The Third Sunday of Advent is also known as Gaudete Sunday, for the first word of the entrance invitation, the introit, at the beginning of the Mass: “Rejoice!” It is a day for savoring both the joy of the promised redemption found in the incarnation of God in Jesus, and looking ahead with anticipation for His return at the end of time to restore all things. In the midst of a liturgical season of preparation and repentance, it is a reminder of the joy set before us and encourages us to keep asking ourselves the hard questions about how we spend our lives, day in and day out. We ask ourselves hard questions not to be gloomy, but to uncover the joy God has set before us.
Each year, my garden slowly quiets as the seasons change from summer to autumn to winter. Some of my rose bushes stop blooming at the first hint of chill, but one keeps going…and going…and going. Even after a few frosts. It is a tiniest of my bushes, a firelight rose that buds deep pink and blooms with creamy petals painted with streaks of fushia.
Toward the end of November, when we start having more freezing nights, I clip the last of the buds and bring them inside to live for a few days unmolested by the cold of winter.
Then I dry it and keep it on the sill until the first new blooms of Spring, a sprig of hope that, yes, I can face another long cold midwest winter. When I make my morning tea and pray the Angelus, the little buds whisper, “Spring is coming.”
And so, Gaudete Sunday, also known as Rose Sunday, the day when the rose-colored candle for Joy is lit, seems a day just like my little firelight rose: the promise of a Spring when all will be restored, all will be healed, no good-byes will ever be said again, sorrow and sighing will flee away, and all manner of things shall be well. Forever.
Thomas Howard, in his book Christ the Tiger, captures a glimpse of this future Day, for which we have cause to hope. He writes as Jesus speaking to each of us:
“Here from this stable, here, from this Nazareth, this stony beach, this Jerusalem, this market place, this garden, this Praetorium, this Cross, this mountain, I announce it to you. I announce to you what is guessed at in all the phenomena of your world. You see the corn of wheat shrivel and break open and die, but you expect a crop. I tell you of the Springtime of which all springtimes speak. I tell you of the world for which this world groans and toward which it strains. I tell you that beyond the awful borders imposed by time and space and contingency, there lies what you seek. I announce to you life instead of mere existence, freedom instead of frustration, justice instead of compensation. For I announce to you redemption. Behold I make all things new. Behold I do what cannot be done. I restore the years that the locusts and worms have eaten. I restore the years you have drooped away upon your crutches and in your wheelchair. I restore the symphonies and operas which your deaf ears have never heard, and the snowy massif your blind eyes have never seen, and the freedom lost to you through plunder and the identity lost to you because of calumny and the failure of justice; and I restore the good which your own foolish mistakes have cheated you of. And I bring you to the Love of which all other loves speak, the Love which is joy and beauty, and which you have sought in a thousand streets and for which you have wept and clawed your pillow.”
Gaudete!!
