15 DECEMBER – THIRD (GAUDETE) SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Saint John the Baptist and the Pharisees (James Tissot 1886)

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Today again the Church is full of joy, and the joy is greater than it was. It is true that her Lord is not come, but she feels that He is nearer than before, and therefore she thinks it just to lessen somewhat the austerity of this penitential season by the innocent cheerfulness of her sacred rites. And first, this Sunday has had the name of Gaudete given to it, from the first word of the Introit. It also is honoured with those impressive exceptions which belong to the fourth Sunday of Lent, called Laetare. The Organ is played at the Mass, the Vestments are Rose-colour, the Deacon resumes the dalmatic and the Sub-Deacon the tunic, and in Cathedral Churches the Bishop assists with the precious mitre. How touching are all these usages, and how admirable this condescension of the Church, with which she so beautifully blends together the unalterable strictness of the dogmas of faith and the graceful poetry of the formulae of her liturgy! Let us enter into her spirit and be glad on this third Sunday of her Advent because our Lord is now so near to us. Tomorrow we will resume our attitude of servants mourning for the absence of their Lord and waiting for Him: for every delay, however short, is painful and makes love sad.

The Station is kept in the Basilica of Saint Peter at the Vatican. This august temple, which contains the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles, is the home and refuge of all the faithful of the world. It is but natural that it should be chosen to be witness both of the joy and the sadness of the Church. O Holy Roman Church, City of our Strength! Behold us your children assembled within your walls around the tomb of the Fisherman, the Prince of the Apostles, whose sacred relics protect you from their earthly shrine, and whose unchanging teaching enlightens you from Heaven. Yet, City of strength, it is by the Saviour who is coming that you are strong. He is your wall, for it is He that encircles with His tender mercy all your children. He is your bulwark, for it is by Him that you are invincible, and that all the powers of Hell are powerless to prevail against you. Open wide your gates that all nations may enter you, for you are mistress of holiness and the guardian of truth. May the old error, which sets itself against the faith, soon disappear and peace reign over the whole fold! O Holy Roman Church! You have forever put your trust in the Lord and He, faithful to His promise, has humbled before you the haughty ones that defied you, and the proud cities that were against you. Where now are the Caesars who boasted that they had drowned you in your own blood? Where the Emperors who would ravish the inviolate virginity of your faith? Where the Heretics who during the past centuries of your existence, have assailed every article of your teaching, and denied what they listed? Where the ungrateful Princes, who would fain make a slave of you, who had made them what they were? Where that Empire of Mahomet, which has so many times raged against you, for that you, the defenceless State, did arrest the pride of its conquests? Where the Reformers, who were bent on giving the world a Christianity in which you were to have no part? Where the more modern Sophists, in whose philosophy you were set down as a system that had been tried, and was a failure, and is now a ruin? And those Kings who are acting the tyrant over you, and those people that will have liberty independently and at the risk of truth, where will they be in another hundred years? Gone and forgotten as the noisy anger of a torrent, whilst you, holy Church of Rome, built on the immovable rock, will be as calm, as young, as unwrinkled as ever. Your path through all the ages of this world’s duration will be right as that of the just man. You will ever be the self-same unchanging Church, as you have been during the [two thousand] years past, while everything else under the sun has been but change. Whence this your stability, but from Him who is very Truth and Justice? Glory be to Him in you! Each year He visits you. Each year He he brings you new gifts with which you may go happily through your pilgrimage, and to the end of time He will visit you and renew you, not only with the power of that look with which Peter was renewed, but by filling you with Himself, as He did the ever glorious Virgin who is the object of your most tender love, after that which you bear to Jesus Himself. We pray with you, O Church, our Mother, and here is our prayer: “Come, Lord Jesus! Your name and your remembrance are the desire of our souls: they have desired you in the night, yea, and early in the morning have they watched for you!”

Epistle – Philippians iv. 4‒7

Brethren, rejoice in the Lord always: again I say, rejoice. Let your modesty be known to all men, for the Lord is near. Be nothing solicitous; but in everything by prayer let your petitions be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Nothing is more just than that we rejoice in the Lord. Both the Prophet and the Apostle excite us to desire the Saviour: both of them promise us Peace. Therefore, let us not be solicitous: The Lord is near. Near to His Church, and near to each of our souls. Who can be near so burning a fire and yet be cold? Do we not feel that He is coming to us in spite of all obstacles? He will let nothing be a barrier between Himself and us, neither His own infinite high majesty, nor our exceeding lowliness, nor our many sins. Yet a little while, and He will be with us. Let us go out to meet Him by these prayers, and supplications, and thanksgiving which the Apostle recommends to us. Let our zeal to unite ourselves with our holy mother the Church become more than ever fervent: now every day her prayers will increase in intense earnestness, and her longings after Him, who is her light and her love, will grow more ardent.

Gospel – John i. 19‒28

At that time the Jews sent from Jerusalem priests and Levites to John, to ask him, “Who are you?” And he confessed, and did not deny; and he confessed, “I am not the Christ.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” and he said,” I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” and he answered, “No.” They said therefore to him, “Who are you, that we may give an answer to them that sent us? What say you of yourself ?” He said, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Isaiah.” And they that were sent were of the Pharisees. And they asked him, and said to him, “Why then do you baptise, if you are not Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” John answered them, saying, “I baptise with water; but there has stood one in the midst of you, whom you know not; the same is he that shall come after me, who is preferred before me, the latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to loose.” These things were done in Bethania beyond the Jordan, where John was baptising.

Praise be to you, O Christ.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

“There has stood One in the midst of you, whom you know not,” says Saint John the Baptist to them that were sent by the Jews. So that our Lord may be near, He may even have come, and yet by some be not known! This Lamb of God is the holy Precursor’s consolation: he considers it a singular privilege to be but the Voice which cries out to men to prepare the way of the Redeemer. In this Saint John is the type of the Church, and of all such as seek Jesus. Saint John is full of joy because the Saviour is come: but the men around him are as indifferent as though they neither expected nor wanted a Saviour. This is the third week of Advent, and are all hearts excited by the great tidings told them by the Church that the Messiah is near at hand. They who love Him not as their Saviour, do they fear Him as their Judge? Are the crooked ways being made straight? Are the hills being brought low? Are Christians seriously engaged in removing from their hearts the love of riches and the love of sensual pleasures? There is no time to lose: the Lord is near! If these lines should come under the eye of any of those Christians who are in this state of sinful indifference, we would conjure them to shake off their lethargy and render themselves worthy of the visit of the divine Infant: such a visit will bring them the greatest consolation here, and give them confidence hereafter, when our Lord will come to judge all mankind. Send your grace, O Jesus, still more plentifully into their hearts. compel them to go in, and permit not that it be said of the children of the Church, as Saint John said of the Synagogue: “There stands in the midst of you One, whom you know not.”