Rejoice?

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.  Indeed the Lord is near.

The opening words of today’s Gaudete Sunday Mass—Gaudete is Latin for Rejoice.

Today is supposed to be a special day of rejoicing.

In just nine days we’ll celebrate the birth of Jesus.

We’ll commemorate God’s full entry into human existence, into this world of ours.

His entry, as a human person, into that nature and this material world that he created.

Our first reading from Zephaniah picks up the theme.

Shout for joy, the Lord is in your midst!

The Psalm continues the theme.

Cry out with joy and gladness, for among you is the great and Holy One of Israel.

Our reading from the Letter to the Philippians echoes the opening words of the Mass.

Rejoice in the Lord always.  I shall say it again: rejoice!  The Lord is near.

And goes on to add:  Have no anxiety at all …

And then we get to our Gospel and its report on John the Baptist.

It does end on an up note; He preached the Good News to the people.

But what’s all that other stuff?  How does that fit our special day of rejoicing?

The people are really impressed with John and think he might be the Christ.

But John humbly tells them that he’s just preparing the way; someone greater is coming.

That is good news, and in keeping with the theme of rejoicing that the Lord is near.

And John goes on …

When the Christ—the Lord—gets here, he’s going to gather the wheat into his barn.

More good news.  Rejoice!

But John doesn’t stop there; he continues:

While the wheat is carried into the barn, the chaff will be burned with unquenchable fire.

How can we rejoice at that?

Should we rejoice that justice will triumph?

Maybe; but that also leaves a real chance that we could find ourselves among the chaff.

Or that as we’re being carried into the barn, our loved ones are being dragged to the fire.

Why are we hearing that today? Where’s the Good News in that?

This seems more of a mixed message—a good news / bad news—story.

Maybe this is not just a time for rejoicing, but also a time for a reality check.

Good and evil are real.

Friday morning we clearly saw unspeakable acts of evil at work in Connecticut.

And similarly-evil acts of crime and war and neglect happen every day in this world.

But we often see acts of goodness in the midst or the aftermath of that evil.

Heaven and Hell are real too.

Jesus spoke frequently and definitely of Heaven and Hell.

But he never described them in full detail, at least not in terms we can fully understand.

All we really know are the basics.

Heaven is very good; better than we can imagine.

Hell is very bad; somewhere between eternal unhappiness and eternal torture.

Christian theologians don’t debate the existence of Heaven and Hell.

But they do debate their population figures.

Some focus on Jesus’ references to the difficulty of entering Heaven.

And decide that few enter Heaven and many go to Hell.

Others focus on the limitless power of Jesus’ self-sacrifice, and God’s mercy.

And decide that most enter Heaven and few go to Hell.

Maybe even, none go to Hell.

Should there be a special depth of Hell for the most despicable humans?

The torturers; the masterminds of genocide.

Those who massacre defenseless, innocent children.

Are they purely evil humans, or mentally defective humans?

All we can do is leave it to God to deal with them.

Can he deal with them without sending them to Hell?

And what if they sincerely repent?

Does their evil go unpunished?

This is most definitely not a perfect world.

It’s in between Heaven and Hell.

Evil does exist here—along with uncertainty and confusion.

Faced with the hope of Heaven and the threat of Hell,

We might ask the same question the people asked John the Baptist.

What should we do?

We have John’s answers.

Care for others; share your cloaks and your food with the poor.

Treat others fairly.

And Jesus has also given us answers.

Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.

We also have Jesus’ assurances.

We have a God who cares so much about humankind that he became one of us.

So that he could suffer for us and die for us; teach us and save us.

A God who remains with us, dwells within us—even when this seems a most evil world.

A God who loves each one of us, pursues us, and calls us by name.

The gates of Heaven are now opened, we’re about to commemorate that opening.

There is eternal life and a far better place than this world.

We know that innocent children are taken there.

We can hope that we’ll all be taken there.

The Lord is near.

The sorrows and anxieties of this world will pass away.

So, indeed—Rejoice!

3rd Sunday of Advent

Lk 3:10-18                                   Read this Scripture @usccb.org