When we allow joy into our lives and it is able to touch the deepest part of our hearts it is so exquisite that it often brings tears to our eyes.  I have often found that joy breaks our hearts and creates such a yearning for eternity that it is almost painful.  The hardness of our hearts from the everyday experiences of sorrows and disappointments, fears and anxieties is shattered as our hearts are pierced by a sudden moment of joy that breaks through the clouds of our protective barrier behind which our true nature hides and causes us to look full on into the truth of eternal love and grace.  For a brief moment we cannot deny the full truth of love and its transformative power.  God casts down the mighty image of cynicism and negative thought that we have made the only reality that we make our offerings to each day and he lifts up the lowly child of love to reveal its true glory and splendor.  For a brief moment we know through our experience that it is love that will be our salvation.  I have often witnessed this type of joy at weddings when the bride enters in adorned for her husband and ready to enter into an eternal life of love and union with her beloved.

     On this third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday, we are reminded that the purpose of all of our Advent preparations is the readiness for the joy of the encounter of the bride with the bridegroom.  Advent hope and preparation points us towards joy.  For this reason our third candle on the Advent wreath is the rose colored candle, a symbol of joy.  Our first reading gives us this image of the marriage feast in which God “has clothed me with a robe of salvation and wrapped me in a mantle of justice, like a bridegroom adorned with a diadem, like a bride bedecked with her jewels.”  When we encounter the bridegroom Christ adorned with the graces that God has provided for us like a bridal garment, gleaming white and adorned with jewels, we begin to experience the joy that comes at the end of our Advent preparations.  We are the bridal Church that awaits the coming of the bridegroom Christ so that we might enter into an eternal union of love and communion with our beloved Lord.  This is the cause of our joy and gives us sufficient reason to “rejoice always in the Lord.”

     Advent is our marriage preparation program in which we are guided by St. Paul to prepare ourselves for the coming of the bridegroom Christ and the life of abundant joy that he brings.  St. Paul gives us instructions on our daily preparations for this encounter in three parts.  The first instruction is to “rejoice always”.  We need to practice joy and begin to feel the joy of the nearness of the coming of our beloved Lord Jesus.  The second instruction is to “pray unceasingly”.  Prayer creates the space for communion in our daily converse with the Lord.  In constant prayer we bring everything to the Lord and keep no part of ourselves from him.  In prayer we respond to his gift of presence and the gift of his Word through words that express our love and devotion to him.  Our third instruction is “in all circumstance give thanks.”  We need to realize the blessings that God has bestowed upon us in calling us to this intimate relationship of love.  No matter what happens we have a reason to give thanks because God is with us, the Emmanuel, and is present in all of our experiences, in joy and in sorrow, in plenty and in need, in gain and in loss, in victory and in defeat, our beloved is always near to us and will never leave us alone.  Our instructions need to be carried out in a way that prepares us for eternity: always, unceasingly, in all circumstances.  In this way we will be made “perfectly holy and may you entirely, spirit, soul, and body, be preserved blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

     The joy of the third Sunday of Advent makes “straight the way of the Lord” and prepares us for a Christmas full of joy, peace and love.  Come quickly, Lord Jesus!