The Third Sunday of Advent Dec. 17th

Third Sunday of Advent
December 17, 2006


“Brothers and sisters: Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice!”
Phil. 4:4

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We are preparing to celebrate Jesus’ Birthday December 25th. Here on earth we celebrate each others birthdays on the day we were physically born. While it is wonderful to celebrate our physical birth, the church has us focus more on the greatest birth anyone of us can have. That birth is our spiritual birth and it comes when we die. So, when we celebrate the life of a particular saint, we do not celebrate the day they were born but the day they died. Why? Because it is in dying that we can be born into the infinite celebration of life that we have always been looking for but could not find here in this valley of tears.

Think of what the person who does not know God and the afterlife runs from. It is death. The clock is ticking and everything is going to be over in a few, short years. How unsettling this thought must be. St. Paul says that we are the most pitiable of all people if our hopes are limited to this life. The one who lives in union with Christ, on the other hand, runs to it. For the Christian, death is just a door to the home of eternal life that she or he has always wanted to get to.

St. Paul gives us this injunction, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice.” As we look to fulfill this command of always rejoicing in this world, let us start with the end. Death, which can be the saddest time for various reasons, can be turned into our greatest time of rejoicing. Remember, it is in dying that we are born into eternal life. When I die, have a big party to celebrate our call to heaven. Have lots of food, fun, music and dancing. Rejoice that the savior is taking another one of his children to himself! At the funeral, rejoice by proclaiming how our Great Jesus loved and saved a sinner like me.

If, then, our saddest time in life can be turned into the greatest time of rejoicing, then let us turn all the sad and all of everything into rejoicing. So, you broke your leg. Rejoice that you have a leg! Your spouse or someone betrayed you. Rejoice that Jesus will never betray you. Someone has discounted, disrespected, made light of you. Rejoice that Jesus counts you more than all the riches and beauty of the world as he dies for YOU on the cross. Rejoice at the next breathe you take because it means you are alive and you have an invitation from Christ, delivered by the Holy Spirit, to live forever.

Rejoice, rejoice, and rejoice in everything, all the time. See Jesus in it, raising us all up to the joy of heaven.

Love is spelled T-I-M-E,
Fr. John