Gaudete!

So guys… The baby is almost here! I know you’ve been waiting with anticipation to finally get to meet the baby… but I kind of feel like I need to give a disclaimer… This here (this pink vestment I’m wearing)… is not a gender reveal… (it’s actually going to be a boy!)

But this is kind of where we are this weekend right? C’mon admit it, today, it’s kind of like we’re having a baby shower… for JESUS! 

We have been walking through Advent, through a time of expectation… We walk with Mary who carries the Son of God in her womb…

I think sometimes we don’t realize that Mary was just an ordinary girl who didn’t have visions all the time. The scriptures only tell of the one encounter she had with the angel Gabriel who appeared in all the glory and majesty of God to Mary with the message, “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High”

But what happened afterwards… poof! The light was gone, Mary just sat in her room, the same room that she had been day after day … and in some sense nothing appeared different. She looked down is the Son of God really inside of me now?

Now hear the words of the first reading again…

Shout for joy, O daughter Zion!
Sing joyfully, O Israel!
Be glad and exult with all your heart,
O daughter Jerusalem!

Fear not, O Zion, be not discouraged!
The LORD, your God, is in your midst,
a mighty savior;
he will rejoice over you with gladness,
and renew you in his love…

Gaudete! Rejoice! The LORD, your God is in your midst! The LORD is near! How near? He’s in you! In you is he being formed… and he will manifest himself through you!

We rejoice today not only because Christ is being formed in the womb of Mary… but also because Christ is being formed in you and me! In every Christian, the life of Christ is present. 

My brothers and sisters, we have a crisis on our hands… we look out into the world and it seems like dark times for the world and for the church… but I think it’s good to remember where the word Crisis actually comes from… in Greek, the world Crisis means “a decision”. In the world today, there is a decision to make… will I rejoice in the light or will I despair in the darkness?

The Church tells us today, in fact, commands us today: REJOICE! And it’s not simply a feeling… Rejoicing is an act of FAITH. Rejoicing is an act of HOPE… Faith and Hope in a person… in the Son of God. 

In the midst of Advent, in the middle of all the dark purple, today we have today, Gaudete Sunday… with our beautiful pink or as some priest will correct you, rose colors. 

It is a day of deep joy… Sometimes we can mistake the deep joy of God with pleasures or passing bliss… we can mistake it for the new shiny toy or the comfortable living that we have. But none of that is real joy. 

Real joy, real happiness only comes from being close to Jesus. To be near Jesus, to be in his midst of real happiness.

The source of all our unhappiness, of all our despair that we experience, is through us putting distance between us and God… through our indifference with Jesus… through our sin we push ourselves further away from Him.

And so today we have a crisis, a decision to make… Will you draw near to Jesus or will you remain far from him? In the midst of the darkness in the world, will you entrust your future to Jesus? Will you put your faith and hope in Him?

Today, I choose Jesus. Today, I choose to rejoice. I know that Jesus is real, that Jesus dwells in me, that in the Eucharist, I become like Mary… that I carry Jesus into the world. And it is Jesus who has the ability to dispel any darkness, he has the ability to fight and conquer any evils. It is Jesus in whom I entrust my life to.

Fear not, O Zion, be not discouraged!
The LORD, your God, is in your midst,
a mighty savior;
he will rejoice over you with gladness,
and renew you in his love