3rd Sunday in Advent

Today is Gaudete Sunday, a Latin word meaning rejoice. In our second reading today, Paul even though he is in prison, is overflowing with joy and enjoins the same joy on the community at Philippi. Paul encourages the people of Philippi to rejoice always. We might think that this is just some pious platitude that is unattainable in real life. In real life we know that we cannot always be happy and walking on cloud 9. There are days when we sky seems to hang very low down on us and the last thing we feel like is rejoicing. But Paul’s advice to rejoice always is not to be categorized as the cheap talk that is often peddled by self-help books and life-coaches. We know this because there was nothing about Paul that was cheap and ill-considered. If anyone had a reason to be down and out, it was Paul, and yet he remained joyful.

Paul is not inviting us to live in denial of the times that we are not feeling sunny and breezy. Rather, what Paul is inviting us to do is to live on a deeper level than just the surface level of our emotions. All too often we let ourselves be buffeted about by our emotions – riding the roller-coaster that sees us taken to exhilarating heights, only to come crashing down soon after. Paul, as a persecuted missionary, knew more than his fair share of ups and downs in life, and he had come to the realization that there must have been a deeper level on which to live his life.

This deeper level is the level at which we are always in communion with God. When we feel separated from God’s love, we need to realize that this is just an illusion. We can never be separated from God’s love, for if we were, we would cease to exist. It is God’s love that holds and sustains us in being every moment of our lives. The illusion of being separated from God’s love actually comes from being separated from ourselves. This illusion of separation is best captured by St. Augustine when he says “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you.”

This idea is expanded on by a disciple of St. Augustine, a contemporary Augustinian monk by the name of Martin Laird. He uses an arresting metaphor of the weather on a mountain. He says that when we make the mistake of identifying ourselves too closely with our feelings, we are identifying ourselves with the weather on the mountain, and forgetting the truth that we are actually the mountain and not the weather. The weather on the mountain can change three times a day from sunny and hot, to stormy and cold. The weather represents our emotions that are fickle and over which we often have little control. But we are not the weather, we are the mountain that is constantly in union with God – because God is the deepest ground of our being. Just as the mountain can never be detached from the earth on which it is founded, so can we never be detached from God.

When we decide go deeper into ourselves and live out of this level of consciousness, we come to the realization expressed so beautifully by an English mystic, Julian of Norwich: “all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” It is on this level that we are able to rejoice always, because we know that ultimately nothing can separate us from the love of God, as we are told by Paul once again in his letter to the Romans (8: 38).

When we are depressed, what we fear is the yawning deep black abyss that dwells inside of us. As we stare into the abyss, we wonder how there could possibly be any joy at the bottom of that dark pit. If we take the courage to leap into this hole we will usually find that, firstly, the bottom is closer than we actually thought, and secondly, when we hit the bottom we will find a familiar and comforting presence in the person of the Lord who never leaves our side. It is from this comforting and peaceful presence that we can find the reason to rejoice always, even when we are feeling blue.

So this Sunday we are invited to live with a joy that radiates to others in and out of season. People, seeing our joy, should ask themselves, is there something that we know that they don’t. Because there is something we do know that others don’t – namely that God is the ground of our being, that nothing can separate us from God’s love and that this is all that matters. Questions for reflection

1. Do I let myself be ruled by my emotions and let them define who I am?
2. When I am depressed, do I have faith enough to believe that God can be found beneath that depression?
3. Am I a person of joy who let’s that joy radiate out to others?