“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” Isaiah wrote. As God anointed him to bring his living word to a wayward people, he was given a glimpse of the coming Christ and was filled with the knowledge that there was more to come than an eternity of God angrily chiding his people into obedience. Listen to what he says in the first reading: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness.” Then he speaks of the bride and bridegroom and his joy is the joy of knowing that the Beloved is coming and he is coming with gifts. He will bring beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning and the garment of praise for a spirit of heaviness. Isaiah saw the face of the Jesus, the bridegroom who was coming to give himself completely for his loved one and to bind up her wounds and heal her shame. He foretold the virgin birth and he gave us images of the suffering Christ seven hundred years before the advent of Jesus. Isaiah's rejoicing came from being privileged to understand that God had a plan that was beyond anything anyone could imagine. Isaiah didn't know if the Messiah would come in one year or several hundred years but still he rejoiced because he had seen the perfection of completion and knew that the Messiah was coming to save not only the future people of God but also all people in all of history, himself included. Isaiah was caught up in the timeless compassion and goodness of his God.
Mary! Mary possessed Pondering Joy. God anointed her to bring the Joy of all joy to birth but in the beginning of her pregnancy she had no idea what this would eventually look like. Everything about her pregnancy was completely out of line with the common perception of the promise and it was all so much bigger than what her mind could grasp. So she became a child and a woman of contemplative joy. Contemplative joy comes from complete abandonment to God. It does not demand immediate answers to immediate problems nor does it require God to conform to any presupposed ideas. As soon as Mary said, “Let it be done to me according to your word,” she lost herself and gained insight into the quiet but explosive creativity of God. She was a vessel of his creative love. Pain and difficulty were already her companions but instead of being foes that she had to conquer, they were friends to attend her on her way because she trusted completely in the love of her God. “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour...” Her rejoicing ran deep and flowed straight to the heart of God – a river of connectedness, a current of immense trust that caused her to exclaim, “Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed.” She felt so blessed and her joy overflowed.
“The rejoicing of John.” That sounds like an oxymoron. In scripture he seems like a terribly serious figure, so sure of who he was that it didn't bother him in the least to publicly and loudly point out hypocrisy and sin where he saw it - and he saw it everywhere. He knew his anointing was to prepare the way for the appearance of the Christ and no one was going to deter him. Because we tend to think of rejoicing as a happy emotion, it's a bit difficult to envision John rejoicing. But sometimes rejoicing has very different overtones from those of exultant happiness.
I would guess that John rejoiced with an awesomely serious joy, a joy that was born in and shaped by an unforgiving wilderness. That kind of joy would be a joy with no excess baggage and very few expectations created out of self-oriented desires. It would have been a stark joy of simple purpose and few distractions and anyone who saw joy as a lovely feeling might not have looked at what John carried in his heart and called it 'joy' or labelled his responses 'rejoicing'. It may have looked more like grief to them and they would have been partly right. What they couldn't have seen was the understanding that this terrible need to cry out to a deaf and blind people was balanced by a knowledge of momentous promise. Perhaps he was given a grave and solemn vision of all the stars and planets in the universe lining up in honor of the One who was about to begin everything the earth and heavens had been waiting for. I believe that out in the wilderness, John knew that all creation was waking up to the realization that the Christ had come and the Christ was ready. It was time. The joy he felt made him want to roar, "People... WAKE UP!"
In the reflection for the first Sunday of Advent I asked you think about what you wanted from God for Christmas. At Mass that week, our priest asked the people of the parish a wonderful question: “What do you want to give birth to this Christmas?” Within the answer to either of these questions is your anointing and your path of rejoicing. Will you be like Isaiah, a man or woman of far-reaching vision, speaking of the promise of the coming Christ? Will you be like Mary, a quietly surrendered but strong vessel of the beauty of Jesus – someone who is pregnant with hope? Will you be like John, determined to clear a way for the one who will save, heal and baptize with the fire of the Spirit?
It is your anointing that will fill you with a kind of rejoicing that cannot come from anything in this world and depends on nothing the world has to offer. The anointing of the Gaudete Three is your anointing. The same Spirit of the Lord is upon you and he has sent you to bring good news to the poor. He has clothed you with the same garment of salvation as Isaiah. He has looked with favor on you and has done great things for you like he did for Mary. And God has anointed you to bring the same knowledge of salvation to the people as John did.
He is coming. He is here. He is ready. Oh people! Find your path of rejoicing.
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