Why, on two Sundays of the year, does the priest wear pink (Rose) and what is the difference between "Gaudete" and "Laetare" which we translate to "Rejoice"? Our rejoicing today is more a sigh of relief - we who were trapped by Sin have been set free, we who are fasting and doing penance have been given a day off. Today we rest in an Oasis as we prepare to enter the desert of Passiontide.
Today is one of those odd Sundays, which only happen twice in the year, where I have to put on a colour we don’t usually see at Mass. This colour, in the Church’s books is called Rose, and it’s worn at the halfway point during the two penitential seasons: that’s the third Sunday of Advent, and the fourth Sunday of Lent. Both of these Sundays have special Latin names, Gaudete Sunday in Advent, and Laetare Sunday in Lent. These words, Gaudete and Laetare, when translated into English are homonyms: different words with the same meaning. Both words are translated into English as a single word command – rejoice!
On these two rejoicing Sundays, the priest and deacons wear Rose, as a symbol of the joy of the approaching feast day. In the penitential seasons we wear purple, a symbol of fasting and penance. On the feast days of Christmas and Easter we wear White, a symbol of light and celebration. On Gaudete and Laetare Sunday we mix the two colours together to make this Rose-colour, and we rejoice in anticipation of the coming feast day which is (now) so close to us.
However, as is so often the case with translations, we lose something subtle when we translate these two words the same way. Because not all kinds of rejoicing are the same, and these two similar-looking Sundays with their funny-coloured vestments aren’t exactly the same.
The names for these Sundays are taken from their Introit, or entrance antiphon – the psalm verse that is sung or said at the beginning of the Mass.
In Advent, on Gaudete Sunday, the Introit is this:
Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice: indeed the Lord is near.
But on this Sunday, as we heard at the beginning of Mass, it is this:
Rejoice, Jerusalem, and all who love her. Be joyful, all who were in mourning; exult and be satisfied at hear consoling breast.
Gaudete, the Advent introit, is a kind of exuberant joy – the joy we feel as we get closer to Christmas and our excitement has built up and built up to the point we can no longer contain it any more. Christmas is coming and we are ready to be joyful.
Laetare, on the other hand, in the Introit for today, is another kind of joy. This joy is the joy of one in mourning, one who is still sorrowing and suffering. It is the joy of comfort, the joy of seeing light at the end of a dark tunnel.
This joy finds an expression in our first reading, from the book of Chronicles. It records the evils committed by the Jewish priests and people, and their punishment – seventy years’ deportation, their land lying desolate until after that seventy-year jubilee, when God (through Cyrus of Persia) restored the Jewish people to their homeland. This exile was long and hard – their Holy city was destroyed, and they were held in captivity. There they wrote the sorrowful psalm we heard this morning; By the Rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept, remembering Zion.
The joy, the rejoicing that comes from going home to rebuild is not the joy of expectation bubbling over but the joy that comes of relief. A burden has been lifted, an inheritance has been given back. The joy of Gaudete Sunday is exuberant, excited, exclaimed joy. The joy of Laetare Sunday is a sigh of relief. Why then, in this fourth Sunday in Lent, are we sighing for relief?
We began Lent three weeks ago, with Jesus wandering into the desert to fast and to be tempted. Our Lenten observance, of fasting and penance, is joining with Him in the desert. We wander in a dry, parched land, without the comforts we are used to. Today, in the middle of those wanderings we find an Oasis, a cool tree under which to shelter, whose fruit is good to taste, and a pool of water to drink. This Sunday is a break from the penances of Lent, and so we sigh with relief as the Church gives us this rest.
But, for all we enjoy this rest, we know we can’t stay in the Oasis – we are marching towards our destination and to reach it we know we have to re-enter the desert. Not only that, but if Lent is a desert then the next two weeks are the hardest part; the rockiest, the hottest, and the dryest part. Next Sunday is Passion Sunday, when we cover over our statues and our images and banish flowers and musical instruments from the church. The Sunday after that is Palm Sunday, when we will read out Saint Mark’s account of the Lord’s Passion and death on the Cross. Then we will enter Holy Week and the Sacred Paschal Triduum, recalling and re-enacting Jesus’ way to Calvary and the tomb.
We are about to re-enter the desert and suffer the Lord’s indignities with Him. We are heading into a period of more intense fasting, and greater penance, and our prayers will become even more muted and solemn. We are in the Oasis today, enjoying our rest with a sigh of relief, but looking out over the deeper part of the desert.
Right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, the Pharisee Nicodemus, a man who knew the Law and the Prophets and believed in the Resurrection, went to Jesus at night to find out if He was the long-awaited Messiah, come to restore the Kingdom to Israel. And right at the beginning of His ministry, Jesus lays bare for this teacher of the Law the contradiction at the heart of his mission: The Son of man must be lifted up, just like Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in the desert – the serpent and the cross, instruments of death, turned into instruments of life.
We celebrate the joy of the Paschal feast today, and by tradition today is the day to visit the Church where you were baptised and recall your own entry into eternal life. But there is a contradiction; that our Paschal joy comes at a cost. The cost is that for the sake of our sins, Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, had to die an agonising death on the Cross. So, let us rejoice, or rather breathe our sigh of relief. Relief in this desert Oasis, relief in the rest from our penance, and true joy at the approach of Easter. But, by prayer, and fasting, and penance, and almsgiving, and (yes) by sacramental confession, let us prepare to make that final push through the deeper desert. Let us ready ourselves to suffer and to die alongside Jesus these next two weeks, and in so-doing, let us make ourselves an offering, in communion with Jesus, for the salvation of souls and the conversion of sinners.
Rejoice, all you who were in mourning, your time of salvation is near at hand.
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