Laudet Dominum

We’ve hit the midpoint in Advent. Only two more weeks until Christmas, and it seems like the whole country is focused solely on preparing for Christmas parties, gift-giving, and merriment. Every other show on TV seems to be a Christmas special, and all the old favorite Christmas songs are being played on the radio over and over again. It’s almost enough to make us look forward to Christmas Day so that it’ll be over.

While it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the constant barrage of Christmas cheer in the media and around town, we should be having a different reaction, one of rejoicing and anticipation. During this season of Advent, we’ve been preparing for the celebration of Our Lord’s birth, but we’re also preparing ourselves to welcome Jesus when he returns again. God wants us to approach this season with great rejoicing, as we are encouraged in today’s Entrance Antiphon, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice! The Lord is near.” Now, we don’t frequently hear the Entrance Antiphon, since we often choose to use a hymn instead for the opening procession, but it is a part of the prayers of the Mass, often chanted with a Psalm or other Scripture verses.

Today’s Entrance Antiphon brings us the popular title for this Sunday in Advent, Gaudete Sunday. Gaudete is Latin for rejoice, the first word in the antiphon, and is an encouragement for all of us to rejoice in the Lord, because He is coming. We usually wear bright colors when celebrating special events, thus the rose colored vestments in exchange for the ordinary purple of Advent, as today is a day of rejoicing along with our preparation for Christmas.

The reading this morning from the prophet Isaiah shows us why we should approach this season with rejoicing. He says that he “rejoice[s] heartily in the Lord, in my God is the joy of my soul; for he has clothed me with a robe of salvation and wrapped me in a mantle of justice.” Isaiah was proclaiming the return of the people of Israel to the Promised Land after being removed by conquering armies, and like Isaiah, we have been wrapped in a robe of salvation. At our baptism, we were wrapped with that robe, symbolized by with white clothes of purity, and we entered into the Body of Christ and were given the promise that if we remain faithful to God, we would receive the gift of salvation.

Much as the people of Israel may have succumbed to despair during their long period of captivity, it’s easy for us to despair when wrapped in the anguish, sorrow, and struggles that frequently come with life on Earth. To us, Isaiah says that God will “make justice and peace spring up before the nations.” Ironically, as we’re experiencing bitter cold weather with lots of wind and blowing snow, Isaiah presents to us the image of the new Spring growth. Just as it seems impossible to imagine the first warm days of Spring during these cold days, it also seems impossible to imagine what life will be like when God reigns over the whole world as king. We know, however, just as the warm Spring will come and melt away the cold and snow, God’s reign will come, enveloping us with his love and mercy.

Today, let us join the Blessed Mother Mary in her song of praise which we sung in the Responsorial Psalm. Let us “proclaim the greatness of the Lord” and “[rejoice] in God [our] savior.”

In 1792, the first bishop of the United States, John Carroll, dedicated the newly formed nation to the patronage of the Virgin Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception, a patronage which continues until this day. It’s fitting, therefore, that our nation’s capital contains the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, a large and very beautifully decorated church dedicated to Our Lady. If you ever have the opportunity to visit Washington DC, I highly recommend taking several hours and visiting this beautiful shrine. Along the sides of both the main upper church and the basement are over 70 chapels dedicated to honoring Our Lady in her various titles.

With all the images of Our Lady that are present in this shrine, it’s striking that the most noticeable image which a visitor sees upon entering the upper church is a large mosaic of Our Lord in the dome over the main altar. While it may seem out of place in this shrine dedicated to Our Lady, it is the exact point of both the shrine and the feast we celebrate today: through the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we see the saving grace of Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross.

When the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary, then a young woman living in Nazareth, he had been sent to present to her the news that she was to become the mother of the savior of the world. While God the Father had chosen Mary to be the mother of His Son, He respected her free will enough to give her the opportunity to accept or reject His divine will. Her acceptance of God’s will meant that His plan of salvation could go forward. To prepare Mary for her role as mother of the second person of the Trinity, God was able to apply the effects of Jesus’ death on the Cross to her from the first moment of her existence. Before she could bear the fully-divine, fully-human Son of God, she had to be made pure with no stain of sin.

Those of us who have been baptized have received this same gift of Christ’s salvation, but we are still affected by the stain of sin on our souls. We are still tempted by sin, and we still fall into sinful behaviors. The Blessed Virgin Mary is held up as the example of what we hope to be one day. As St. Paul tells us in the second reading, we have been chosen in Christ “to be holy and without blemish before Him.” All of us who remain in unity with Our Lord will one day have the stain of sin washed away for good, and will be as pure and spotless as Our Lady. We look forward to that day when we will be able to stand before Our Lord and His mother washed clean from sin. Until then, we ask Mary to intercede on our behalf to her son in order to prepare us for that day when we will see him face to face.

Mary, the Immaculate Conception, pray for us!

There always seem to be some groups who attempt to predict the date the end of the world will come. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are up to about their fourteenth or fifteenth try. Some thought that it was going to be New Year’s Day, 2001, at the start of the new Millennium. Others looked at the Y2K bug as a portent of the end of civilization as we know it. Now, groups are saying that an ancient Aztec calendar ends in the year 2012, a prediction of the world ending during that year.

As Christians, we would be well advised to not listen to these “prophetic” groups. St. Peter in our second reading tells us that we don’t know when Our Lord will return. Instead, he compares the Second Coming of Jesus to a “thief in the night.” As anyone who has had their house or car broken into knows, it’s impossible to predict when a thief will decide that your property needs to become his. If we knew, we would take steps to stop him before he could even make the attempt. Because we don’t know, we make preparations to prevent anyone from even thinking about trying. We make sure that our doors are locked and windows are secured. We make sure that our house and cars have alarms which will scare the thief away if he does attempt to break in. In short, we do everything we can to secure our possessions and prepare for the thief’s arrival. As Christians, we must likewise prepare for the coming of Jesus Christ, even if we don’t know when he’ll return.

To help us understand the necessity of preparing for the coming of the Lord, we are given the example of John the Baptist. John knew that Our Lord was coming, even before his birth, as we see when Our Lady went to visit her cousin Elizabeth. He also knew that he was called by God to be the precursor to Jesus’ ministry. Much as an introductory speaker gets the audience ready for a major speaker, John was sent to prepare those who were under the Old Covenant for the coming of the Messiah and the New Covenant. St. Mark tells us in his Gospel that John fulfills the promise of the prophet Isaiah, which we heard in the first reading, that one will be sent to “prepare the way of the Lord”. John realized that this was his role, and he fulfilled it, even pointing his disciples to the Lord. We still use his words today in the Mass: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”

Like John the Baptist, we are also called to be precursors to Christ. Instead of proclaiming his imminent arrival, as John the Baptist did, we are called to proclaim to the world the Second Coming of Our Lord, in which he will “judge the living and the dead”, as we say in the Creed. Our role is different than John the Baptist’s, as we can also proclaim what Jesus has done, both 2,000 years ago when he lived on Earth, and in our lives today. Not only can we testify on what He has done for us as individuals, we can also share the Gospel which he proclaimed, the Good News of salvation, freely offered to all.

As John the Baptist was sent to prepare the Jewish people under the Old Covenant for the coming of Jesus and the New Covenant, our proclamation of Jesus’ Gospel must prepare the whole world for Our Lord’s return. We are called to convert the whole world to Christ, but we must do it with true love and respect of all humanity. Force and intimidation is out, we can’t bribe people to become Christian, but must evangelize by our way of life. We must strive to live as Christ lived. We have to be willing to give totally of ourselves, our time, our skills, our possessions, even our very lives, for others. Instead of merely giving lip service to our faith, we must live what we believe. We must allow our actions to speak louder than words.

As we continue in this time of Advent preparations, getting ready for the celebration of Our Lord’s birth on Christmas Day, may we prepare not only for the earthly celebrations that surround Christmas, but also for the Heavenly celebrations in the world to come.