Dear Parish Family,
Today, the third Sunday of Advent, is known as 'Gaudete' (Rejoice) Sunday from the first word of the entrance antiphon of the Holy Mass. ‘Rejoice’?! Some of us might be skeptical about the realism of this. Our trying situations of life can cast a shadow of doubt or cloud our possibility of rejoicing! One of the ways to understand human life is to compare it to a journey. To have a pleasant, pleasurable or happy journey, one must have favorable circumstances like weather, companions and transport. Joy, which is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit is different from pleasure or happiness, though these may accompany it. Joy goes deeper than either pleasure of happiness, and is less easily disturbed. Joy is more like a fundamental attitude, a key to the way I live, something that affects everything I do or say. What can be the source of such joy?
Joy depends on knowing, loving and treasuring the Church and the faith which it proclaims. If we want to be joyful people we have to begin here, at our liturgy. We have to start from a commitment to learn more about our faith, trying to understand it more. We have to begin from a conscious choice that we wish to be closer to the heart of the Church. Of course, there is much about the Church that is not perfect, there is much that could be made better; but we have to be able to distinguish from the faults and failures of the people who make up the Church, and the beautiful truths of the Christian faith. Sometimes our confidence takes a knock when we hear people criticizing the Church; we are not sure quite how to answer them, and doubts begin to set in. That is the time to set about learning more, understanding more. I do not recognize a Christianity that is negative, depressing restrictive and joyless. The first step on the path to joy is to understand more fully the place from which we begin, to know and love our faith, and the Church which proclaims it, better. The second step is to take to heart who it is that travels with us. On every step of our journey we are accompanied by the risen Jesus. We are deeply, profoundly, absolutely and unconditionally loved by Him, and he is always beside us.
Finally, joy depends on a trusting acceptance of where we are heading. We might know where we began, and with whom we are travelling, but unless we are sure of where we are going, joy will elude us, and be replaced by uncertainty. For that reason we must be very clear that God plans for us to spend eternity with him; his plan is that the end of our journey will be 'like plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a moment in which time - the before and after - no longer exists.' (Pope Benedict XVI Spe Salvi n. 12).
If we feel little or no joy in our faith, the problem lies with us. It means we have lost contact with those things that really matter, and been seduced by things of lesser value. We need to readjust our priorities in life, and leave behind the old self. We need to reassert once again our confidence in where we have come from, with whom we are travelling with, and where we are heading to. With Christ all the circumstances of life are colored by his immense love and infinite power. This is what he assures the disciples of John who came to investigate Christ’s claim to messiahship.
Fr. Tom Kunnel C.O.