Episode 033 - Homily | Even In Prison, Paul Says Rejoice: Advent (December 14, 2025)

In the middle of Advent, right when people feel stretched, thin, tired, anxious, or quietly overwhelmed, the church does something almost startling.

She interrupts us by saying quite plainly, rejoice.

Not later, not when things settle down, not when Christmas finally comes, but right now.

That's why this third Sunday of Advent is called Gaudete Sunday.

It's from the ancient words of the entrance antiphon that I said at the beginning of Mass.

Today's opening liturgy says, Gaudete in domino semper.

Rejoice in the Lord always.

It's important to notice that the church does not offer this as a suggestion or some kind gentle encouragement.

No, it's a command.

It's telling us to rejoice, which immediately raises a very honest question.

How can the church ask that of us, especially now?

How can she dare to speak joy when so many people are carrying grief?

Grief of a lost one, uncertainty, illness, a new diagnosis, broken relationships, financial pressures, especially during this time of the year with so many commitments, or even just the simple exhaustion that so often marks this season.

To understand that, we have to listen carefully to where those words at the beginning, entrance, antiphon come from.

Well, they come from Saint Paul, and he's writing a letter to the Philippines.

It's a community he loved deeply, a community that he knew very well.

Philippi was not a sentimental place.

It was a city shaped by power, by conquest, and an empire.

It had been conquered by Philip of Macedon.

Later it was absorbed into the Roman world.

And it was a site of one of Rome's most decisive military victories.

Yet it was also the place where Paul founded the very first Christian community in Europe.

These were believers who knew what it meant to live under intense pressure, to stand out, to be vulnerable, but because of their faith.

And when Paul writes to them urging them to rejoice, he's not writing them to them, he's not writing to them from a place of comfort or safety.

He's writing to them from a prison cell, isolated, chained, unsure whether he will be released or executed.

And yet from that place he writes these astonishing words rejoice in the Lord always.

That alone should make us stop and meditate and think.

Because Paul's joy does not come from when his suffering is resolved.

It comes right in the middle of it.

And that tells us something immediately about what Christian joy is not.

It's not a forced smile, it's not some goofy, happy stance or pretending that everything is fine.

It's not denying pain or the loss or fear.

Paul is not offering some emotional type, some emotional hype or spiritual denial.

He knows very well how harsh life can be.

He knows what prisons are like.

He knows what persecution feels like.

So when he speaks of joy, he speaks about something deeper, something stronger, something that suffering itself cannot destroy.

What Paul understands, and what changed everything for him, is what God had already done in Jesus Christ.

The incarnation, the cross, the resurrection are not some abstract ideas from Paul.

For Paul.

They are decisive events.

In the birth of Christ, God enters fully into human history, into human weakness, into our human suffering.

In the cross, God Himself takes on sin and death.

And in the resurrection, something utterly new happens.

Death is defeated from the inside.

Victory is one that no power on earth can undo.

Paul uses the language of victory again and again because he's convinced that this one unshakable truth, that the worst thing is never the last thing.

Sin does not get the final word.

Mistakes do not get the final word.

Failure does not get the final word.

Suffering does not get the final word.

Death itself does not get the final word.

Jesus Christ does.

And Paul is writing to people who have been baptized, people who belong to Christ, people who have been grafted onto the body of Christ and made shares in his divine life.

To them and to all of us, he's saying something astonishingly bold.

He's saying to us that if you really understand that you belong to Christ, then his victory is now your victory too.

Nothing can undo it.

No loss, no illness, no disappointment, no grief or the grief of a loss of a loved one, no setback, not even death can separate you from what Christ has already accomplished.

That's why when we read Paul's letter to the Romans, he says, Neither anguish nor distress, neither persecution nor famine, neither danger nor the sword, neither anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of Christ.

That's why Paul, that's why Paul can say, even from a prison cell, rejoice in the Lord always.

Not because circumstances are easy, but because Christ has already won.

This is why Galdeate Sunday matters so much.

Advent is not about pretending that the world is fine.

Advent is about waiting honestly while remembering what is already true.

We're not waiting for a victory that might happen someday.

We are waiting for the full unveiling of that victory that has already been won for us.

And that changes how we wait.

It changes how we suffer.

It changes how we live.

Because Christian joy is not the absence of struggle, it is the presence of Christ.

It is the quiet, steady confidence that no darkness is strong enough to extinguish the light that has already entered the world.

This is also why Christian faith spreads so fast and so quickly.

People looked at believers who had lost status, who lost all of their security, even lost their lives, and yet they were not defeated.

They saw joy that could not be explained by circumstances.

They saw people who could lose the whole world and still remain unbroken.

People who looked at them and said, I want what you have.

Please tell me about that Jesus.

Because as long as you have Jesus Christ, you have everything.

And the opposite is also true.

You can gain the whole world, look for riches and material things, success, comfort, control.

But I can guarantee you this.

If you lose Christ, you lose everything your heart was made for.

So today the church asks us a very question and a very important question.

Do you believe this?

Do you believe these words?

Do you believe the promises of Christ?

Because the church does not ask us to rejoice because everything is resolved.

She asks us to rejoice because the Lord is near.

Near to his word, near in the Eucharist, near in our waiting, near in our suffering, near in our hope.

Galdicti Sunday reminds us that joy is not postponed until Christmas morning.

It begins now.

Because Christ is already among us and his victory cannot be undone.

So my brothers and sisters, today in a world that is anxious, divided, weary, and longing for relief, the church dares to say something radical and deeply hopeful.

Rejoice.

Not because life is easy, not because the road is smooth, but because Christ has conquered sin and death, and nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate us from him.

And the world will try to separate us from him.

Because when we put all of our trust, all of our hope in him, that is Christian joy.

That is Advent hope.

And that is why, Saint Paul, we can pray for the grace to remain steadfast.

We can pray for the grace to remain faithful.

And yes, even now, even with everything that's going on, be so determined in our faith, so determined in our relationship with the Lord that we today can say, rejoice in the Lord always.

Amen.