Today, the third Sunday of Advent, we light the third candle in our wreath – the pink one. Why pink?  Well, because today is Gaudete Sunday! 

For all those who need a brush up on their Latin (like me), Gaudete means joy – today is the Sunday of great joy! 

Advent, like the other season of preparation – Lent – is a more quiet, reflective, even penitential time; a time when we sit in darkness; a time to remember that the world is not as it should be. 

Gaudete, then, is our reminder, in the words of Psalm 30, that though “weeping may linger for the night,… joy comes with the morning” (v. 5b). On Gaudete, we get to peek to the end, and remember that light is coming, that the world shall be set right, and that there shall be much rejoicing!

The first reading of Advent 3 (Isaiah 35:1-10) shows us that we can find signs and reminders of this coming joy all around us: “the wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom, like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly (v.1)” 

We are blessed to be in a place where it is so easy to find signs in creation of the joy which is to come: as we raise our eyes to the snow-capped mountains, coloured pink by the rising sun; as we stand by the river to which salmon and eagle return year after year; as we walk our very own labyrinth, watching it once again become alive and green under our feet. 

I pray that you may find joy this week. I pray that you find signs that the God of joy is on the way. 

 

Thanks be to God!


CG+