Today is the third Sunday of Advent. The third week of our preparations for the solemnity of Christmas. The church celebrates the Joyful anticipation of the coming of our Lord. The day takes its common name from the Latin word Gaudete (Rejoice). The first word of the introduction of this day’s Mass is: Gaudete in Domino semper: iterum dico, gaudete. Modestia vestra nota sit omnibus hominibus: Dominus enim prope est. Nihil solliciti sitis: sed in omni oratione et obsecratione cum gratiarum actione petitiones vestræ innotescant apud Deum. Benedixisti Domine terram tuam: avertisti captivitatem Jacob. This may be translated as: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice. Let your forbearance be known to all, for the Lord is near at hand; have no anxiety about anything, but in all things, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God. Lord, you have blessed your land; you have turned away the captivity of Jacob.” Philippians 4:4-6; Psalm 85: 1.
Gaudete et exsultate (Rejoice and Be Glad) is the third apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis, dated 19 March 2018 and published on 9 April 2018, subtitled. It addresses the universal call to holiness, with a focus “to re-propose the call to holiness in a practical way for our own time”. The document is arranged in five chapters: (1) On the universal call to perfection of charity; (2) On the heresies of Gnosticism and Pelagianism, described as “false forms of holiness”; (3) On the Beatitudes as “worship most acceptable to God”; (4) On five signs of holiness in the modern world (perseverance, patience, meekness, joy and a sense of humor, boldness and passionate commitment), and (5) On life as constant spiritual combat against evil, with discernment.
The Holy Father has provided some sort of a guide for us in our reflections this week. And I would like to expatiate on the 4th point that talks about the signs of holiness in the modern world. Putting in mind the experience of hundreds of thousands who are in the world of over 6 billion people yet are lonely and hungry. Pope Francis as we all know has remained a Pope who wants to smell like his sheep. And he has demonstrated this through his preferential option for the poor, in his writings, visits and actions. His ability to kiss the feet of warring leaders for the sake of peace. His washing and kissing the feet of prisoners who are on death roll. And indeed his great sense of humor. C.P Varkey, in one of his classical writings has written about Being Human and Being Holy. These are two sides of the same coin, in every respect. One cannot be excluded from the other. If not you run the risk of becoming an extremist. Pope Francis has provided these insights on being holy in the 21st century, in his Gaudate et Exsultate.
PERSEVERANCE AND PATIENCE: In the Bible, Perseverance is our total confidence and believe that God will finish the work He started in our lives that makes us to persevere over a lifetime. People give up without Hope. Christians must not only work by faith; we must also persevere and endure for there will be trials and tribulations. When someone shows perseverance, it means they work hard in anything they choose to do and when they face difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement, they don’t give up. It means you keep trying until you get it. (Romans 12:12).: Patience is a virtue. It is listed by Paul in Galatians 5:22-23 as among the fruit of the Spirit. So there’s no disputing that the Christian ought to be patient. Patience is “waiting without complaint,”. What’s so virtuous about not complaining? In itself, not complaining carries no particular virtue. Suppose a person awaits the arrival of a friend from out of town, and she spends the time happily reading or watching television. We wouldn’t say that, simply because she’s not complaining, she exhibits patience in this case. Something else must be required to make one’s lack of complaint virtuous. That something is discomfort. It’s because a circumstance is uncomfortable for someone that we find her refusal to complain remarkable and thus regard her as patient. So to improve the initial definition above, to be patient is to endure discomfort without complaint. Jesus was very patient with his disciples. They were sometimes thickheaded, lazy, selfish, and slow to believe. Even from a merely human standpoint, we can see how frustrating they must have been. In spite of Jesus’ miracles and words of wisdom, they were focused upon themselves and wavered in their belief about who he really was. To say that was uncomfortable for Jesus would be an understatement. Yet do we find him railing at his disciples over their foolishness and stupidity? Or making fun of them when they make mistakes?
MEEKNESS AND JOY: It has been defined in several ways: righteous, humble, teachable, and patient under suffering, long suffering willing to follow gospel teachings. When Christians talk of joy; it is not been confused with a mere feeling of happiness. Feelings are fleeting, and depend on the circumstances of the moment. Christian’s joy is different. It is not temporary, but permanent; it is founded not on circumstances, but on certainty of God’ love poured out gratuitously on the cross, and put on display for all to see. One of my greatest sources of encouragement to grow in Christian joy is looking at the lives of saints. One sees a certain joy in the midst of the many tribulations they went through. Most vividly of all the saints. The martyrs exemplify this joy. When reading St Ignatius of Antioch, for example, his joy and excitement at being too able to follow Christ in death leaps off the page. The early Martyrs joy was contagious. There are even stories of Romans leaping into the arena to join the Christians in their trial. This joy comes with the ultimate motivation of the Holy Spirit.
SENSE OF HUMOUR: Friedrich Nietzsche, the infamous 19th century atheist, was raised in a Christian home that apparently was mostly joyless. Very little laughter must have echoed in its hallways, for later on Nietzsche would often observe that he might be more inclined to believe in redemption if Christians actually looked a little more redeemed. To him, Christianity had no sense of humor. Perhaps all too often, Nietzsche has been correct. To be sure, there is much to be serious about in Christianity. Our faith makes serious claims about God and fallen humanity, sin and salvation, heaven and hell. “How will we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?” (Hebrews 2:3). Nevertheless, the same God who makes such eternally grave claims upon us is also the One who creates giraffes, baboons, camels, and avocado pits. And laughter. Nietzsche, who certainly knew firsthand about chronic pain and intense suffering but doggedly persisted in laughing his way through it, was convinced that Christians’ long faces were largely Jesus’ fault. Nietzsche admired Jesus, but only to a point: “He knew only tears and the melancholy of the Hebrew. Would that he had remained in the wilderness and far from the good and the just! Perhaps he would have learned to live and to love the earth-and laughter too.” But Nietzsche was just plain wrong about Jesus.
The writer who has probably done the most to correct our misconceptions about our Savior in this regard is Elton True blood, the Quaker philosopher who wrote The Humor of Christ 40 years ago. True blood confesses early in the book that it took the wisdom of a child, his four-year-old son, to jar him out of his well-worn assumptions about Jesus as a staid sage. During family devotional time, as True blood read from the Sermon on the Mount, suddenly their little boy began to laugh. “He laughed because he saw how preposterous it would be for a man to be so deeply concerned about a speck in another person’s eyes, that he was unconscious of the fact his own eye had a beam in it,” True blood wrote. “Because the child understood perfectly that the human eye is not large enough to have a beam in it, the very idea struck him as ludicrous.”If the absurd image of a man (a carpenter, perhaps?) stumbling around with a 2 x 4 sticking out of his eye-trying, no less, to help someone else remove a speck of sawdust from her eye-is not enough, let us consider Jesus’ apparent love for puns and word plays. He was not content simply to say, “You Pharisees get so obsessed with all your little rules and regulations!” No, in his native Aramaic tongue it becomes clear that he punned: “You strain out a gnat (kalma) but you gulp down a camel (gamla)!” (Matthew 23:24,).
Joy, humour, patience, perseverance, are qualities that should mark a Christian in this period of preparation. Let us look out for members of our communities that have lost everything through fire disaster, or those driven out of their homes as a result of insurgency. And put a smile on their faces. Let us identity barren women and men who are old and have no family of their own to cater for them. Special appreciation to women like Mrs Henrietta Ifeoma Odume the founder of the Childless Old Women Foundation. Who has been silently putting smiles on the faces of such abandoned women for the past twenty years. That is the spirit of Gaudate Sunday.
Fr Stephen Ojapah is a priest of the Missionary Society of St Paul. He is equally the director for Interreligious Dialogue and Ecumenism for the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, a member of IDFP. He is also a KAICIID Fellow. ([email protected])
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