“So the first thing you will see is that I am wearing rose. A lot of people might say this is pink, but the liturgical calendar calls it rose. You know how I remember that that is that Jesus did not pink. He rose. That’s a good way to remember that. Well, you know, in this bright color it’s called Gaudete Sunday to rejoice. It’s a time of rejoicing. This third Sunday of Advent is to rejoice. In the second reading, St. Paul tells us to ‘Rejoice in the Lord always. I tell you again to rejoice.’ And again it’s a command a command for you to rejoice. But how can you command someone to rejoice? How can command someone to rejoice? You know, it’s easy to rejoice when everything is going your way. It’s easy to rejoice when you just won, when you got a raise, when the kids are all doing well, when life seems easy, it’s easy to rejoice then, but how do you rejoice when things aren’t going your way, when you just got a bad news from a doctor, when your children are sick, when financially things seem bad. How do we rejoice in there? And how dare they tell us to rejoice then? But how we’re thinking about rejoicing is not the way that St. Paul is thinking. He’s talking about joy. A lot of times we, we associate happiness and joy together, but happiness is more of a feeling. It comes and goes. And so our feelings we cannot really control. They come and go. Some days you might wake up and you’re feeling well. Other days you aren’t, but that doesn’t have to dictate your attitude in life. And St. Paul is calling us to something much greater: the action of our own will to rejoice in the Lord, always to rejoice in Him.
You know, in a lot of gothic churches, and this is an example of that Bishop Barron has given us. He was my rector in seminary and also a teacher. He always one of them, when he talks about this, he always turns towards. The image is called The Wheel of Fortune. It’s not the game wheel of fortune. It’s a wheel of fortune that you might see on gothic churches in stained glass windows or the image. In this wheel of fortune at the very top is a king and above it, it says, in Latin, ‘I reign.’ And going clockwise, going clockwise there is another person and says, ‘I have reign’ in Latin, it’s a man with his crown fallen and at the very bottom is a person that says, ‘I have no power.’ And then at three o’clock, there’s a person climbing up and says, I will reign. And in this wheel of fortune it’s kind of like our lives. There’s ups and downs. Things will change. Sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down. Sometimes you’re feeling happy. Sometimes you’re feeling sad. It ebbs and flows, it ebbs and flows, but the beautiful thing about this image, this wheel of fortune is what is at the center. At the very center is Christ. And what it’s saying, the spiritual message here is that if you keep Christ at the center, Christ stays the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, forever, Christ will always be the same. The thing for us is that we tend to be living on the edge of that, wheel. We tend to be living on the edge of that wheel. We tend to always be kind of grasping at time to things of our world and relationships, but they ebb and flow and we lose our peace. What St. Paul is calling each of us to is not live at the spokes or live at the border of this wheel, but to live at the very center where nothing changes. Christ is Lord.
You know, there is a hymn, there’s a hymn that I love that really exemplifies this image. It’s no storm can shake my inmost calm, but to that rock, I’m clinging, since Christ is Lord of Heaven and Earth. How can I keep from singing? The thing about that is that it acknowledges that the storms will come, the ebbs and flows will come, but to the rock I’m clinging. To Christ I always cling with my heart, with my life and because he is Lord of Heaven and Earth that’s why you keep on singing. That’s why you continue to rejoice. That’s why St. Paul tells us to continue rejoicing in our lives. Now, how do we do it? How do we keep Chris at the center? How do we stay in a state of joy and rejoicing in the Lord? It really is the three disciplines that we hear in lent its prayer, continue to pray and stay close to the sacraments. It’s penance, where John the Baptist says repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand, or Christ even says that himself, but then also its almsgiving. In the Gospel today, they asked John the Baptist, ‘What should we do?’ And what does he say? ‘If you have to cloaks, give one cloak away.’ He tells us what to do, almsgiving. Now almsgiving, the spirit of almsgiving is actually the spirit of stewardship, which we heard this morning, stewardship. And again, we give this, we always have the time, talent and treasure in our stewardship, but one of the most important things in those time, talent and treasure is not what you might think. Treasure will come and go. When we give it away we can always get more. When we lose it, we can always gain more. Talent, we have talents, but we can also learn to have more talents. It’s something that you can always gain more of more knowledge, more talent, but time is the most precious to us, isn’t it? Time is when it happens, you can no longer give it away. You cannot gain it back. When you give your time you can no longer gain that back and we only have a certain amount of time in our lives.
We’re all used to the economy of material things, we see that if you give it away, you have less right? But now I want you to think about what Christ is calling us to is the principle of the economy of grace, the economy of grace. In the economy of grace is as you give, you shall receive. Now, will you do that? Because in doing that, you will start to let go. It’s called detachment, detachment from the things of this world, that your heart will start to cling to the center of the world, which is Christ and in doing that, you will start to see joy in your life. There’s that whole idea of grasping at things, the very action of grasping we lose. I always look at that with sand. If you go on the beach, the very action of grasping at the sand, you lose it. In the wheel of fortune when we live on the edges of that, we’re always grasping at the top. If we’re at when we’re a king, we have everything. We want more, don’t we? Or we’re always grasping at our time. Or we’re always grasping at more things, more peace, but as we grasp, we tend to lose it. But if we have Christ at the center of our lives, if we truly believe that He is, is Lord of Heaven and Earth then we detach from that.
The spirit of stewardship is a spirit of gift that everything is a gift from God. If we look at the world as gift, we’re willing not to hold on to it, not to grasp it, but to give it away and as Christ says, ‘Give and you shall receive.’ As you continue to give, you will receive. And so as you come before the Lord today, where Christ is truly present before in the Eucharist, let us give Him our time, our talent, our treasures, our sacrifices for the Lord and when we sacrifice that to God and we receive his body of Christ, we have gone within us so that we can rejoice. Rejoice, that Christ is the Lord of Heaven and Earth. Amen.”