Rejoice, It's Gaudete Sunday! A Message for My E-mail Recipients and the Catonsville UMC Youth

Greetings,

      If you are using a traditional Advent Wreath for your daily devotions, you are about to light the pink candle for the Third Sunday and week of Advent.  (In recent years some Advent candle sets use all purple candles, and in the last few years there has been a push to use blue candles – Virgin Mary blue is the color – which I suspect is the idea of the church supply houses to generate more income by selling churches blue paraments, altar cloths and pulpit and lectern hangings) in addition to the purple ones they already are using for Lent.)  Whatever the color of your candles, the principle of the Joyous Sunday remains.  It is a time to be excited about drawing close to Christmas and the celebration of the birth of Jesus.

      Gaudete Sunday is another name for the Third Sunday of Advent.  It comes from the first Latin word of the traditional Entrance Antiphon used in the Church on that Sunday:

Rejoice [Gaudete], Jerusalem, let your joy overflow;

your Savior will come to you, alleluia.

Traditionally Advent, like Lent, was a penitential season, with fasting and other acts of abstinence and signs of sorrow for our sins.  The purple color of Advent, again as with Lent, represents that penance and sorrow for sin.  Advent is the time of making sure we are right with God and are prepared for the glorious return of Christ; that when he comes again (or if we should die before his return) he will find us ready and acceptable for the eternal kingdom.  

Advent, however, also is a time to recognize the coming of Christ in the Incarnation, the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem; and it is a time of thanksgiving for the coming of Christ into our hearts and lives.  Therefore, it is anticipating a time of great joy, when God’s plan of salvation was made real with the coming of Jesus.  In the midst of our sorrow for our sins (purple) we are looking also toward the great joy of our redemption (Christmas - white, the color of joy and glory).  Half way through our time of penance we can contain ourselves no longer - the anticipated joy bursts through and we permit ourselves a slight break in our penance as we look toward the glorious coming of Jesus.  The purple is mixed with the white resulting in the pink representing our Rejoicing (Gaudete) in the midst of our penance and sorrow for sins.

So, Rejoice, but don’t forget to keep your attention of being ready for the coming of Jesus the Christ in Glory by having already asked Jesus to come into your heart and life.  With Jesus in you, walk with him each day, so that the celebration of each of his comings is made real in the lives of the people around you – your family, your friends, your neighbors you know, and your neighbors you do not know, but who are to Jesus just as much your responsibility to love as is your closest friend.

Yours & His,

DED