Rejoicing in the midst of Darkness

 Third Sunday of Advent

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. When I was a young child, our tradition for decorating the house for Christmas was always done on my parents’ anniversary, 14 December.  While we were away at school (5 out of 7 years), my dad and mom, who took the day off, would do the majority of the decorating, especially putting up the tree and putting out the fragile items.  As it was their anniversary, they were also probably happy when we were away at school so that they could celebrate with only each other for a few hours.  When we got home from school, we would put the less fragile items up and put the kid-friendly ornaments on the Christmas tree.
    When I lived in my own house as the pastor of St. Joseph in Adrian, I had to develop my own decorating tradition.  I guess I could have stayed with my parents’ anniversary, but decided to have a date that was more special for me, which was the anniversary of the Dedication of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, our Lansing Cathedral, which is the church in which I was ordained a priest.  So, since 2014, on 9 December, after I’m done with Masses, I put up the tree and the other decorations I use to make my house seem more Chistmas-sy.  
    But I will admit that this year, I was tempted not even to decorate at all.  This is not to indulge in self-pity or gain your pity, but life has been very busy of late.  For the 7 days from 27 November to 4 December, I celebrated or concelebrated 5 funerals, including 2 on Friday, 3 December.  And that’s on top of an already generally full schedule.  After that week, there was the extra duties with the Immaculate Conception holyday, and then trying to get everything done in time for Christmas.  And, in the background, there was the house explosion (Hogarth Avenue is still closed in that part of the road), and then the school shooting in Oxford.  There’s a new variant of COVID (as there seems to be every few months), people keep fighting about vaccines, and then just the usual everyday drama that occurs in life.  And the thought of decorating my house for Christmas seemed like too much, requiring too much energy and time.  But, I went through the discipline, and this past Thursday, 9 December, decorated my house for Christmas.  
    As we come to this third Sunday of Advent, we’re supposed to rejoice.  We call this Sunday Gaudete Sunday, because of the Introit, or Entrance Antiphon, which comes from the Letter of St. Paul to the Philippians.  “Rejoice in the Lord always: again I say, rejoice.”  The prophet Zephaniah has a similar message in our first reading: “Shout for joy, O daughter Zion!  Sing joyfully, O Israel!  Be glad and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!”  And the message gets taken up again in the reading from the New Testament.  But for some this year, it doesn’t seem like a time of rejoicing.  People continue to come to me with the COVID blues, whether as a long-lasting symptom of having had the virus, or simply being tired with dealing with COVID everywhere you turn.  In our area, at least, death and the threat of death crop up regularly.  And it’s simply busy for all of us, priest and parent alike.  
    So it might be helpful to put into context the people who are giving us this message of “Rejoice!”  Otherwise, we could simply write them off as holy people who were so disconnected from the world that they didn’t have to worry about it.  Zephaniah was writing sometime between the years 640 and 609 BC.  That period is described in my Biblical introduction to the book as, “a time of religious degradation, while the old idolatries reappeared and men worshipped sun, moon, and stars.  Rites completely alien to the pure monotheism taught by Moses flourished in Jerusalem.”  Doesn’t sound like happy times.  And Zephaniah’s message was mainly one of God’s judgement against the People, which probably was not received well by others.  It isn’t the sort of thing that gets you invited over to parties.

Statue of St. Paul in Rome

    St. Paul wrote the Letter to the Philippians while in jail, probably in Rome, and possibly was dying.  Scripture scholars date the letter to somewhere around AD 59-63, not long before he died by being beheaded.  Nero was emperor, and likely was starting to persecute the Christians more and more.  So life wasn’t hunky-dory for St. Paul, either.
    And yet, we hear from both, “Rejoice!”  How can one rejoice when so many things go wrong?  Or, to quote Theoden from “The Two Towers,” “So much death.  What can men do against such reckless hate?”  
    But this is precisely the beauty of Catholicism.  In the midst of evil and darkness, the Church dares to say rejoice because we already know that death, sin, and darkness have lost.  We rejoice because we are preparing to celebrate the birth of the one who put all fallen things down and brought everlasting light to the world.  As Catholics, we don’t ignore the evil, whether moral or natural, that are around us.  But we let it fall off us as water beads off the back of a duck, knowing that, because of Christ, it cannot truly harm us.  God doesn’t promise us a life without struggle, but He does promise a reward after struggling while we are united to Christ.  He doesn’t promise us that we won’t get tired, but He does promise to give us eternal rest.  We rejoice because we are God’s, and God will not let anyone take us out of His hands, as long as we choose to remain with Him and respond to His grace.  In the words of Psalm 32 [new numbering], “Though flood waters threaten, they will never reach him.”  
    We are not Pollyannas; we are Catholics.  And we rejoice because each day we are closer to the day when Christ will return and set everything right.  The longing in our hearts for the end of death, illness, destruction, violence, lies, slander, etc., is not a pipe dream.  He whose Word is Truth, Who is Truth Incarnate, has promised to return one day and put an end to everything fallen.  We trust in that word, and we long for it, as much as and more than a child longs to wake up to find presents under the tree at Christmas.  And so we make our little acts of rejoicing, even in the face of so much that is wrong and sad.  We put up Christmas decorations, not because it’s easy and enjoyable, necessarily, but because it reminds us of the one who came to set us free, and who will come again.  No matter what occurs in our life, we rejoice always in the Lord, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who will bring us true joy at His coming.  Amen.