GAUDETE SUNDAY

Today is "Gaudete Sunday" or "Rejoice Sunday." Why? What is all the rejoicing about?

More than two hundred years ago a man named Isaac Watts wrote the words to a Christmas carol which, no doubt, you have heard every Christmas since you were born. The first verse reads:

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare him room
And heaven and nature sing.

Do you every wonder if that is really true? Is there joy in the world because Jesus was born? Yes! There is joy and happiness, celebration and song, excitement and honest-to-goodness merriment. There is hardly a nook or a cranny, hardly a country on the entire earth that doesn't have at least some Christian people who join in celebrating Jesus' birth. Almost as though the Liturgy can't wait to celebrate the presence of the Savior, the Word of God today tells us to rejoice.

How will you put that word into practice as we enter this second half of the Advent season?