The third Sunday of Advent is known as: Gaudete Sunday – Latin meaning “to rejoice”. The church has set aside the usual purple vestments and uses roses as a sign that something long-awaited is on the way.
Joy in this situation is different from happiness. Etymologically, this difference is noteworthy. Happiness comes from Old Norse. Sigh (chance or luck), connotes a contingent state, or the outcome of something. Happening to us. Conversely, joy comes from Latin. Gaudiumsuggests an essential inner state that is independent of external luck.
This is consistent with the academic understanding that pleasure is ontological rather than merely phenomenological. So it’s not just a feeling, it’s a state of being. Our job is not to pursue joy, because it is a fundamental reality. Our role is one of receptive attention and openness to allow Joy to reveal herself. We quickly forget that just being alive is an amazing blessing and a massive coincidence. When did we remember?
To summon this deeper joy, take a few minutes each day to practice being aware of your surroundings intentionally and non-judgmentally. Silent attention, just being present in the moment, creates space for joy to emerge. (The etymology of the Hebrew word “salvation” means the removal of space, or constriction, which also helps us understand New Testament salvation as restoration and wholeness.)
Joy is a recognition, not a discovery, and is based on the principle: “Joy finds us, but we do not find joy.” Think of it this way. The sun is not found. You are standing where the sun shines on you. Joy means that you have to be open to just accept the reality that is given to you, like a ray of sunshine.
This deep, independent joy provides a powerful lens for Advent. The Jesuit thinker Teilhard de Chardin approached this season through hope based on his understanding of the universe. He saw the story of Christ not simply as his birth in Bethlehem, but as a guide to the future of all creation. In his view, the universe is moving towards a state where matter and spirit meet in complete unity, and randomness makes sense.
Joy points to this future. We can endure disillusionment and despair because we look ahead. Teilhard called this future the Omega Point, the moment when creation is fulfilled in Christ.
In contrast, happiness comes from our own efforts. It depends on our immediate situation.
Joy works in a different way. It is a signal from within the world, a disclosure or grace that finds us because it is already an established reality. It shows that we are moving in step with a deeper movement towards unity. Joy can be destroyed at any time. Happiness tends to follow our plans.
This openness is important when crossing cultures. When I moved abroad, I felt a split. Joy and difference have something in common. Both ask us to loosen our bonds and allow ourselves to be transformed through the encounter, to adopt the receptive attitude necessary for joy to manifest itself.
We all live in tension between different “cultures”. Navigating between them requires a new emotional language. You can’t understand other people’s experiences if you only talk about your own experiences.
Teilhard’s concept of love comes into play here. He understood love as a force that draws the universe toward unity rather than uniformity. Loving in this sense is a call to personal growth, in which we learn to see others as whole human beings. Convergence emerges from this movement. In convergence, human thought and life converge into a shared field, or “noosphere” (from Greek). No waymeaning “mind” or “reason”).
Such movements require tension. The inner workings of living between worlds create friction through which we grow into our own personalities by entering into a relationship with the whole.
Pleasure and culture both require openness. Advent invites us to wait for what is beyond our reach. Intercultural life requires the same attitude.
When I lived abroad, I didn’t yearn for my hometown. I found it elsewhere. Philip Larkin once wrote:
I was lonely in Ireland because I didn’t have a home.
The strangeness had meaning. Refusal of salt in speech,
They insisted on being different and welcomed me.
Once it was recognized, we got in touch. . .
I think passages from the Christmas story contain similar insights. “The wise men were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, so they returned home by a different route.” They arrived at the same place, but something had changed within them. They returned to their starting point and saw it with new eyes.
TS Eliot puts it in his own way:
And the end of all our explorations
We’ll arrive where we started
And then I knew the place for the first time.
This is also Teilhard’s vision. Through Joy’s ongoing work and the tensions and convergences that arise from it, we return to our origins with a new understanding. We see what has always been there, what is here.
notes and reading
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Hebrew origin of “salvation…”In contrast to the common English meaning of rescue or avoidance of punishment, the core Hebrew root (Yasha) Literally means to widen or expand, and expresses spaciousness and a sense of security. This etymology suggests that Salvation is the removal of privation and the expansion of life.consistent with New Testament ideas of restoration and wholeness.
—John L. Mackenzie bible dictionary (1965), 760. Fr. Mackenzie was a pioneering and outspoken Roman Catholic Bible scholar.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, center of matter,transformer. René Haag (2002). A famous French Jesuit theologian, mystic, and scientist, Teilhard helped bring Christian theology into creative dialogue with modern science.
ursula king Christ in all things (2016). Dr. King is a German theologian and religious scholar specializing in gender and religion, feminist theology, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Dominic Moisi The geopolitics of emotion: How cultures of fear, humiliation, and hope are reshaping the world. (2009). Moisi is a French political scientist, author, and research professor at King’s College, London.
Philip Larkin “The Importance of Elsewhere” whit wedding (1955). Larkin was also a poet, novelist, and librarian. He remains one of Britain’s most popular poets. In 2022, it celebrated its 100th birthday.
TS Eliot, “Little Gidding” V; four quartets (1943, 2023) — Eliot’s Masterpiece: A Language for Longing and Return.
Reverend Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Past and Future Coming of Jesus Christ (2018). Drawing on the Bible, patristic studies, Barth, Bonhoeffer, and modern theology, Rutledge is academic, but not obscure to non-academics.
peace in conflict
hidden hope
Approximately 2+2=5
Source: 2 + 2 = 5 – williamgreen.substack.com
