“REJOICING IN THE LORD, ALWAY”
Saint Matthew 11: 2-10
Gaudete: 15 December Anno Domini 2019
Father Jay Watson SSP
What a joyous day. This is a day that The Lord hath made. You may not “feel” it. You may not “experience” it in your emotional life—your personal and subjective sensations. But that’s because you are a selfish, self-absorbed sinner, just like everyone else. Hear God’s Word from the Apostle Saint Paul to the Philippian Christians: “Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I say, Rejoice” [Phil. 4.4]. The Church Catholic, so normed by God’s call to rejoice, saw fit to use this verse as the antiphon in this morning’s Introit, and it’s even printed on the cover of your worship folder.
The Latin name for this the third Sunday of Advent is Gaudete, which means: rejoice! It is what the Blessed Virgin did when she gave birth to God. It is what the shepherds did when the angels sung the Gospel to them and then when they beheld the living Gospel in the flesh. It was what Saint John the Baptist did when the in-utero Jesus was brought into his own in-utero self, “when…heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb,” [Lk. 1.41] Gaudete! That is what the Word of The Lord does. Because it is joy in its fulness, The Gospel, The Evangel, it produces joy, which in turn produces responding voices, thoughts, words, and actions.
Ah, but you retort, “you don’t know what I am going through; you don’t understand the pressures, the set-backs, the sickness and sadness and blackness of utter despair and despondency.” Well, other humans, even care-givers, might well not know and truly empathize with you trials and temptations, but God does, God knows, God cares!
Did Saint John the Baptist know this? He did. Did John believe, teach, and confess these truths? He did…but not perfectly. Could this “…among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist” [Mt. 11.11] have been in a dark place—I don’t mean the dark dungeon of Herod—but the black hole of fear and despair? Possibly. He may also have legitimately sent his last two “stragglers,” his own disciples who would not leave him and unreservedly follow Jesus, for their benefit and not his. To believe that Jesus is “The Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world,” as a propositional truth, is not the same as Gaudete: Rejoice in the Lord alway!
You are in prison. You are in the jail of your own trespasses and fallen nature. You cannot work your way out of the cell of sin. By yourself you languish with “old Adam,” the world’s rotting mammon, and the devil with his tempters. But you have heard the works of Christ! You are + Baptized. You belong to Jesus. You confessed your sins in the general/generic confession and have received corporate absolution. You will shortly be fed God in Christ Jesus’ Body and Blood. Jesus has sent to you his two disciples of Law and Gospel that you would have not only the full counsel of God but the proper meat in due season rightly divided, properly distinguished and served.
Your daily and continuing struggle is with your old self that doesn’t like the prison you are inhabiting. You may be in a prison of an aging or sickly body; a prison of broken relationships and failed ambitions; or a prison of loneliness and grief. Your individual life under the cross, is your life from natural birth to natural death. You are “doing time” in the world’s eyes, and in -the blinded-eyes of “old Adam,” a 70 year plus prison sentence. You don’t like it. Sadly, in sin, you many times hurl back into the face of Messiah’s disciples “is This Gospel, He that should come, or do I look for another?” “I need relief and answers, is this free Grace and forgiveness all there is, or do I look into philosophy, science, technology, medicine, mysticism, drugs/alcohol, sensual depravity, or just my own Stoic endurance? Is it all meaningless?”
The Word of God says, Jesus says: “what do you hear, what do you see?” This is the question not just for John in chains, but for all of you in bondage to fallen nature, original sin that manifests itself in your lives every day. Who is The Christ? What has He done for you?
This same situation, albeit not in solitary confinement, happened when Jesus returned to Nazareth after His 40-day battle with Satan. “…As His custom was, He went into the synagogue…there was delivered Him the book of the Prophet Esaias. He found the place where it was written, ‘The Spirit of The Lord, is upon Me. He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of The Lord.’ And He closed the book…and He began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” [LK. 4. 16-21]
As the citizens of Nazareth heard this truth and rejected it—violently, so too did John’s two disciples hear and see The Truth from Jesus, believed it, rejoiced in it, and presumably went back to Gospel John what had been Gospelled to them. To release John from the prison of despair and sinful non-Gaudete, to righteous rejoicing. So too for all of you.
While you may never get out of your own particular “prison” or “dungeon” this side of eternity…you will never, ever, be alone or forsaken. The God/Man, enfleshed, is really, truly, present with you in His Words and Sacramental Words; with His Flesh and Blood.
What do you hear and see? “The blind receive their sight” You are + Washed and regenerated. “The lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear; and the dead are raised up.” You are forgiven all your misdeeds in + Jesus’ Name. “The poor have the Gospel preached to them.” Yes! Objectively, in all verity and conclusiveness “You are blessed and are not offended in Jesus—The Crucified God/Man”
With the living Saints, now, and with the ever-living saints in Christ awaiting the Resurrection, we celebrate Gaudete as Saint John writes in the Apocalypse: “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to Him; for the marriage of The Lamb is Come…” [Rev. 19.7]
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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