The image of Saint John's vision in the Apocalypse (1360–1390) is by Jacobello Alberegno. I chose it because the Eternal Father is vested in a lovely rosy pink garment. Gaudete Sunday in heaven?
Third Sunday of Advent
A Homily on the Introit
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer let your petitions be made known to God (Phil 4:4-6).
Rejoice in the Lord Always
We began Advent on the crest of a surging wave, an immense welling up of hope that lifted us out of ourselves and carried us Godward: “All my heart goes out to you, my God; I trust in you” (Ps 24:1). Last Sunday, the Introit did not address God at all; it was a clarion call, a trumpet blast to wake us up, to shake us up, a summons to open our hearts to the joy of the glorious voice of the Lord (Is 30:30). Next Sunday, the Introit will again become pure prayer, a cry wrenched from the depths of human experience, a plea for the dew from heaven, the dew that refreshes and makes fruitful. “Send down dew from above you heavens, and let the skies pour down upon us the rain we long for, Him, the Just One” (Is 45:8).
Today’s Introit is one of the few drawn from Saint Paul. It is an exhortation to joy, but its mood is quiet and reflective. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer let your petitions be made known to God” (Phil 4:4-6).
Grace, and Loveliness, and Joy
What the Latin gives as, “gaudete,” and the English as “rejoice,” is astonishingly rich in Saint Paul’s Greek. Any one translation would be inadequate. Paul says, “chaírete.” It is the very same word used by the angel Gabriel to greet the Virgin of Nazareth. “Chaire, kecharitoménè!” “Joy to you, O full of grace!” (Lk 1:28). The word is untranslatable. Just when we think we have seized its meaning once and for all, another door opens inside it. “Chaírete” was the ordinary greeting of the Greeks. It embraces health, salvation, loveliness, grace, and joy, all at once. In the mouth and in the ear of Christians, the taste of the word is indescribable. “Grace to you, and loveliness, and joy in the Lord; again I wish you grace, and loveliness, and joy” (Phil 4:4). Paul’s greeting is not so much an imperative — a command to be joyful — as it is the imparting of a gift in the Lord. “What I wish for you, what I send you, what I give you in the Lord is grace, and loveliness, and joy.”
The Lord is at Hand
The second sentence becomes more intelligible in the light of the first. Paul says, “Let your gentleness — or your modesty, your courtesy, your forbearance, your serenity, your meekness — be known to everyone” (Phil 4:5). In other words, give evidence around you of the gift you have received: grace, and loveliness, and joy in the Lord. Show each other faces that are serene and peaceful, radiant with joy, faces that reflect the loveliness of God. And he adds, “the Lord is at hand” (Phil 4:5). This is the great central affirmation of the liturgy today, and every day. “The Lord is at hand” (Phil 4:5).
No Anxiety
He who is to come is already here, near to us, close at hand. God is present, and from his presence streams all grace, all loveliness, all joy. Saint Paul draws a very practical conclusion from this: “Have no anxiety about anything” (Phil 4:6). Were God absent, had God not yet come in His Christ and in the gift of His Spirit, we might have reason to worry, reason for anxiety, and for fear. Worry and anxiety are an affront to the graciousness of God, a denial of his nearness to us, a turning from Him who has turned His Face towards us. Paul is categorical: “have no anxiety about anything” (Phil 4:6). Commenting on this very word for her daughters on December 11, 1932, Mother Marie des Douleurs says: “Worry about nothing. Let nothing trouble you. Don’t you know that the Saviour is very near?” Her words are very close to those of Saint Teresa of Jesus: “Let nothing frighten you. All things are passing. God alone is changeless. He who has patience wants for nothing. He who has God has all things. God alone suffices.”
A thousand reasons not to follow Saint Paul’s mandate come to mind. “But I have this, and she has that. This thing is lacking, and of another thing there is too much.” This kind of thinking leaves us wide open to an attack of the “what ifs.” “What if this happens, and what if that?” It is easy to listen to the voices of our fears, our insecurities, our need to arrange, rearrange, and attempt to control even things beyond our control. The Apostle says, “Have no anxiety about anything,” but we hold ourselves excused, saying, “Is not a little anxiety, just a little bit of worry reasonable and right?” Saint Paul is not moved by our rationalizations. “Have no anxiety about anything” (Phil 4:6). He echoes the message of the prophet Zephaniah in the First Lesson: “ In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: ‘Fear not”; to Sion: ‘Let not thy hands be weakened’” (Zeph 3:16).
I Will Trust and Not Be Afraid
The Second Lesson today repeats, word for word, the text of the Introit. So important is the message that we need to hear it more than once. The Responsorial Psalm, taken today from the prophet Isaiah, delivers the same message. “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid” (Is 12:2).
Behold!
Today’s Communion Antiphon will deliver the same message: “Say to those who are of a fearful heart, be comforted and have no fear; behold, our God will come and save us” (Is 35:4). Again, the marvelous pedagogy of the Church! She knows that during the Introit, the First Lesson and the Second we may have been distracted for a moment or inattentive. She wants us to hear the message nonetheless, and so she repeats it again and again at Communion: “Say to those who are of a fearful heart, be comforted and have no fear; behold, our God will come and save us” (Is 35:4). The “Behold” of the antiphon echoes the “Behold” of the invitation to Communion: “Behold, the Lamb of God; behold, our God will come and save us!” And so, he comes. The Lamb comes in the adorable mysteries of His Body and Blood; He comes in His Eucharistic advent to comfort us and deliver us from every fear.
Prayer
Saint Paul gives us the key to a worry-free life, the means to stop grumbling, fretting, and trying to manage and control everything. “In everything,” he says, “by prayer let your requests be made known to God” (Phil 4:6). Paul sends us to prayer because in prayer God accomplishes the things that of ourselves, and by ourselves, we are unable to do. In prayer we wait, all of us — the weak, the poor, the misshapen, the broken, and the wounded— for God’s gifts of grace, and loveliness, and joy.
It is in prayer, especially in adoring silence before the Blessed Sacrament, that we experience the truth of what Zephaniah says today: “The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty, He will save; He will rejoice over thee with gladness, He will be silent in His love, He will be joyful over thee in praise” (Zeph 3:17). How I treasure that one mysterious phrase in Zephaniah’s prophecy: “He will be silent in His love” (Zeph 3:17). Silebit in dilectione sua. The silence of Christ, loving us in the mystery of His Eucharistic advent, is the wellspring of all our joy. Join Him in His silence and He will give you the joy of His dilectio, the love by which He singles you out, cherishes you, and reveals Himself as the Bridegroom of the soul.
The Sacrament of Our Joy
Today’s Introit, you see, is a blessed imperative and a gracious gift. It sent us into the hearing of the Word of God and, in a few moments will send us to the altar, to the place of Christ’s sacrifice to the Father. To us who “know not how to pray as we ought” (Rom 8:26), the Holy Spirit communicates the perfect and all sufficient prayer of Christ. The Eucharist is the sacrament of our joy. The Breaking of the Bread is the inbreaking of divine joy. “Joy to you in the Lord at all times; once again I wish you joy” (Phil 4:4). Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!
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