3rd Sunday of Advent. Year B, 17 December, 2023

 
On this Gaudete Sunday, we are called to share the joy of the groom’s friend. May our joy be as complete as his. Happy Sunday!

DOCTRINE AND FAITH

(Isaiah 61,1-2.10-11; Magnificat Canticle: Luke 1,46-50.53-54; 1Thessalonians 5,16-24; John 1,6-8.19-28; 3rd Sunday of Advent. Year B, 17 December, 2023)

“Look, O Father, at your people, who faithfully await the birth of the Lord, and let them celebrate the great mystery of salvation with renewed exultation”. Thus we pray in this Sunday's Collect/Opening Prayer which the liturgical tradition titles with the Latin imperative "Gaudete", that is, "rejoice, rejoice", "always be happy", according to the exultation that Paul addresses to the disciples of Thessalonica (see 1 Thess 5,16). We are now close to Christmas and, while the wait becomes more intense, the vigilance becomes more acute/attentive, the joy of the encounter with the Lord can already be perceived, as adding a different flavor to our journey.

The word of God that we welcome today, inviting us to rejoice, colors our joy with peculiar shades. It is above all an espousal/hearty joy. The prophet Isaiah compares it to the exultation of those who allow themselves to be clothed in the robes of salvation and wear them as if they were wedding dresses, "like a groom puts on a diadem and like a bride adorns herself with jewels" (Isaiah 61,10). Nuptiality implies fruitfulness: the love between a man and a woman generates a new life, just as the Lord will make the earth fruitful and "make justice and praise spring up before all the people" (Isaiah 61,11).

It is the same joy that Mary sings about in her Magnificat, which today's liturgy makes us pray as a responsorial psalm. Starting from the extraordinary wisdom that God has brought about in her life, opening her virginity to an unheard-of maternity, the girl from Nazareth does not remain closed in her own experience nor in the horizon of her small Galilian village, but contemplates and celebrates the justice that God causes to spring from the earth, fertilized by mercy that extends to every generation: "he has filled the hungry with good things, he has sent the rich away empty-handed" (Luke 1,53). Thus can Mary sing who welcomes and cherishes within herself the "sprout of the Lord", sent to "bring good news news to the miserable, to bind up the wounds of broken hearts, to proclaim the freedom of slaves, the release of prisoners, to promulgate the year of favor of the Lord" (Isaiah 61,1-2). The child she carries in her womb, besides filling her with exultation, opens her eyes, allowing her to discern the salvation that God works in history, especially in favor of the poor and the little ones, the first to whom the year of grace of the Lord must be announced. Among them is she, first and foremost, the humble servant of the Lord, whom God clothes not only with a robe of salvation, but with love that radically transforms and renews her.

This nuptial theme is also present, albeit implicitly, in the Gospel passage, which once again focuses our gaze on John the Baptist. According to the synoptic tradition, in fact, he baptizes with water, prophesying the coming of the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. In the Fourth Gospel John becomes above all the "witness", as already highlighted in the verses of the Prologue that speak of him (see John 1,6-8). After this poetic introduction, the narrative part of the Gospel opens again with the testimony that John gives to Jesus. “He was not the light” (states the Prologue)  and John, with the triple “no” with which he responds to those who question him, confirms that he is entirely relative to the one who comes after and of whom he is not worthy “of untying the thong of the sandal” (John 1,27). The expression sounds completely similar to the one we read in the synoptic tradition, but the Greek text presents a notable difference, which should not be overlooked. In the Synoptics the adjective “worthy” translates the Greek term hikanos; John instead uses a different word - axios - which rather evokes a right, an authority: "I have no right to untie the lace of his sandal". To fully understand, we must remember the so-called law of the levirate, prescribed by the Torah of Moses. If a woman remained widowed and childless, her closest relative had the duty to marry her to ensure descendants for her deceased husband. Escaping this task involved a symbolic gesture, prescribed by Deuteronomy: "he will take the sandal off his foot" (Deut. 25,9). And what happens in the book of Ruth. Boaz would like to take her as his wife, but there is a closer relative who boasts of greater rights than him, which he however renounces by performing the rite of taking off his sandal (see Ruth 4,5-8). It is probable that the evangelist is thinking of this tradition when he writes that the Baptist recognizes that he does not have the authority or the right to take away Jesus' sandal, Christ is the only groom and the Baptist knows that he cannot take away the bride from him. As he himself confesses a few pages later: You yourselves are witnesses that I said: "I am not the Christ", but: "I was sent ahead of him". The groom is the one to whom the bride belongs; but the groom's friend, who stands and hears him rejoices with joy at the groom's voice. Now this joy of mine is complete/full. He must increase, and I must decrease" (John 3,28-30).

In this “Gaudete” Sunday our exultation is that we are called to share the joy of the groom's friend. May our joy be as full /complete as his. We could then, as Paul exhorts us, give thanks in everything, since "he who calls you is trustworthy: he will do all this" (1 Thess 5,24). +John I. Okoye.

graphics by Chukwubike