By Fr. Antony Christy, SDB –
Third Sunday in Advent: December 16, 2018
Zephaniah 3:14-18; Philippians 4: 4-7; Luke 3: 10-18
An expectant couple, a lover on the park bench, a child on the birthday eve, a starved person on a set table… these are vivid snapshots of the joy of waiting! There is a pain involved, but a pain that is part of the joy. There are myriads of reasons to be disturbed and be restless about, but they are all overwhelmed by the joy that resides beneath. That is the picture that the Church wants us to contemplate this Sunday: Waiting in the Lord with Joy for the Reign.
This Sunday is called the Gaudete Sunday (Gaudete in Latin simply means ‘Rejoice’)… taking off from the entrance antiphon which invites us to REJOICE, because the salvation of the Lord is near. Note the colour of the vestments today… they are not merely the violet, but purple or pink… to add the necessary element of joy to the waiting! A Christian waiting should be joyful, the liturgy reminds us today.
The whole creation groans as with pangs of childbirth…for a peaceful, prosperous, perfect world. Every religion and every spirituality is a yearning towards that state of existence, called in various names. We believe it to be the Reign of God; “We are seeking God’s Kingdom” reminds the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (180) of Pope Francis. This waiting, this Christian waiting for the Reign of God is a joyful waiting, not a miserable waiting, not a servile waiting. The readings today bring to our attention the marks of this waiting:
The first mark is the Assurance of FAITH. The first reading is full of words like, gladness, joy, exultation, rejoicing, shouting, dancing, singing… all these words of Zephaniah was used by the people of Israel in their liturgy because it consoled them in their times of exile… the prophet reminds them the day of the Lord is near! What fills their hearts and their lives is faith – a joyful and total abandonment into the hands of God, one who creates and directs history. A total assurance that the Lord is for them; the Lord stands in favour of them and the Lord will lead them to the prosperity that they are waiting for.
Our life, to be truly Christian, to be truly worthy of the Reign, has to be based firmly on this assurance of faith, that the Lord is with us and the Lord is for us. When at times things go wrong in our lives – a break of relationship, or a repeated failure in career, or a disillusionment with one’s dreams…we need to remember in faith: When God is for us, who can be against us!
The second mark of a joyful waiting is the Aspirations of HOPE. Hope is not an empty dream or a fanciful imagination that things will dramatically and miraculously change over and everything will be fine at a point of time. Hope is the aspirations of a heart, the desire for a better world, the yearning for a bright tomorrow, the thirst for justice and truth, these are infallible signs of the Reign.
That is what we are invited to.. to hope, and only that hope will thrust us into action, into doing our little bit, our essential part in making those dreams come true! We need to do out bit: John the Baptist instructs those people what to do and what not to do. Today, we have each of us our part to reflect upon and do… to change the world in our own way. Are we going wait for some change to come from somewhere without we doing anything for it? Or are we going to be filled with that vision, to reach the promised land, each and every one of us hand in hand.
The third mark is Associations of LOVE. When is a person filled with such joy while waiting? Only while the person is waiting for the love of one’s life! This is the chief characteristic of our waiting. We are not waiting for something to happen, but we are waiting for someone to come, someone whom we love with all our heart, someone whom we know so well. We are waiting with joy because we know the person would bring us exactly that – joy, joy without ending! The love that fills our hearts, fills our lives too and that is why our life changes while we are waiting. In fact the waiting is for the change to happen within us, that at the moment of coming we are in the best of our selves to encounter the moment, meet the person, enjoy the love and grow into the Reign.
We are waiting… we are waiting for the Reign… but the Reign is already here, the wait is to make it more and more visible! Hence, each of us has the responsibility, to make the Reign of God felt, here and now, through living with an abundance of assurance of faith, with limitless aspirations of hope and divine associations of love with each other. The joy of waiting for the Reign, has to radiate that joy to every one, everyday in every way.
Fr Antony Christy is a Salesian Priest from 2005, who has a Masters in Philosophy (specialisation in Religion) and a Masters in Theology (Specialisation in Catechetics). He is currently pursuing his doctoral research in Theology at Salesian Pontifical University, Rome. Walking with the Young towards a World of Peace and Dialogue is the passion that fires him.