A Laetare Sunday Thought to Start the Week Off Right
This Fourth Sunday of Lent is also known as "Laetare" Sunday. Laetare means "Rejoice!"
Does this invitation by Holy Mother Church to rejoice seem odd? After all, we're in the midst of our Lenten discipline which consists of some level of deprivation. We willingly embrace depriving ourselves because we know we are sinners. We understand that our sins glaringly demonstrate a lack of gratitude for the suffering and death Our Dear Savior endured for our sake. We know he endured this in order that we might be redeemed from our sins and enter the eternal joy of Heaven. But we go on with our sinfulness anyway. All of this points more to sorrow, doesn't it? And yet, on Laetare Sunday, we rejoice. What's up with that? As we have on Sunday's this year, we turn to The Inner Life of the Soul for some enlightenment.
"Joy is the life of the Church, for God is essentially joy..."
That pretty much sets the record straight. There's more, but before we continue, let's pause a moment. So many today consider our Catholic Religion a kind of killjoy - including many Catholics. But placing Laetare Sunday in the midst of Lent flies in the face of that, don't you think? Now let's continue:
"...We say truly that Christ lived in suffering, and died in unutterable anguish; that we have our Ash Wednesdays and Good Fridays; that earth's kinds of troubles and distress are manifold; and that there are also the pains of Purgatory and the far more awful pains of Hell. But still in the midst of our Advents, when our thoughts are on the dread judgment, and of our Lents, when we are following Christ to Calvary, the Church, who knows the mind of God, cries out: "Rejoice!"
Anyone who's lived in this vale of tears knows about suffering - and that's all of us. We Catholics are taught that we can offer up our suffering in reparation for our sins. Further, we can offer up our suffering for others, if we wish, especially those who now suffer in Purgatory for their sins. It's a way of taking something bad - suffering - and turning it into something good. Think about it and you see what a generous, beautiful offering this can be.
Not only that, but we can unite ourselves to Him Who suffered and died for us. We can, in a way, join Him on His Cross. But even if we have progressed in our spiritual sensibility to such a point, we don't stop there. Suffering may be part of life. Offering up our suffering may be a beautiful thing. But even as we recognize this, and turn the evil of suffering into a good, it's important that we remind ourselves that God did not make us to suffer. That's our own doing. God didn't create us to share in suffering. He created us to share in peace and eternal happiness - despite ourselves.
"Can you or I, however great our sin, alter God's essential, unalterable peace? Can the creature trouble in aught the infinite calm of the Creator? We sometimes taste a little of his untroubled joy. On Ash Wednesday with the touch of the ashes and the reminder of death, we may think, exultingly: I shall rise again! God omnipotent will gather our formless dust from the four winds and the deepest seas. He shall call me, and I will answer Him...Our Lord was happy here on earth, though the vision of sinners and sin lay ever before Him; and it has been truly said that if the sins of others can make the sinless grieve, yet those sins can never interfere with that abiding gladness, deep down, which union with God must of necessity produce."
And so we remember that Lent will soon end, as will our suffering in this world. The light at the end of the tunnel: The Resurrection! - both Our Lord's and ours. Just as He suffered and died that we might share in eternal happiness, so He rose to demonstrate that His promise of eternal happiness was not a mere thought or word. It was real, as will our own resurrection be real.
Which brings us back to Laetare Sunday. This joyful respite points us to that light, even as we re-enter the penitential season of Lent tomorrow. And as we return to our Lenten discipline, we can call on the intercession of the saints to help us through these final days before the celebration of glorious Easter. They have already gained the happiness that awaits us. Call on them to help us remember that happiness and to help us to some day share it with them.
"Is such happiness worth having? and if so why not follow the saints' method of gaining it? This is certain, that God will fill a soul that empties itself of earth's joys and plans, in order to give Him room. When we have blinded our eyes to the world's vain delights, and closed our ears to earth's syren voices, we shall hear the Church cry out: "Rejoice!" and we shall respond in the words she puts on our lips in her Mass today: 'I was glad at the things that were said to me: We will go to the house of the Lord.'..."
So...Happy Laetare Sunday!
Let's conclude today's remarks with the traditional exhortation from the praying of the Stations of the Cross, to remind ourselves we live and work now in the holy season of Lent:
Does this invitation by Holy Mother Church to rejoice seem odd? After all, we're in the midst of our Lenten discipline which consists of some level of deprivation. We willingly embrace depriving ourselves because we know we are sinners. We understand that our sins glaringly demonstrate a lack of gratitude for the suffering and death Our Dear Savior endured for our sake. We know he endured this in order that we might be redeemed from our sins and enter the eternal joy of Heaven. But we go on with our sinfulness anyway. All of this points more to sorrow, doesn't it? And yet, on Laetare Sunday, we rejoice. What's up with that? As we have on Sunday's this year, we turn to The Inner Life of the Soul for some enlightenment.
"Joy is the life of the Church, for God is essentially joy..."
That pretty much sets the record straight. There's more, but before we continue, let's pause a moment. So many today consider our Catholic Religion a kind of killjoy - including many Catholics. But placing Laetare Sunday in the midst of Lent flies in the face of that, don't you think? Now let's continue:
"...We say truly that Christ lived in suffering, and died in unutterable anguish; that we have our Ash Wednesdays and Good Fridays; that earth's kinds of troubles and distress are manifold; and that there are also the pains of Purgatory and the far more awful pains of Hell. But still in the midst of our Advents, when our thoughts are on the dread judgment, and of our Lents, when we are following Christ to Calvary, the Church, who knows the mind of God, cries out: "Rejoice!"
Anyone who's lived in this vale of tears knows about suffering - and that's all of us. We Catholics are taught that we can offer up our suffering in reparation for our sins. Further, we can offer up our suffering for others, if we wish, especially those who now suffer in Purgatory for their sins. It's a way of taking something bad - suffering - and turning it into something good. Think about it and you see what a generous, beautiful offering this can be.
Not only that, but we can unite ourselves to Him Who suffered and died for us. We can, in a way, join Him on His Cross. But even if we have progressed in our spiritual sensibility to such a point, we don't stop there. Suffering may be part of life. Offering up our suffering may be a beautiful thing. But even as we recognize this, and turn the evil of suffering into a good, it's important that we remind ourselves that God did not make us to suffer. That's our own doing. God didn't create us to share in suffering. He created us to share in peace and eternal happiness - despite ourselves.
"Can you or I, however great our sin, alter God's essential, unalterable peace? Can the creature trouble in aught the infinite calm of the Creator? We sometimes taste a little of his untroubled joy. On Ash Wednesday with the touch of the ashes and the reminder of death, we may think, exultingly: I shall rise again! God omnipotent will gather our formless dust from the four winds and the deepest seas. He shall call me, and I will answer Him...Our Lord was happy here on earth, though the vision of sinners and sin lay ever before Him; and it has been truly said that if the sins of others can make the sinless grieve, yet those sins can never interfere with that abiding gladness, deep down, which union with God must of necessity produce."
And so we remember that Lent will soon end, as will our suffering in this world. The light at the end of the tunnel: The Resurrection! - both Our Lord's and ours. Just as He suffered and died that we might share in eternal happiness, so He rose to demonstrate that His promise of eternal happiness was not a mere thought or word. It was real, as will our own resurrection be real.
Which brings us back to Laetare Sunday. This joyful respite points us to that light, even as we re-enter the penitential season of Lent tomorrow. And as we return to our Lenten discipline, we can call on the intercession of the saints to help us through these final days before the celebration of glorious Easter. They have already gained the happiness that awaits us. Call on them to help us remember that happiness and to help us to some day share it with them.
"Is such happiness worth having? and if so why not follow the saints' method of gaining it? This is certain, that God will fill a soul that empties itself of earth's joys and plans, in order to give Him room. When we have blinded our eyes to the world's vain delights, and closed our ears to earth's syren voices, we shall hear the Church cry out: "Rejoice!" and we shall respond in the words she puts on our lips in her Mass today: 'I was glad at the things that were said to me: We will go to the house of the Lord.'..."
So...Happy Laetare Sunday!
Let's conclude today's remarks with the traditional exhortation from the praying of the Stations of the Cross, to remind ourselves we live and work now in the holy season of Lent:
We adore Thee O Christ and we bless Thee,
Because by Thy Holy Cross Thou Hast Redeemed the world.
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