Before the visit, the road crews are out there filling those holes and leveling that road. We want to look good for the visitor. We certainly want to look good for the Visitor whose birth we celebrate in ten days.
But the challenge is how do we straighten those roads? The Scriptures use the word in Greek – metanoia – to think beyond our minds – to radically change our ways. We prepare now to welcome the arrival of goodness itself at Christmas – God’s incredible gift to us! Hallmark cards used a motto: “if you care enough to send the best”. For us God cared enough to send the best – His Son. Jesus’ message has been changing lives for two thousand years.
To level those spiritual roads John tells the tax collector, only collect what was prescribed, in other words don’t defraud people. John warns the soldiers not to extort people nor falsely accuse them and then to be satisfied with their wages, which probably meant don’t extort people for bribes. When He came, Jesus would announce that we are God’s adopted sons and daughters thus family to each other. It is an incredible message but it involves a challenge. What do we do to prepare for Him? Basically by living as He taught us!
John challenged his motley array of listeners and us. What he said might be summed up in an old poem I found – poet unknown.
When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the three kings have returned home,
when the shepherds go back to their flocks in those fields,
then the work of Christmas begins:
” to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release prisoners,
to rebuild nations,
to bring peace among brothers and sisters,
to make music with the heart.”
In Christ,
Monsignor John A. McGuirl