The Ordinary Unexpected Joy

A Homily for Gaudete Sunday (The 3rd Sunday of Advent)

Today is Gaudete Sunday and we are kindly invited to “Rejoice!” But what exactly is this “joy” we are called to make manifest?

The prophet Zephaniah exclaims: “Shout for joy, O daughter Zion!”

The prophet Isaiah encourages us to: “Cry out with joy and gladness.”

And St. Paul exhorts us to: “Rejoice in the Lord always.” And to emphasize his point he repeats: “I say it again: rejoice!”

First, we need to understand what this joy is not. The joy at the heart of Gaudete Sunday is not a “feeling.” It is not an emotion, though it might have some emotional content. It’s not a plastered on perma-smile. It’s not feeling good because everything is going my way, because, seriously, how often does everything go our way? Nor is it some relentless happiness or elation that might makes us appear as if we’ve gone around the bend!

I would like to suggest that the Joy of Gaudete Sunday can be defined in three simple words: I. Am. Enough! I am enough!

What is the primordial human sin if it is not the drive, or better said, the human compulsion to “Overreach.” It is at the heart of the disobedience of our first Parents: Adam & Eve. They are unsatisfied with simply being human and lovingly created by God, and want instead to be God by their own machinations. And what is the result? They recognize their nakedness; their vulnerability and they engage in the long-standing human addiction to hiding. Hiding so well and so long that the truth of who we are becomes so convoluted and lost that we begin to mistake ourselves, hidden due to shame, to actually be the person we were created to be. And that existential shame only draws us ever more helplessly into a cycle of over-reaching in order to quell the pain of our own self-created predicament.

So, what is this Joy of Gaudete Sunday? I believe it is this: That with the coming of Christ; from the very moment Mary said “Yes” to God, we no longer need to over-reach. We can be who we are, as we are, loved by God… We are enough. I am enough. You are enough. And it is within that “enough,” which appears as limitation to us, where God chooses to work his wonders. And his primary wonder, at work in each of us, is to draw us into his divinity as sheer gift, rather than something earned by our own machinations.

Note how John the Baptist responds to each of his interlocutors in our gospel today, as they ask the same question: What should we do? John doesn’t say: “You got to go do something spectacular!” “You’ve got to get it together!” “You’ve got to get it right!” He simply says to crowd, tax collector, and soldier alike: Stop over-reaching! Be at peace with who you because it is there, and only there, where God can make himself known. NOT in spite of our limitations but, by the incarnation of the Word made Flesh, in the very heart of our human limitation.

So, what is the Joy of Gaudete Sunday? The Joy that is ours every day of our lives? It is to know, to be convinced, to be convicted, in the fundamental truth, which we celebrate each Christmas, that in Christ, I am enough. And it is in that “Enough” where God transforms us daily from glory into glory!

In the end it is an ordinary, unexpected joy. Ordinary because it has always been, is now and will always be ours. It is Unexpected because we so often over-reach it by looking for something else. The joy God desires for each of us is the knowledge that what we are, who we are, as we are, is enough. And God’s joy is to show us daily how that “Enough” is all he needs to work wonders.