The cause of our joy – God is always with us: Homily for Sunday, December 17, 2023

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Today is Gaudete Sunday. Gaudete is a command: Rejoice! It is the imperative form of the verb gaudere, which means to rejoice.

The cause of our joy – God is always with us

So one of the things that I try to do with some success and some failure is to exercise on a regular basis. I know it’s good for me, I know I feel better physically, I sleep better, and quite honestly my mental health is better. So there’s all kinds of good benefits from it.

And so I was a little surprised when I started on the elliptical machine that we have in our basement how hard it was. Now I’ve been on elliptical machines before, I mean I know that there’s supposed to be some work, but I’m telling you this was really hard. I was all out of breath, I thought oh my gosh I can’t possibly endure this, so how is this going to happen?

But I did, I stuck with it and put my half an hour in even though it was hard and it was on the lowest level. I thought my gosh, this is one demanding elliptical machine. Well the other night I was on the elliptical machine and we fortunately have a little television because I’m going to tell you, anybody that tells you that exercise is not boring is lying to you.

And I’m on this and I’ve been at this for about 26, 27 minutes and one of the other brothers comes down, he’s doing his laundry, he said oh I see you’re using the elliptical machine, I probably should tell you something, we don’t know how it happened, but it’s flipped. So even though you see it, you might think oh I’m on level one, that’s actually level 20. And level 20 is actually level one.

So I immediately put it up to 20 because I thought well I’ve been 28 minutes, I’m exhausted, I don’t want to die on this thing. But I was thinking about it over the weekend as I was preparing for my homily these past few days, this image struck me as a good one for where we are in the season of Advent.

See I’d done a lot of hard work, but then I got a little reminder that maybe there was joy at the end of the tunnel. And that’s kind of where we’re at with Advent.

Now there was a period of time I would suggest not really right in the long history of the church, that tried to push aside from Advent the notion that it was a penitential season. There was color changes and so forth, but quite frankly that’s not accurate when we look at the texts for the Mass, when we look at some of the things that change during this particular season.

It’s not as penitential as the season of Lent. But there are hints that it is intended on some level to be penitential. What do I mean by that? Well, for example, we don’t sing the Gloria during Lent. We don’t sing the Gloria during Advent.

There’s a little bit of time where we’re called to recognize why it is that God has made this great promise to us. Why it is that we have the season of Advent at all. It’s not just because we need something spiritually to do before Christmas, because we’d be bored otherwise. It’s because we need to recognize the reason why God made promises to us in the first place.

What is the biggest reason? Well, we need a Savior. And if we need a Savior, we need something from which we are being saved. We need to be reminded that even though we sin, even though we fall short, we need to change. We need to convert. But more than that, we need to know that God still loves us. That God still cares for us.

It would have been just if God had left us in our sin. But God’s justice is tempered by His mercy. And that indeed is the good news. That indeed is the good news that we are not left alone, that we are not condemned, that Jesus did not come into the world to condemn us, but to save us. Look at our world today. It’s a mess.

We’ve got more wars than I can possibly keep track of. And as Pope Saint Paul VI said, every time there’s war, it’s a failure. It’s a failure. War is not a solution. And it’s a sign that whatever we should have been doing, we’ve failed. Look at our world.

On some level, we get excited about this right or that right, but we don’t seem always, at least in my view, or maybe I’m saying I don’t always get excited enough, when people don’t have the right to eat. Or when people don’t have the right to have a place to live. Or people don’t have the right to be safe. The world is really a dangerous place.

But let’s take it even a step further and make it a little bit more individual, to be sure this is a wonderful time of year. Often it is a time where we celebrate family that maybe we don’t see as regularly as we would like. There are all kinds of wonderful celebrations, and there are decorations, and there are all kinds of good things which we are called to celebrate in our lives, and rightly so.

However, this is also not an easy time for everyone. For some, it is a time of loneliness. For some, the changing of the seasons is a time of increased depression or anxiety. For others, the end of the year and the beginning of another is not a happy time. It’s a challenging one. So where does joy come from if we find ourselves in those situations as well? Because I’m going to tell you, as much as I love my family and I love my relatives, I always have a little trepidation when I gathered with them.

Now, since I don’t live near most of my relatives, I have to say that it doesn’t happen as much as it used to. But I always have a little bit of trepidation. Maybe you do. I don’t know about your families. I can tell you that my family is not the Holy Family. Because there are some people in my family with whom I disagree profoundly about just about everything.

And I know that if I’m not careful, I’m going to get sucked into some kind of disagreement to which there is no good end. So it’s a challenge as well. And Jesus knows all of this. And there are other challenges I haven’t even mentioned. And Jesus knows all of this.

And in the midst of this difficulty, in the midst of this hardship, St. John the Baptist reminds us of something unbelievably true. He is that voice crying out in the desert, make straight the way of the Lord. God wants us to really work to create a world with His grace, under His inspiration, with His help that is level. And smooth. A world where people will get all of the things they deserve. Isaiah gives us a pretty difficult list, if you ask me. Let’s see which way is what it’s like. Very rarely do I have to do this.

But I have to get it right because the homework that you’re going to be given must be done correctly. Isaiah is very specific. So here’s your homework, because I’m a teacher after all. Okay, bring glad tidings to the poor. Okay, that’s not so difficult. Just tell them and remind people that Jesus loves them. Heal the brokenhearted. Okay, that’s a little bit more difficult. Proclaim liberty to captives. Oh, I don’t know about you, but that seems hard. Release to the prisoners. Announcing a year of favor from the Lord and a day of vindication by our God.

And if we do all these things, then we can rejoice. Yes, this will be on the test. Yes, you do need to know this. Yes, you do need to do this. See, because that’s the promise that Jesus gives each one of us. That if we truly believe in Jesus, then these are the signs that accompany our belief.

But here’s the even better news. We don’t have to do this all by ourselves. There’s two reasons I can say that with confidence. One, here we are. It’s a group assignment. If you’ve listened to any of my daily homilies, you know I hate group assignments, but this is a group assignment.

And secondly, and even more importantly, Jesus gives us grace. Jesus gives us help. We act under the inspiration of Jesus Himself. And so, with all of this help of Jesus and all of His grace, it’s very easy to do what He commands. Rejoice.

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