Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent (Year C) - Gaudete Sunday
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One morning last week I awoke with the Christmas carol “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” going through my head. As I put on my robe and slippers to go downstairs to let the dog out, the structure of the first verse began to unfold into four elements:
- A call to merriment and freedom from dismay
- A reminder of the cause of our joy
- A brief Catechism about the reason for the Lord’s Incarnation
- A little hymn of rejoicing in which the composer can hardly contain himself, singing three times of the comfort and joy the message brings.
I thought that this carol’s message would offer a nice lesson for Gaudete Sunday. So, I sat down at the piano to have a look at the rest of the verses to see what they might provide. The other verses continue in the didactic style of teaching through story-telling about the Lord’s Birth, and what it should mean for us. This is what makes this song a carol rather than a hymn, because while a hymn sings praise to God, a carol tells a story.
The first thing I noticed while looking at the page was the title of the carol itself. Easy to overlook, a punctuation mark and its location make a big difference, defining the message almost on its own. Who’d have thought that a comma and its place in a sentence could be so significant? The title is not “God Rest YeMerry Gentlemen” as though the gentlemen receiving this greeting are already merry. It’s actually “God Rest Ye Merry the message to ensue would bring not only merriment, but comfort and joy… God is the cause of the joy about to be revealed.Gentlemen” indicating that there was perhaps some cause for dismay already present… A lot to pack into a title, don’t you think?
For our purposes today, celebrating Gaudete Sunday, we’ll limit our study to the first verse and the four aforementioned structural elements in order to see what they can provide for us gentlemen… and ladies.
The call to merriment and freedom from dismayThe first word in the greeting mentions the name of God: “God rest ye merry…” From the first word, the composer assures us that in God alone will we find the rest, the comfort and the joy we seek, especially at this time of year. The God of Fear now becomes the God of Mercy, not as a doting Grandpa, but as Jesus reveals Him: a Father whose love commands respect, which respect, graced through the years in wisdom, will blossom into comfort and joy. How does this happen? The next line informs us of the very cause of our joy.
“Remember, Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day…”Recalling the events of the Incarnation and Birth of Christ our Savior allows us not only to celebrate, but to rest in the Good News. The “rest” referred to earlier, now connected to the Lord’s Birth, defines a new outlook on life. The “rest” is not an elongated siesta in which we become spiritual couch potatoes, but a first hint of the eternal rest of heaven, free of earthly burdens, disappointments and anxieties… and eventually even temptation and sin! The imparting of this rest does not liberate us completely from our humanity and its difficulties here on earth, but grants us Grace to live in the midst of that humanity with a certain restful, peaceful outlook. This leads us to the third element in this verse:A brief Catechism about the reason for the Lord’s Incarnation“To save us all from satan’s power when we had gone astray…” Here is the reason for our jubilation. More pro-active than even the father in the Prodigal Son parable, our God and Father seeks us out as He sought out Adam and Eve in the Garden. He now sends His Son to save us from evil and sin, a sin that is committed, as we prayed in the Penitential Rite of this Mass a few moments ago, “…through my most grievous fault.” So, at Christmas we’re celebrating not a Birthday party but the love and mercy of God, and the turning point of human history: we are now saved souls. And fourthly:This ushers in the threefold chant of comfort and joy.This is not the fa-la-la-la-la merrymaking as one finds in an other carol; this is Gaudete joy, a joy which comes from the depths of our being, which will bring us rest, comfort and joy, even as others experience a “Blue Christmas,” or whatever.As the composer points out, those who remember, keeping in heart as well as in mind, the ultimate reason for the feast and season in which we find ourselves, will not only find rest while others find fatigue and stress, but in recalling God’s mercy and becoming merciful persons, will bring to the weary world tidings of comfort and joy.