McTeigue: Rejoice because “You are worth my Son”

December 18, 2014 at 2:06 pm · Filed under Ave Maria Florida, homily and tagged: Ave Maria chronicles, Ave Maria Oratory Parish, Catholic college, Father Robert McTeigue SJ, Gaudete, Jesuit, TLM, Usus Antiquior

Well, we have a problem. In our liturgical calendar, this Sunday is known as “Gaudete Sunday”, which may be very loosely translated as “Rejoicing Sunday.” In my copy of the Roman Catholic Daily Missal, I read that, “On this day the Church urges us to gladness in the middle of this time of expectation and penance.”

Now, those who know me can tell you that I am not prone to spontaneous outbursts of rejoicing and gladness, and achieving rejoicing and gladness on a schedule, even a liturgical one, would take a significant act of the will on my part. And while I do frequently experience expectation, what I most often expect is best not spoken of in the presence of impressionable young children such as we have here among us this morning.

Now, in fairness, I must say that I think that I and those like me—we have earned our gloom. Some among the chronically gloomy would say that they have earned their gloom by making the effort to keep abreast of what’s going on in politics near and far. Some such folks have concluded that the rule of law is in tatters in this country and beyond whatever borders may still be said to remain. They remind us that the veneer of law that covers underlying lawlessness, sooner or later, inevitably fades away. Lawlessness, as both history and headlines teach us—for those who care to learn—they teach us that lawlessness and the tyranny that precedes it do not protect the vulnerable, promote the common good, or secure the rights of the Church.

Other folks say that they have earned their gloom as they observe the present state of the Church’s life. These folks call “apostasy” what one prominent Catholic described as “miscues” during the recently-concluded Extraordinary Synod on the Family. These same folks also use the word “persecution” as they look at those circling the Church around the world and closer to home. Beheadings abroad and local legislation show that nowadays those with access to either to power or force tend to have no love for Holy Mother Church.

So, for those who are more inclined to count clouds during the day rather than count stars at night, Gaudete Sunday seems a bit…incongruous.

Nonetheless, duty calls. Saint Paul exhorts us with these words: “Rejoice in the Lord always: again, I say, rejoice!” Saint Paul is right, and whatever dark, brooding, Irish melancholics you may know, and those like him, are wrong. Let me explain why.

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