Rejoicing in Our Hardships

There’s an old saying, “Fortune is a fickle mistress.” In other words, just when things seem to be going well, good fortune often abandons us. The crooner Frank Sinatra put it another way in one of his most famous songs: “They call you Lady Luck/ But there is room for doubt/ At times you have a very un-lady-like way/ Of running out!”

John the Baptist knew the fickleness of fortune all too well. In last week’s Gospel, we heard how people from Jerusalem, Judea, and all over the region of the Jordan – an area of some several hundred square miles – were coming out into the desert to hear him preach and to receive his baptism of repentance. In today’s Gospel, John is in a very different place: he in prison, awaiting his own execution. Lady Luck, it seems, has run out on him! John had been the voice calling out in the wilderness, preaching to multitudes, the one that everyone wanted to see. But he ends his life alone, beheaded in a cold prison cell.

This sharp change in the fortunes of John the Baptist might surprise us. We might think, “Is this any way for God to treat the prophet whom he sent to preach the coming of his Son?” But while we might be caught off guard, John himself certainly was not. He knew his role was a temporary one. His job was to point toward the Messiah and then move out of the way. As he himself says about Jesus, “he must increase, and I must decrease.” What John was after wasn’t worldly fame and fortune, but something deeper. He wanted salvation – not just for himself, but for all, for the world. He wanted God’s People to finally receive the fullness of redemption that had long been promised to them, and then God was at last ready to send. That was John’s mission – to prepare the Lord’s way – and in the end he was willing to lay down his life to see it through.

Today is the Third Sunday of Advent, sometimes called “Gaudete” Sunday, a Latin word that means “Rejoice.” Using the pink candle and vestments, we look ahead with expectation and joy to the dawning of the Lord’s salvation. Because like John the Baptist, it is salvation that we are after. That’s what we prayed for in the opening prayer today: “Enable us, we pray, to attain the joys of so great a salvation.” Salvation is lasting. It is not fickle like fortune; it doesn’t abandon us like Lady Luck. And today, on this Gaudete Sunday, we celebrate with joy that salvation is now very near, that it is coming soon – not just at Christmas, not just in this holiday season, but in every way that the Lord desires to enter more fully into our lives.

Whenever we encounter Jesus, we encounter his salvation. Sometimes that salvation comes in the ways we like – as blessings of peace and prosperity, happiness, love, meaning, purpose, fulfillment. But sometimes the Lord’s salvation has more difficult manifestations: for example, contrition or guilt, when we have sinned; perseverance or resolve, when we are enduring some trial; perhaps even sorrow or loss, when we experience the fickle nature of this world's fortunes. But even these more challenging experiences are forms of the Lord’s salvation, ways that he draws us more closely to himself.

Joseph Dietrich, John the Baptist in Prison (c. 1740)

And for that reason, these more difficult encounters with the Lord are reasons to be joyful, even in the midst of pain or confusion. Our Gospel does not say it explicitly, but surely John the Baptist rejoiced when he heard from his friends what they had seen and heard: that in Jesus, the blind regained their sight, the lame walked, lepers were cleansed, the deaf heard, the dead were raised, and the poor had the good news preached to them. Surely, he was joyful and gave thanks to hear that the salvation that he had long hoped for had finally come to pass – even though he himself was still in a prison cell, awaiting his own death.

We can think too of Saint Juan Diego, the man who received the apparition of the Virgin Mary on the hill of Tepeyac five hundred years ago. When the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to him, she appeared to him as one expecting a child, bearing within herself the Lord Jesus. The Virgin Mary's coming was a cause for joy, but it didn't make Juan Diego's life perfectly easy. He had to endure the hardship of his uncle's illness; he had to endure the difficulty of having the archbishop not believe him at first about the apparitions; he surely had other challenges and difficulties as well. But he opened himself to receiving the Lord's presence, with faith and with rejoicing, and he was rewarded for his perseverance.

Friends, perhaps the question for us in this Advent season is this: can we be joyful in welcoming the Lord’s salvation in whatever manner it comes to us? John the Baptist and Juan Diego were saints focused not on their own good fortune but on God’s salvation, and who rejoiced when it came even though it brought them hardship. Are we willing to go through difficulties to receive the coming of the Lord, perhaps to be misunderstood as Juan Diego was, perhaps even to give up our own life as John the Baptist did? Are we able to rejoice at what the Lord comes to give us – even in those blessings and invitations that are not so enjoyable, but which nonetheless bring us closer to him?

Let us now prepare our hearts for the Eucharist we will celebrate, for in this banquet too Jesus comes, to bless us with a foretaste of the heavenly feast. May the Lord, who draws near to us, enable us, we pray, to attain the joys of so great a salvation.