Third Sunday - and Gaudete Sunday
On the third Sunday of Advent the people continue to call out and to await that the skies rain down the just one:
Rorate caeli desuper,
Et nubes pluant justum.
Drop down dew, you heavens, from above
And let the clouds rain the Just One.
- and, with verse three of the hymn, they yearn for the remission of afflictions, and for the liberation that will be brought by the coming of the Just One :
Vide Domine afflictionem populi tui,
Et mitte quem missurus es:
Emitte Agnum dominatorem terrae,
De Petra deserti
Ad montem filiae Sion:
Ut auferat ipse
Jugum captivitatis nostrae.
See, O Lord, the suffering of your people,
And send the One who was to be sent:
Send forth the Lamb, the ruler of the earth,
From the Rock of the desert
To the mountain of the daughter of Zion
That the same One may carry away
The yoke of our captivity.
The third Sunday of Advent, however, is also Gaudete ("Rejoice") Sunday. Just like Laetare Sunday during the Lenten period, Gaudete Sunday "interrupts" what is otherwise a period of quiet and introspective expectation, with a call to joy. This is the joy of the coming Birth of the One, which is so great, that it penetrates, as it were, through the veil of time, and reaches back into the Advent period, going against the flow of time. The Birth has not happened yet, but the event that will happen seems to irradiate it joy both forward - and backwards - in time. Gaudete Sunday is thus a burst of the Joy of the Birth, within and into the Advent period of preparation.
And Gaudete Sunday is also a reminder that this period of restrained, quiet, partly penitential ("prepare the way") introspection does not exist for its own sake, nor is it "the final thing." Just like Lent prepares the glory of Easter, and as the painful sacrifice of Good Friday gains its completion in the eternalized joy of the Resurrection, thus Advent is also a period that has a purpose, and meaning, in something beyond itself: in the luminous Birth. But, still, there is no Arrival without Awaiting and Preparation. and the Waiting and the Preparation are all for one purpose, to make that Arrival possible.
"To rejoice," then! - and dancing is that most human expression of rejoicing in body and spirit:
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