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Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice! 

Indeed the Lord is near.

We heard those words in the opening of today’s Gaudete Sunday Mass—

And again in our reading from the Letter to the Philippians.

This Sunday is a special day of rejoicing.

Gaudete is Latin for Rejoice.

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

We’ll commemorate God’s full physical 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.

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 about winnowing and unquenchable fire? 

How does that fit our special day of rejoicing?

The people are really impressed with John.

They think he might be the Messiah, 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 thrown into 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 isn’t just a time for rejoicing,

But also a time for a reality check.

Time to look at where we are now and where we hope to be.

Good and evil are real.

Time magazine has published its 2018 Pictures of the Year.

One is the photo of little Amal Hussain, a child in Yemen.

It’s a haunting picture of an entranced, starving, skeletal child.

Just a few days after the picture was taken, she died.

Don’t Google it if you don’t want to be deeply … disturbed.

This is the world we live in.

And similarly-evil acts of crime and war and neglect

Happen every day in this world.

But there’s also great good in the world.

The Kingdom of God continues to grow.

We often see acts of goodness

In the very midst or the aftermath of the evil.

Heaven and Hell are real too.

Jesus spoke frequently and definitely of Heaven and Hell.

But he never described them in complete 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.

Christians don’t so much debate the existence of Heaven and Hell,

As they debate their population figures.

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

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

Others focus on the limitless power of Jesus’ self-sacrifice,

And God’s abundant mercy.

And believe 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 like Amal?

Are they purely evil humans?

Or mentally defective humans?

Can God deal with them without sending them to Hell?

And what if they sincerely repent?

Does their evil go unpunished?

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

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 does not want even one of us to be lost.

We have a God who has prepared many rooms for us in Heaven.

We have a God who cares so much about humankind

That he humbled himself to become 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.

We’re preparing to celebrate our annual commemoration 

Of God’s coming.

His sending His Son to us on that first Christmas.

His opening of the gates of Heaven for us.

We know that Indeed the Lord is near.

That he remains truly in our midst today.

Even more present now than when he physically walked the earth.

We know that he has stayed with us, to lead us and guide us.

We know there is eternal life, and a far better place than this world.

We know that innocent children are taken there.

We know that we have great reason to hope that we’ll all be taken there.

So, yes—Rejoice!

3rd Sunday of Advent

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