Today, Gaudete Sunday—the Church says rejoice. In the midst of Advent’s quiet longing and sobriety, a note of joy, rose-coloured and unexpected. Yet the readings set before us are not obviously joyful. They speak of waiting, of suffering, of imprisonment, of questions emerging from the darkness of prison cell. And perhaps that is precisely why today’s joy matters so much. Christian joy is not a denial of pain; it is the radiant hope that God’s promises are trustworthy even when the world is not.
James writes to a scattered, beleaguered community and urges them, “Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord.” He invites them to look to the prophets, whose witness, over the generations cost them dearly. James surely had in mind John the Baptist, the last prophet who suffered, a herald who has paid with his freedom and would pay with his life.
John sends word to Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
Jesus responds not with ideas and theories but with evidence: “Go and tell John what you hear and see.” The blind see. The lame walk. The poor hear good news. This is not a Messiah who vaunts earthly power but one who heals, restores, and lifts up. Jesus adds, “Blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.” Blessed is anyone who can recognise that God’s justice arrives clothed in mercy, and God’s strength in vulnerability.
This tension between justice and mercy, between suffering and joy, between prophetic boldness and patient waiting – this is where the Church finds itself in every place and age of its existence. This is what meet and right means in the Eucharistic prayer.
There is many young child eager for lunch, who can smell the roast chicken at those words. Meet not roasting in the oven but in the sense of just and true.
The Church can be perceived to be too quiet about justice. James and John Baptist remind us that prophetic witness has always been costly and is often misunderstood. Only in the last few days the Church spoke clearly in rejecting the lure of ideologies which promise security through exclusion and identity through fear.
It calls relentlessly for just peace in regions of conflict and the rejection of genocide; the cries of Cardinal Pizzabella of Jerusalem, and Anglican Archbishop Hosam continue to ring out and be echoed by the wider Church. It has not ceased to cry out for Ukraine, nor to lament the violence tearing Sudan apart. These are not comfortable statements; they are the Church attempting, however imperfectly, to stand with the prophets, to lift its voice where human dignity is crushed.
On Wednesday, the King attended a service in the Abbey where the preacher spoke of the persecution and the death of the Catholic Bishop of Oran, a fellow Dominican killed with a Muslim colleague after a journey back from Algiers, by extremists. At his funeral many Muslims present chanted “he was our Bishop.” A most affecting account. A Christian young woman from Pakistan told her story. At university she was the only Christian in her year. No one spoke to her except to try to convert her to Islam. She has taken refuge here.
Christian witness is not only protest and it is not simply lament. It must be infused with joy, or it ceases to be recognisably Christian.
Gaudete Sunday reminds us that justice without joy becomes brittle, and joy without justice becomes hollow. The joy of Advent is not mere optimism; it is the deep, Spirit-given confidence that Christ is already at work healing the broken and lifting up the lowly. Christian joy arises precisely when we align ourselves with that work.
So, as James says, we must be patient—but this is not a passive patience. It is the patience of farmers, who prepare the soil and trust the rain; the patience of prophets, who speak truth knowing it may take generations to bear fruit. It is the patience of John, who dares to ask hard questions.
This Advent, may our waiting be active, hopeful, courageous. May we be unafraid to speak for peace in a world seemingly addicted to conflict, fearless proclaiming God’s kingdom is near, which is the truth of the Eucharist itself: we can touch it and taste it.
And above all, let us rejoice. For even now, signs of the kingdom break through: compassion offered in dark places, peace pursued in war-torn lands, courage shown by those who refuse hatred’s easy answers. Kindness and humanity shown to those who are not in the habit if receiving those gifts. These are the works of Christ in our midst. “Go and tell what you hear and see.”
William Gulliford