My anxiety at December’s rapid passing changed when I learned to regard today as “Advent’s Third Sunday” rather than “Oh no, Christmas is seven minutes away, and we’re not ready!”
Advent grants us space and time. It allows us to forego the frantic twists of the race towards Christmas Eve. Advent may be many things theologically and historically, but on a practical level, it offers the gift of peacefulness.
Still, keeping the rituals of Christmas until the liturgical “Twelve Days” is not possible for some families. For example, I have friends who hold a traditional Thanksgiving Day dinner, and then, the next morning, pop up the tree, exchange gifts, sing Carols, and feast across Friday and Saturday. Why? Because these are the only days their spread-out family can gather and be together.
Today offers us a different kind of feasting–Rejoicing Sunday or Gaudete Sunday (Latin imperative for rejoice). In past calendars, we’ve enjoyed featuring our favorite medieval tune and text appropriate for the day. I recommend it with a warning, though; its melody and rhythm are infectious. If they enter into your ear and heart, prepare to have them pop up at the most inconvenient of times. Perhaps you’ll be in a serious meeting and, suddenly, “Gau-de-te, GAU-de-te, Christus est NA-tus” (Rejoice, Rejoice, Christ is Born!) will spring into your head, complete with the tinkling of finger cymbals and the pop of a tambourine. If that happens, you are in trouble!
On Rejoicing Sunday the maternal figure (mom, grandma, great-aunt) lights the third candle. If your candle drawer has one, today’s candle is rose-colored, reflecting another name for this day: Rose Sunday. Liturgically, the clergy and altar will be clad in rose or pink today, which makes a festive contrast to violet.
The concept of a festal day in the midst of a fasting season is ancient and useful. After all, four weeks (Advent) or forty days (Lent) is a long time for a spiritual discipline. Most of us aren’t constituted as heartily as the Desert Fathers.
Rejoicing Sunday also tells us that we are coming close to our spiritual goal. In Lent, the intensity ratchets up with increased observances in Holy Week, Christianity’s most dramatic period. But in Advent, we are spotting the finish line on Rejoicing Sunday, with somewhere between 7 and 13 days before Christmas Eve arrives. At that point, the wondrous hush of Christmas Eve descends over the whole world (or so it seems to me). Already I yearn for that feeling.
So, let us rejoice today and renew our desire to keep Advent, follow old traditions, and make new ones. We still have work to do if we wish to guard and protect Christmas’ sacred nature from the forces of secular culture. We want to imbue these days with as much spiritual care and faithfulness as possible.
Isn’t that a mother’s job every day? Maybe that’s why the maternal figure is honored on this Third Sunday. She represents the force of mothers throughout time, including the Holy Mother Mary. The mother, after all, is God’s caretaker of the family. Like an iceberg, the bulk of her labor, love, and concern lies unseen below the surface, supporting the visible structure of the family. Her love is impossible to measure, assess, or fully appreciate To use the language from Proverbs 3:15:
She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.
Next week, father’s will be honored on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, the other figure who labors tirelessly for the family. But today, after she lights the third Advent Candle, take the hand of the woman who blesses and knits together your family. Press it tenderly and rejoice together.
