Rejoice (Sunday, Advent 3, Year B)

INTRODUCTION

Today is the Gaudete Sunday (Rejoice Sunday). We must rejoice because the Lord is near; our salvation is near. We must rejoice because in Christ and through Christ we too have received a good measure of the Spirit just as Christ did; and by that Spirit, we have been equipped to combat sin, evil and wickedness in the world, equipped to set those in captive free. 

REFLECTION 

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice. Indeed, the Lord is near” (Phil 4:4-5).

Someone, commenting on this quotation, said something very funny. He said: If St Paul were to be physically present here, I would have asked him: “Who are you telling to rejoice in this hardship? Don’t you see that there are families struggling to feed three times in a day, why should they rejoice? People are being harassed and abused in so many ways, and many are being uprooted from their homelands and catapulted to places where they languish in suffering and in pains. St Paul, how can such persons be happy? People languish in hospitals; suffer different types of incurable diseases, even to the point of giving up the ghost in their terrible conditions. How can such persons be joyful? Many people are being terrorized by physical, emotional and spiritual forces, and endlessly seek to be liberated. But they still feel held down by the forces tormenting them. Where is joy for such persons?” These questions reflect the realities of life and call for deeper reflection. 

Yes, our human situation is as clear as described above but St Paul has this to say in response: “Notwithstanding what our situation may be, we must rejoice because the Lord is near indeed” (Phil 4:5). If the Lord is near, then our salvation is assured. In Isaiah 35:8, it was made clear to the harassed and suffering people of Judah that “the Lord is coming with vengeance; He will come and save us”. To calm their fears and raise their hope, Isaiah further tells the people of Judah that “the Spirit of God will rest upon the One who is coming. And when He comes: He will bring glad tidings (good news) to the afflicted (those harassed and afflicted in different ways); He will bind up the brokenhearted; He will proclaim liberty (freedom) to the captives; He will open the prison for those who are bound; and He will proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour” (Isa. 61:1-2a.10-11). Upon hearing all of the above, I am sure the suffering people of Judah must have been filled with joy. 

But how would the Messiah accomplish this serious task of redemption? How would the salvation come about? What will the Messiah work with? It could be that the people of Israel might have thought that the Messiah would come with physical weapons (clubs, guns, arrows, swords, spears, bombs, etc) to fight for their freedom or redemption. No! They were wrong if they had such thought. In response, Isaiah says that “the Messiah will be clothed with the garments of salvation and will be covered with the robe of righteousness; He will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all nations”. In all these, the one and only weapon of the Messiah will be the robe of righteousness and the garment of salvation, truth and justice. 

The Messiah comes to challenge and break the chains of vice, oppression, wickedness and affliction. These chains of vice and wickedness can best be broken and vanquished by acts of virtue and righteousness. That is why He must be robed with righteousness. The truth is that for one to succeed in the fight against evil, the fighter should never be found wanting in good deeds. A sinful habit is vanquished by a reverse habit of virtue. A sinful habit of lust and sexual immorality can only be vanquished by strenuous efforts to cultivate and maintain modesty (in dressing, in thoughts, in speech, in actions). That’s how it works. Yes, it is good to pray against evil but prayer without efforts is meaningless. Prayer grants us the grace that would enable us to make personal efforts in the fight against evil. 

For us to rewind and reverse the course/spirals of evil and wickedness, we must be righteous. And so, if people can make consistent efforts to correct the ills in the society by living righteously and by being advocates of justice, evil will die a natural death in our society. In His days (the days of Messiah), justice shall reign and peace till the moon fails. The Messiah knows that righteousness/justice has a greater role to play in the fight against evil. We can’t talk about fighting corruption at large when we are corrupt in our own little ways (in our families, places of work, schools, etc). A STORY WAS TOLD ABOUT A KEKE RIDER, A STRONG CRITIC OF A PARTICULAR GOVERNMENT. ONE DAY, THIS KEKE RIDER TOOK SOMEONE TO THE GOVERNMENT HOUSE AND THE GOVERNOR LEARNT THAT THE ORDINARY KEKE RIDER, HIS FAMOUS CRITIC WAS AROUND. ACCORDING TO THE STORY, THE GOVERNOR SENT FOR HIM. WHEN HE CAME, THE GOVERNOR THANKED HIM SO MUCH FOR BEING HARD-WORKING AND FOR BEING POLITICALLY CONSCIOUS. HE GAVE HIM #500,000 (about 8000 Ghana Cedis) FOR ALL THE KEKE DRIVERS IN HIS OWN BRANCH: THEY WERE ABOUT TEN (HE SHOULD TAKE 50,000 AND GIVE THE REST TO OTHERS – 10 OF THEM). THIS MAN POCKETED 450,000, AND GAVE 50,000 TO OTHERS. THIS STORY IS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE. But then, the point is that this man was a critic of the government; he said that he was fighting corruption. But a little test of him showed that he too was also corrupt. And how would he be vocal again to speak against the corrupt practices of the governor. 

As Christians expecting the coming of the Messiah, we must rejoice at all times in all circumstances because we too have received a good measure of the Spirit of God in Christ. The Spirit is received for a purpose (cf. Isa. 61:1-2). Whoever that receives the Spirit must participate in the Messianic work of liberation and redemption. People are still bound by evil structures that have been set up in society. Unfortunately, most of these structures are even put in place by Christians, those who claim that they have received the Spirit. Christians are preparing to celebrate the coming of Christ the liberator, while there are many people that have been put in bondage by the so-called Christians: economic, physical, emotional, spiritual bondage and so on. Anyone who pins another to the ground has also pinned himself or herself to the ground. Freedom, liberation, salvation and redemption will be for those who work for it. In Nigeria, always there is fuel hike during Christmas because certain individuals decide to hoard petrol and fuel products. They have grown with this habit, and have seen it as one of those ways they celebrate the birth of Jesus our Saviour and Liberator. Does it make sense? We are celebrating a liberator but in different ways we may be chaining people and putting them in bondage. How can we even enjoy the salvation that Jesus the liberator would bring? 

In this Third Sunday of Advent, John the Baptist is presented to us as someone whose life was the message he preached. He was not the light; he came to bear witness to the light in a world filled with darkness of sin, wickedness and injustice. He came to reflect the light for those in the dark to see. He said that he was only a voice crying in the wilderness calling people to repentance. He not only preached by words of mouth; his life was a clear reflection of what he stood for: he lived simply and distanced himself from evil, frivolities and self-gratification: “he wore a simple garment made of camel’s hair; he ate locust and wild honey”. We must rejoice because we have been armed with the Spirit, with the truth and the message of liberation. But our joy will be complete when each of us begins to live and act more righteously and become real agents of justice and redemption wherever he/she may be.