Third Sunday of Advent

Lectionary: 9

On that day, it shall be said to Jerusalem:
Fear not, O Zion, be not discouraged!
The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a mighty savior;
he will rejoice over you with gladness,
and renew you in his love, he will sing joyfully because of you, as one sings at festivals. 

 W e don't seem to think of God rejoicing over us with gladness, nor of his singing joyfully because of us. We have heard him say of Jesus, "This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased!" Perhaps we supposed that he was only satisfied.

But I think pleased is more than satisfied. Pleased seems to entail a degree of surprise as if Jesus had surpassed the standards which had to be merely satisfied. We can say the dinner satisfied us, so that we could survive until breakfast; but to say we were pleased with it suggests we'll remember it in the morning, and for some time afterward. 

Pleased implies pleasure, happiness, and joy; and it's how we hope our God feels -- if we can say that the supreme Lord who created the Universe and all its possible multiverses -- has a sensation similar to our experience of pleasure. But we have read in the Book of Genesis, "God looked at everything he had made, and found it very good." 

If an artist or craftsman creates something and finds it very good, I think we can say they're pleased and happy with it. I've created a few thing -- pictures, poems, and so forth -- and taken pleasure in them months or years later. 

And if this artisan is God, he might even be ecstatic with it. Ecstasy means coming out of oneself. (Ex means out of, and stasis has to do with standing. God was outstanding; he was standing out of himself with the experience of creating. In fact he was so far carried out of himself that he begot the Son and spirated the Holy Spirit even before he created the universe. 

If we look at the sky through a telescope -- or better, a Hubble or James Webb telescope -- we're likely to say, "The Lord got carried away with his creativity. He just about went beyond himself!" if that makes sense when we speak of God. But in fact, the saints and martyrs insist, that does make sense. One of the surest things we can say about God is that all human expectations of limit and containment are blown away by the superabundant generosity, energy, authority, and joy of our God. Everything about God is infinite; an infinity of infinities!  

And when the Lord would share that endless happiness, that brilliance with us, we're so astonished that we think it's darkness. As in a light shining in darkness which the dark cannot comprehend. As in a solitary star shining over Bethlehem which signals the Birth of the Son of God. As in a poor baby in a manger, or a man crucified. It's so brilliant we can see it only with our eyes shut and ears silent and our mind very still, with no more feeling than astonishment or ecstasy. 

Only afterward can we say, through inexplicable tears and sobs, how joyful it is. How wonderful is God's pleasure in the goodness and purity of this son of Mary, son of David, son of God.

Christians find in this joy the true meaning of Christmas, but it's something I learned from watching my parents at Christmas time. I was a teenager at the time and not given to ecstatic joy. Without gifts to give, without interest in getting stuff I didn't need or want, I watched my mother and father get excited over the excitement of my young sisters and brothers. Like their smallest children, they believed in Santa Claus, that he lived at the North Pole, had an enormous toy-making company of elves, and flew about the world on Christmas Eve in a flying, reindeer-driven sleigh! 

On another occasion I watched Dad watching us on the merry-go-round. I said, “Dad, you're not having any fun at all.” 
He said. “Son, I'm having more fun than all of you put together.” 

Christmas is about giving joy and it begins when we give God the pleasure of Jesus’s infinite and perfect love of God. We cannot comprehend such purity; we cannot understand his giving himself as a sacrificial lamb to God. Their joy and ecstatic pleasure are beyond all understanding and yet we give that perfect joy to God as we come to the altar to receive his body and his blood. This is the Sacrifice of the Mass, which he makes for us, and we make with him. 

On this Gaudete Sunday, we celebrate the anticipated Joy of giving until it doesn’t hurt anymore. Saint John (16:21) described our joy like this: 

When a woman is in labor, she is in anguish because her hour has arrived; but when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the pain because of her joy that a child has been born into the world.

On Christmas, we cannot think of ourselves, neither our sorrow nor our sacrifices. We think nothing of our gifts. We can think only of the mercy which allows us to suffer the anguish of labor until Christ is born.