On Monday, we celebrated the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, and we saw how, due to being completely free from sin and any and all effects of sin (concupiscence), She is completely and totally free, like Dante at the end of his process of spiritual purification in the Divine Comedy: “Already were all my will and my desires / turned—as a wheel in equal balance—by / The Love that moves the sun and the other stars.”

          In this classic work, after being taken by the Roman poet Virgil to see the punishments meted out to sinners in Hell, before beholding the perfection of the Blessed Virgin and being overawed by the Beatific Vision, Dante undergoes an important preliminary purification in Purgatory. He presents Purgatory as a mountain that he climbs, seeing how God’s grace purifies and restores the repentant sinners he encounters to prepare them for Heaven. But then Dante becomes not only a witness, but a participant in that purification, and reaching the top of the mountain of Purgatory, Virgil tells him, “your will is free, erect, and whole … I crown and miter you over yourself.”

          Dante achieves true freedom through the taming of his will, which has become erect – properly directed – and whole. He has, “no anxiety at all,” the Lord “[rejoices] over [him] with gladness and [renews him] in his love,” (to borrow a phrase from St. Paul today) crowned as one with perfect control over himself. Now he is ready for the joys of the Earthly Paradise, the last stage before final admission into Heaven.

          Joy is, of course, the Church’s theme today on this Gaudete Sunday. The prophet Zephaniah give us the image of the one who preaches a message of joy, “Shout for joy, O daughter Zion! Sing joyfully, O Israel! Be glad and exult with all your heart.” After being purified from the effects of sin, Dante experiences joy resulting from interior freedom. We think of freedom as exterior – the freedom from constraint, or the freedom to perform this or that action. But interior freedom is even more important – it is the ability to love rightly. Interior freedom begins in honesty and forthrightness, and that is where our friend John the Baptist comes in.

          John the Baptist seems an unlikely image of joy. He is, after all, the one who “was clothed in camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. He fed on locusts and wild honey.” The honey sounds nice – the locusts, not so much. He has a knack for the incendiary (“His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor … the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”) and the controversial (denouncing the adulterous Herod, getting thrown into jail, and then losing his head because of some pretentious girl’s dance). He does not seem, in any of the four Gospels, ever to be presented as joyful.

          But here he is on Gaudete Sunday, because John models honesty and forthrightness, an essential pre-condition for interior freedom, an essential pre-condition for authentic joy. “The crowds asked John the Baptist, ‘What should we do?’”, and John challenges them to radical generosity and to counter-culturally reject the vices that were seen as normal, everybody’s doing it kind of behavior. Later, John will insist on the adulterous nature of King Herod’s attempt at re-marriage. John’s constant witness to the truth gives him a freedom that leads him to a joy that transcends mere appearances.

          That kind of interior freedom is usually born of honest dialogue with the Lord in prayer. “God, this is me, this is what I am struggling with; this is who I am; this is what I can’t let go of.” Related to that honest dialogue with the Lord is honest dialogue with others, because the virtues, or stable dispositions, of prayer and relationships with others effect and enrich each other. If you regularly hide things from other people, you’re likely to try to hide them from God too. (Like we saw last week, if you haven’t let the Lion dig His claws right down to your heart.)

One of the greatest desires of modern men and women is authenticity – the desire to be true to one’s self. We think that we can be “authentic” by constructing our own value systems – speaking my truth. It’s funny, though, that most people who want the freedom to “speak my truth” end up sounding a lot like everyone else. The quest for authenticity so quickly becomes illusory.

The most authentic people in human history, the most truly unique, beautifully vibrant and joyful humans who have ever lived, are the saints. John the Baptist is a great example. But so are modern saints. What more authentic person has there been in recent memory than St. Theresa of Calcutta? We remember her working tirelessly in the slums of Calcutta for the sick and dying, but that same woman had an incurably feisty streak, condemning abortion before the United Nations and excoriating the vapid soullessness of American materialism – “I have been to many countries and seen much poverty and suffering,” she said in an interview in the 1970s, “…But of all the countries I have been to, the poorest one I have been to is America.” She was at all times perfectly herself, and far more authentic than any YouTuber, influencer, or Instagram star.

The great irony is that the more you self-consciously try to be authentic, the less authentic you are likely to be. The freedom of a will purified of desire for sin, is the path to real authenticity. This is why St. Augustine could say something as radical and even scandalous as, “Love God, and do what you will.” “When the love of God is the governing principle of our lives, then all that we think, say, and do will necessarily be yielded to that love.  If our love of God is real and profound, then obedience and faithfulness, right thinking and right actions will flow irresistibly from that love.” That is what leads to authentic joy. (Source: https://www.kingsmeadow.com/wp/love-god-and-do-what-you-will/)

The reason that real joy is not born of authenticity, of being “true to yourself,” is that you’re dealing with a constantly shifting standard. Great saints like John the Baptist of Teresa of Calcutta could rejoice in the complete freedom “to be themselves” because they recognized Someone outside themselves as the source of a mission given to them, originating in a plan of cosmic significance, fitting together perfectly in a bigger design for the whole world. John could confront corrupt soldiers and tax collectors, and Teresa could confront the United Nations and the world’s only superpower, because they had confidence in something deeper than their own convictions: the law of God revealed not only in their hearts, but in God’s Word and the natural law observable in the world around them. In times of adversity, the saints and all Christians can rejoice because “The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a mighty savior,” rejoicing with gladness over those who are faithful to Him, renewing with His love those who courageously proclaim His truth.

The saints were also joyful because they were free from the tendency that plagues us to always go back looking for joy in the very places that sap our joy away. We know, to take the most obvious example, that screen-based activities leave us feeling empty, but yet we keep coming back to them looking for affirmation, a thrill, a hit of dopamine, only to get pulled into the vicious cycle. The saints sought joy in the Lord, in doing His work, and in the joy of encountering Him in the real people around them.

On Monday, the Church placed words of rejoicing on the lips of the Blessed Mother in the entrance antiphon for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, Gaudens gaudebo, “I rejoice heartily in the LORD, in my God is the joy of my soul; for he has clothed me with a robe of salvation and wrapped me in a mantle of justice, … like a bride bedecked with her jewels.”

Certainly, Mary is very different than John the Baptist and Teresa of Calcutta. Scripture records no fiery denunciations from Her. Yet in a humble and hidden way, she shows us pure freedom and pure authenticity: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” While St. Bernard beautifully describes all the angels in heaven waiting breathlessly for our Lady’s reply to the angel, filled with nervous tension as the fate of the universe hangs in the balance, they were never in doubt. She could not have answered otherwise, not because She lacked freedom, but because She is perfectly free. It is precisely Her lack of modern concern for authenticity, and Her search first and foremost to fulfill the divine will, that She arrives at the perfect freedom that can be moved by the great and providential Love in which She finds real authenticity and joy after all.

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope

III Sunday of Advent – Gaudete – A.D. MMXXIV