Charity, which requires self-sacrifice, is the way to joy. By contrast, living only for yourself is the shortcut to misery and meaninglessness. This truth is clearly revealed to us in scripture, especially in the Gospels, which tell us of the life of the Lord. It is also the theme of what is perhaps the best-loved Christmas story in English: Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
A Christmas Carol, as with most things Christmas-related, has been trivialized. Dickens, himself a Christian, albeit one with significant flaws, making him like the rest of us, did not write a story about a grumpy old man overcoming his grumpiness and finally joining in all the holiday cheer because, it’s just plain fun or on the premise “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”
Rather, A Christmas Carol is about a disappointed old man who, granted the great grace of visits by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, responding to God’s grace and becoming a new man, or, perhaps more accurately, the man he was destined to be before life’s concerns jumped in, bringing him to where the reader initially finds him: alone and miserable on Christmas Eve.
After his harrowing night, Ebeneezer Scrooge not only seems to be a different but a much younger man, embodying these words from T.S. Eliot’s poem “Little Gidding”-
We shall not cease from explorationScrooge’s change, his rebirth, his finding true joy was his heeding the Baptist’s call found in our Gospel for today. Doing these things are the fruit of repentance, proof that you have repented, that you’ve undergone a metanoia, a Greek word that denotes a transformation.
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time1
Becoming charitable is not the price you pay to earn God’s favor. Rather, being charitable is the result of realizing that, in and through Christ, you always already have God’s favor. Hence, each genuine act of charity is an act of rejoicing.
Today is Gaudete Sunday. It is the Sunday of the pink candle and the pink vestments (“rose” for those who prefer). The Third Sunday of Advent is called “Gaudete” because Gaudete is the first word of the Introit (that part of Mass that is sung prior to ringing the bell for everyone to stand). Gaudete is Latin for “Rejoice!” It is an imperative, urging us, maybe even ordering us, to rejoice. Note that “joi” is at the heart of “rejoice.”
Gaudete in Domino semper: iterum dico, Gaudete = “Rejoice in the Lord always: again, I say rejoice.”2 This comes from our second reading today, taken from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. As the apostle wrote in his Second Letter to the Corinthians:
Each must do… without sadness or compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. Moreover, God is able to make every grace abundant for you, so that in all things, always having all you need, you may have an abundance for every good work3Charity should not be a once-a-year thing, acts you perform between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Being charitable is what it means to be a Christian. Being a Christian, at least on this side of eternity, amounts to becoming. It is a journey, like the one described by Eliot in his poem. In Christian parlance, caritas, the Latin word from which “charity” is derived, is a translation of the Greek word agape.
Scripture teaches that “God is love.”4 Agape is the word translated as “love” in this passage. Unlike English and most Western languages, koine Greek- the original language of the New Testament- has four words for love. Three of these are used in the New Testament. Eros refers to what we call romantic love; philos to brotherly love- think the city of Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love; agape to self-giving, self-emptying love.
I think motherhood is the closest human analog to agape. It’s beautiful that during Advent, this year in the week leading up to Gaudete Sunday, that we celebrate Immaculate Conception and Our Lady of Guadalupe. Agape, self-emptying love, is the essence of the nature of the Most Holy Trinity.
It is through the Incarnation of the Father’s only begotten Son, whom the Father sent because He so loved the world, that we can begin to understand what the revelation “God is love” really means.5 A few chapters earlier in Philippians, in the “kenotic hymn,” we read this of Jesus:
though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness6True charity doesn’t consist only of giving something to someone in need, as important as that is. It requires giving something of yourself. While well-intentioned, things like “Giving Machines” make giving transactional rather than relational. Frankly, I find it fairly easy to give money and donate items. It’s much harder to give something of myself, to give time, attention, and care. Vulnerability is scary.
Our Lord only ever gives Himself whole and entire. In the Eucharistic exchange, you pledge your entire self to Him. In response to His self-giving, you pledge yourself to others, to charity, to self-giving, self-sacrificing love. You pledge to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Like Ebeneezer Scrooge, doing this is how you discover true joy. Only the joyful can rejoice.
1 T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” Part V.↩
2 Philippians 4:4-5; Roman Missal, The Third Sunday of Advent, Entrance Antiphon.↩
3 2 Corinthians 9:7-8.↩
4 1 John 4:8.16.↩
5 John 3:16.↩
6 Philippians 2:6-7.↩
No comments:
Post a Comment