December 14, 2020
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily for the 3rd Sunday of Advent (Year B) on December 13, 2020 at St. Austin Catholic Parish in Austin, TX. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Isaiah 61:1-2a, 10-11; Luke 1:46-54; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; and John 1:6-8, 19-28. A worship guide for the Mass is available here.
It’s Gaudete Sunday, better known as “the day they light the pink candle.” Why do we use rose-colored vestments on this day? They’re a sign of joy. This is a liturgy when we hear the words “joy” and “rejoice” throughout our readings and prayers.
It might be jarring to hear messages of joy as we enter into “the long, dark winter” of breaking U.S. historical death records on a regular basis. 1 Yet, we believe that these Scripture passages are the inspired Word of God. As we go through this Mass, let us simply “be present” to the readings.
As we prepare to celebrate the sacred mysteries, perhaps our mood is captured by the prayer that Fr. Mychal Judge, OFM wrote for a memorial service for the victims of TWA Flight #800 in 1996: “Our world is empty without [our loved ones]. Our hearts are broken, our sadness immense, our tears so abundant. We live our sorrow together. We need You, Lord. Please come and touch us. Fill us with courage. Calm our discomfort. Give us signs of Your presence. We ask You, we beg You: come.”
On December 2, for the first time in my life, I admitted, out loud, that I was seriously depressed. And some knowledgeable professionals soon agreed with my assessment. I don’t tell you this to seek out your pity. On the Winnie the Pooh Pathology Test, even on my darkest days, I am still much more of a Tigger than an Eeyore. But the year 2020 has been a tough year on almost everyone’s mental health, including naturally positive people like me. When we know that other people are suffering much more than we are, it can be hard to grieve our own legitimate losses without feeling guilty.
And while I’m on a roll, I’ll admit it: I have a personally-curated Advent playlist. I usually look forward to playing it on heavy rotation in the weeks following Thanksgiving. But this year, I only wanted to put on the darkest of Advent tunes, ones that address how, even in a messed-up world, God will eventually reconcile the universe to its intended purpose.2
Advent is not only supposed to be a season about waiting for the celebration of Jesus’ birth on Christmas day. It’s also a season for awaiting God to break into our world in new and exciting ways. At this liturgy, we’ve lit the pink candle of our Advent wreath and already heard the word “rejoice” proclaimed a bunch of times. Paul tells the Thessalonians that they are to “rejoice always,” even though the second coming of Christ has not occured as soon as they had originally anticipated. While the promise of vaccines indicates that 2021 will likely get better as it goes along, it will still be a year of much death, inequality, and economic devastation.
Advent is a time of trusting in God’s promises, but for billions of people this year, our trust is being put to the test. More than any other Advent of my life, I am struggling to find the joy that marks the second half of the Advent season.
The Hebrew and Greek words that can be translated as “joy” appear in the Bible more than 150 times. Add in the adjectives “joyful” and “joyous,” and the verb “rejoice,” and we’re up to roughly 400 mentions. But what exactly is joy? One of my former colleagues told me that in biblical times, the idea of “joy” was about connection. Often, biblical joy describes events that bond people together, such as marriages and the birth of children. For all of us who have had less physical connection with friends and family in 2020, it’s no wonder we’ve been less joyful than usual this December!
While the Bible’s use of the word “joy” is often about the connections between people, it is always about a connection between the believer and God. Biblical joy accompanies successful harvests, military victories, Israel’s escape from Egypt through the Red Sea, and Judah’s restoration after the Babylonian exile.
Today, if we can think about joy in the context of connecting with God, we will find that God continues to be present – radically present – in these waning days of this challenging year. Even as countless people have died alone in hospital ICUs and safety concerns have prevented families from holding funerals, God has been present, the first to grieve this senseless loss of life. God continues to inspire weary medical personnel ministering to the sick, to encourage teachers and students learning in less-than-ideal circumstances, and to sustain overwhelmed social workers scrambling to assist the financially destitute. God is speaking to us through the tears, the fears, and the frustrations of relatives, friends, co-workers, and even strangers. In these gut-wrenching emotions, God is here. As Pope Francis wrote in his first major apostolic exhortation, called The Joy of the Gospel, “Joy… always endures,… born of our personal certainty that, when everything is said and done, we are infinitely loved.” 3
How do we confront the incomprehensible number of senseless deaths, as we await both the celebration of Christmas and Christ’s second coming at the end of time?
Advent calls us to humility: to recognize that we can’t reconcile the world on our own. But Advent also calls us to trust: to cherish the hope and the light we can find, even in the face of sadness and darkness.
And so, no matter how lonely, how brittle, or how out-of-control we feel in 2020, can we embrace some form of joy in these remaining 12 days of Advent? Can we kindle the flame in our hearts that we are infinitely loved? If we can’t bring ourselves to rejoice always and have no anxiety at all, can we at least try to rejoice more frequently and have fewer anxieties? Then, perhaps the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will more often guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
The day after I admitted that I was depressed, I had my monthly Zoom call with my spiritual director in the mid-afternoon. As usual, he cut through all my chatter and anxiety, and he gave me some simple advice. He told me to just sit in the darkness with God for a while. So I did that for a few hours. But before I went to bed that night, something rather remarkable happened. For the first time since the pandemic began, I felt the desire to play more joyous Advent music, and even to start playing Christmas music.
Let me be absolutely clear: many mental and physical ailments cannot be addressed by prayer alone. But no matter the malady, we will surely benefit from nurturing our connection with our heavenly Father. For, “when everything is said and done, we are [always] infinitely loved.”
Notes:
- The list of “deadliest days” in U.S. history includes days of natural disasters, military battles, and attacks on our nation by outside forces. There have been at least 14 days so far this year – including 9 of the first 12 days of December – when the daily death toll from COVID-19 has exceeded the ≈2,403 deaths caused by on the attack on Pearl Harbor, HI on December 7, 1941. On both December 9 and 10, the death toll exceeded the ≈2,977 deaths in the terrorist attacks in NY, DC, and PA on September 11, 2001. The majority of epidemiologists predict that many days in the next few months may have more COVID-19 deaths than we have seen thus far. However, the current COVID-19 daily death tolls are significantly less than the estimated 8,000 people who died in a hurricane in Galveston, TX on September 8, 1900 or the daily deaths during the worst of the flu pandemic of 1918, when an average of >6,200 U.S. citizens died each day in the month of October. ↩
- A personal favorite: Glenn Rudolph’s “The Dream Isaiah Saw.” Here’s a link to the premiere recording, in which I had the honor of participating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uic7GsWXpk4. (Turn the volume up – it starts very softly.) ↩
- Evangelii Gaudium, #6. ↩