A SERMON FOR GAUDETE SUNDAY
The two chief periods of penance in the Church’s liturgical year are Advent and Lent. During these times, no flowers are permitted on the altar, the organ remains silent, no marriages may be solemnized, and the Ember Days are commemorated with fasting and abstinence. Each of the two seasons has its one day where our thoughts of penance are mitigated somewhat—the fourth Sunday in Lent, known as Laetare Sunday, and the third Sunday in Advent, Gaudete Sunday, which we celebrate today. Both Laetare and Gaudete Sundays herald in a kind of “mini-season” that continue the spirit of Lent and Advent, and yet take that spirit to a new level, the better to prepare for the great feasts of Christmas and Easter. In Lent, the Sunday after Laetare starts the season of Passiontide, while now in Advent, our Gaudete Sunday occurs just before the start of Sapientiatide.
Passiontide and Sapientiatide are, however, completely different in the turn they take towards the feasts they precede. Passiontide moves us from thoughts of penance and self-improvement to focus exclusively on the Passion and Death of our Lord. For before we are permitted to celebrate the Resurrection and the start of the Glorious Mysteries of our Redemption, our blessed Saviour must first endure all five of the Sorrowful Mysteries, all within the space of a single day. We live our penance more fruitfully by keeping the sight of his suffering in our constant view.
Sapientiatide is a very different story. There are no Sorrowful Mysteries between our penances of Advent and the joys of Christmas, only the unrelenting progress towards the coming of our Salvation. We begin our Advent with thoughts of our blessed Mother’s Annunciation, and the Word becoming flesh in her womb. This theme is continued through the feast and octave of the Immaculate Conception, as we turn our mind to thoughts of sanctification through penance. And now we enter the final phase of Advent, the season of Sapientiatide.
It’s a long name, “Sapientiatide”. It takes its name from the first words of the antiphon at Vespers on the first night of the season, December 17th, O Sapientia. During Sapientiatide, the antiphon that is said before and after the Magnificat has special solemnity, and is sung standing rather than sitting. There are seven days of Sapientiatide, and each antiphon announces an attribute of our divine Saviour who is to come. On the first night, the Antiphon begins with the words O Sapientia, “O Wisdom, which camest out of the mouth of the Most High, and reachest from one end to another, mightily and sweetly ordering all things: Come, and teach us the way of prudence.”
Sapientia is the Latin word for Wisdom, not in the sense of the virtue of wisdom, but rather as representing Christ the Saviour, the perfection of divine wisdom, who comes forth “from the mouth of the Most High”, the Incarnate Word of God the Father. On the following six nights we extol other attributes of the Redeemer, singing these Great ‘O” Antiphons in turn: O Adonai, O Root of Jesse, O Key of David, O Dayspring, O King of the nations, and finally on December 23rd, O Emmanuel.
Bear in mind that the name Emmanuel means “God with us”, and as if to emphasize the point, if we take the initial letters of all seven of the O Antiphons, starting with O Emmanuel and working backwards to O Sapientia, we find that they spell out the words “ERO CRAS” (“Tomorrow, I will come.”) Indeed, the very next day after the final O Antiphon is sung, we find ourselves at Christmas Eve, when our blessed Lady and St. Joseph come to Bethlehem and, in a cold and simple stable, the Saviour of the world is born, a Saviour who is Christ the Lord, God with us, Emmanuel.
The Great O Antiphons have given rise to the well known carol, O come, O come, Emmanuel. Each of its verses is a paraphrase of the corresponding Vespers antiphons for the seven days of Sapientiatide. The words invite our Lord to come into this world, ransoming captive Israel from all his iniquities, and re-opening the gates of heaven. We should sing this carol, not only in commemoration of this greatest of events, but also for our own souls, which like Israel, lies captive to the sins we can’t stop committing. We want to be good, we try to be good, and yet we so often fail to be good. The answer to our sincere repentance, the sorrow we bear for having offended God, who is infinitely good and deserving of all our love—the answer lies in the coming of Christ into our souls, Emmanuel, God with us. This is the second “true meaning of Christmas”, the one which takes the primary, awe-inspiring mystery of “God dwelling amongst us” and applies it to our own lives in an efficacious and redemptive way.
The coming feast of Christmas is one of unparalleled joy in the Church’s year. Joy that mankind has been redeemed, yes, to be sure. But also the very personal joy that Christ is still with us, truly present in the Blessed Sacrament, truly present in our souls when we worthily receive him in Holy Communion. It reminds us of another carol, one we sing on Christmas Day. It could be described as the Christmas O Antiphon, beginning with the words, “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” If we take its last verse and think of the words as representing the Christ Child not only in the manger, but also in the Divine Eucharist, we may look forward to that fullness of Christmas joy, of which today’s Gaudete Sunday is but a pale and fleeting presentiment:
How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is giv’n!
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heav’n.
No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.
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