3rd Sunday Advent - Year B

Today is Gaudete Sunday.  The name comes from the Entrance Antiphon from today’s liturgy.  Every mass has an Entrance Antiphon (usually a phrase from scripture) assigned to it, and it used to be a custom to assign a title to every Sunday mass.  The title was a Latin word taken from the first word of the Entrance Antiphon.  The first word today is rejoice - Gaudete!  The colour of vestments for today’s liturgy is rose.  The lighting of the rose candle in the Advent wreath adds to the ambience of this joyous day.

All the readings of this Sunday underscore the theme of joy.  In the 1st reading from Isaiah, we read “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord”. In the 2nd reading (1 Thes.5:16-24), Paul exhorts the Thessalonians to rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances.   Though we do not find explicit reference to joy in the gospel (Jn 1:6-8,19-28) John the Baptist’s plea to make straight the way of the Lord is an emphatic declaration that sin and joy won’t go together and therefore people should confess their sins and undergo conversion. 

Do our rituals and symbols produce real joy in our life?  Is it not true that they do not match our reality.  We profess that Christ comes to save us, but we don’t really believe that we need to be saved. Take the case of our anxieties.  As theologian Paul Tillich says every human being labours under a triple anxiety: anxiety about one’s own existence, about the meaning of life and about guilt.  Tillich calls these absolute anxieties because they exist in the heart of humanity.

It is a strange fact that we don’t worry much about absolutes.  At the same time we are worried about a lot of relative anxieties like pain.  We don’t  want to think about death; but pain evokes general anxiety about death.  Anxiety about the meaning of life exhibits itself in our frantic drive for identity, affirmation and relevance.  Guilt anxiety is the basic realization that we can do evil but not undo it.

In this human condition, Advent is an invitation to trace a passing pain, a nagging worry, an uneasy conscience back to the source in the absolute anxieties of death, meaning and guilt.  We might even discover that we do need to be saved.  Not from anxiety, which is natural. But we need someone to transform death to resurrection, give meaning to our life, forgive our sins.  Here comes the relevance of John the Baptist’s proclamation.