Third Sunday of Advent
Gaudete Sunday
December 17, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/121723.cfm

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, what glorious readings we have, capturing our exuberant hope. In our Responsorial Psalm, Mary proclaims the profound re-ordering of the world in justice and mercy.

Walter Brueggemann says “the song of Mary (the Magnificat; Luke 1:46–55) is about the unthinkable turn in human destinies when all seemed impossible: “For with God nothing will be impossible” (v. 37).

Our God has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty;.
has come to the help of our people
and remembered the promise of mercy…

Luke 1:63-64

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With Isaiah, the whole earth sings out: “GAUDETE’ – REJOICE”, because the Divine Light breaks on the horizon. Isaiah imagines the self-proclamation of this glorious Messiah Who rises out of history’s darkness:

The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor,
to heal the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
and release to the prisoners,
to announce a year of favor from the LORD
and a day of vindication by our God.

I rejoice heartily in the LORD,
in my God is the joy of my soul;
for he has clothed me with a robe of salvation
and wrapped me in a mantle of justice,
like a bridegroom adorned with a diadem,
like a bride bedecked with her jewels.
As the earth brings forth its plants,
and a garden makes its growth spring up,
so will the Lord GOD make justice and praise
spring up before all the nations.

Isaiah 61: 1-2A;10-12

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Finally, in our Gospel, John the Baptist instructs his questioning followers about finding “the One Who is to come”. His words give us a precious insight into how we will find this emergent Savior in our own lives:

John answered them,
“I baptize with water;
but there is one among you whom you do not recognize,
the one who is coming after me,
whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.”
This happened in Bethany across the Jordan,
where John was baptizing.

John 1:20-28

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The jubilant grace of Gaudete Sunday may be this:

• the spiritual energy to find God, as John did, in the shrouded complexities of our lives and times
• to believe, as Mary did, that God will enact an incredible restoration of Creation
• to rejoice heartily with Isaiah in the One who is the “joy of my soul”

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Prose: Willa Cather in Death Comes for the Archbishop

The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.

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Music: Rejoice in the Lord Alway – Henry Purcell