Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks.

This third Sunday of Advent is Gaudete Sunday --  Rejoice Sunday.  We light the pink candle of the Advent wreath.  We wear the pink vestments expressing that the joy of Christmas is beginning to invade the Advent season.

In ten words, St Paul expresses the theme of today’s liturgy:  Rejoice always.  Pray without ceasing.  In all circumstances give thanks.

My hope for myself and for you is that the joy of Gaudete Sunday is the joy that you experience everyday as a disciple of Jesus:  rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in all circumstances give thanks.

The way Pope Francis expresses the Advent joy is with one of his favorite expressions:  “Evangelizers must never look like they have just come back from a funeral.”  In Advent, we prepare with much hope and joy in our hearts.

How can possibly pray one without ceasing?  St Augustine gives us a beautiful example of praying without ceasing.  St. Augustine tells the story of his life as a prayer to God.  He shares his anxieties, successes, discoveries frustrations and even his sinful behavior in his classic autobiography entitled Confessions of St Augustine.  Augustine shows how every moment of his life can be a conversation with God.  May you have a faith perspective that enables you to view your whole life as a conversation with the God who created you and loves you with an  unending love.

In all circumstances, give thanks.  At every Mass, w begin the Eucharistic Prayer with:  LET US GIVE THANKS TO THE LORD OUR GOD.  It is right and just.

In today’s Scriptures the prophet Isaiah and John the Baptist are models for all of us.  We are called to be prophets in our world; we are to bear witness to Christ;  and in the wilderness of human greed, injustice, and falsehood, we are called to make straight the way of the Lord.

The Gaudete message is true joy and happiness is found only in God.

But we get fooled because John the Baptist is in the desert eating locusts and wild honey.  He may not seem like a person with an infectious smile out there in the desert.  Yet, make no mistake about it, John the Baptist experienced the joy of knowing the Lord.  Joy is one of the characteristics of God’s spirit in the human heart.

The question that people kept asking John was:  “Who are you?”  John knew his identity.  He knew who he was and who he was not.  John said:  “I am not the Christ…I am the voice of one crying in the desert, make straight the way of the Lord.”  John went on to say:  “There is one among you whom you do not recognize.”

John’s mission was to help people recognize the presence of Christ who is in our midst. 

So we ask ourselves the question:  What helps us to recognize the presence of Christ that is in our midst?  Also, we need to humbly ask what blinds from recognizing the presence of Christ in our midst.  We might be so intent on something that we miss the gem right before us.

 John was filled with a faith-filled vision in recognizing Christ.  John lived his life deflecting attention away from himself so that the focus might be fully and directly on Jesus.  John had plenty of time to focus on Jesus because nothing else mattered to John.

May we in this Advent season exercise a John-like role directing attention away from ourselves and witnessing to the Christ who is in our midst.  May we find joy, Gaudete, in helping others recognize the presence of Christ.   It is my prayer that my preaching can help others know Jesus in their lives.  Yours is an even more important witness.  You are to preach without words.  How?  By a simple smile that communicates friendship, and in all the ways we wash the feet of God’s poor, we witness to the mystery of Christmas.  Our God is present to us in human flesh – in your human flesh and in mine.

The mission given to us at our Baptism is the same mission that was given to John.   We are to witness to the presence of God in our midst.  In so doing, we rejoice.  We rejoice even in the midst of the violence that surrounds racial conflict and the threat of terrorism that we live with.  We rejoice because God is present among us.

 When the question is asked of us that was asked of John in the Gospel:  “Who are you?”  May we witness to the reality that the Spirit of the Lord is upon us.  And thus, we are a parish community filled with the qualities that Paul asks of us:  “Rejoice always.  Pray without ceasing.  In all circumstances give thanks."

May the Church of the Holy Spirit in this Advent season herald, give witness, give voice to the presence of Christ in our midst.  May our Advent attitude be:  “Rejoice always.  Pray without ceasing.  In all circumstances give thanks.

Come Lord Jesus.  Marantha.