Summary: today is Lætare Sunday, the fourth Sunday in Lent. The Latin verb lætifico, from which the title Lætare is taken, implies rejoicing. Yet it is not the hectic rejoicing we would normally associate with the concept of joy, but rather the consciousness of incipient joy we feel in the coming of spring, and the sense of things approaching fruition. Though I am aware that there may be some who will take exception to a meditation on Lætare Sunday occurring in a concededly secular and somewhat political blog, I must crave indulgence. There is more to life than politics, and more to life then quotidian temporal pursuits. Those who wish to take umbrage are free to do so, but Lætare Sunday is hardly a time for people to harsh each other’s mellows. As the days grow longer with the coming of daylight saving time, we feel within ourselves that sense of things being made new; we should be grateful therefor.
By: Paul S. Marchand
There are two Sundays in the kalendar of the Church year set aside by name for "rejoicing." The first is Gaudete Sunday (III Advent), and the second is Lætare Sunday (IV Lent). Though both gaudeo and lætifico are now routinely translated out of classical Latin as meaning "rejoice," they, like most word doublets, are not strictly synonymous. In several Latin-English dictionaries, for example, lætifico is translated as "to fertilize, to cheer, to gladden," and "to delight." The related word lætus is variously translated as "fat," "rich," "fertile," "glad," "joyful," and "happy." Gaudeo, on the other hand, is translated simply as "to rejoice."
In many ways, there is a distinct difference between rejoicing and happiness. The first implies almost an isolated occurrence; the second suggests a state of being. The spouses rejoice at the wedding feast; by God's good grace they may find lifelong happiness together, even if that life offers few occasions for anything akin to the revels of their nuptial day.
Thus, the sense of gaudete is one of a celebration, of cutting loose to mark a memorable occasion —a great victory, a wedding, a baptism, a graduation, an anniversary— that does not happen every day, and which stands out apart from the quotidian rhythms of our existence. Perhaps the single most perfect illustration of gaudete is the immortal photograph of the sailor and his girl kissing in Times Square on V-J Day, 1945. There is a frenetic, hectic quality to gaudete, (as there is in fact a frenetic, hectic sense of Gaudete Sunday, coming as it does during the flurry of the holiday season), that tends not to lend itself to deep thought or meditation, but rather to ecstacies and spectacle.
Lætare, by contrast, is slower, neither hectic nor frenetic; its sense is one of things growing to fruition, a sense of the intrinsic goodness of God's creation, fat, fertile, and rich with the potential that only a passionately loving God can call into being. Who, watching the earth's natural springtime increase, cannot be imbued with a sense of gladness in beholding it? When the hills don their coats of green, and the verbena mantles the desert with its Lenten purple, and the freshly sown fields begin to give forth their produce, one would have to possess a heart of stone not to apprehend the wonder of God's creation, as God renews the face of the earth.
Here is no hectic flurry of activity; here is no sudden need to make merry. Here instead is the coming together of God's creative, redemptive, and sanctifying power, carried out almost imperceptibly, yet more irresistible than the power of the mightiest glacier or of the deepest ocean swell. Apprehending the sense of things coming together to renew the face of the earth and to further God's divine economy, we begin to apprehend the sense of gladness Lætare Sunday is intended to awaken in us. Subtly, as Fr. Andrew Green of St. Paul in the Desert in Palm Springs once noted, the Lenten emphasis is shifting.
We have heretofore been three Sundays in the wilderness, taking time to reconsider ourselves and our lives, for that is the precise purpose of a penitential season. Indeed, in Latin, the word Pœnitentiæ implies reconsideration. Any first year student of the law of contracts can tell you that the Locus Pœnitentiæ is that "Place of Reconsideration" in which one party to a contract may back out: before the hammer falls at auction, or during the statutory three-day period prescribed in many States to permit a consumer to withdraw from a credit contract. A Penitentiary is that place in which our incarcerated convicts will (we hope) reconsider their actions and find repentance before returning to society. Even the returning prodigal necessarily passed through a period of reconsideration, leading to a repentance experience that turned him once again toward home and family, as we are all called to turn again toward our spiritual home in God's Kingdom.
Yet at some point, God calls us to leave off a heavy regimen of repentance in favor of opening our eyes to the fruits of repentance, to see with clear eyes, with tested eyes, with enlightened eyes, the beauty of holiness that suffuses creation, and to be glad therein. And thus our emphasis shifts, we find ourselves confronting not so much the necessity of periodic re-examination of our own lives —for, as Fr. Green notes, an excessive emphasis on re-examination can easily turn into prideful egoism— so much as we open our hearts to the realization that Lent is also a preparation for Easter, a time for allowing the seeds of our faith to sprout anew in the richness of the Spirit.
As our emphasis shifts, of course, it becomes incumbent upon us also to be aware that our apprehension of things coming to fruition, our sense of gladness at the earth's increase, necessarily presupposes a trust in God and in God's good providence that ofttimes seems incomprehensible to the temporal world. We live in a society that tends to organize itself without reference to first things, or to eternal things, preferring to concentrate on the immediately verifiable here and now. Over against stubborn empiricists who refuse to believe what they cannot see, we, like Thomas the Apostle, profess and confess a Lord and a God whose ways are emphatically not the ways of the temporal world. Ours is a faith based on patience, on solidarity, and on a quiet confidence that the transitory things which attract the passing adoration of that temporal world are powerless to distract us from the Way of the Cross.
A world that has grown old, a world that seeks to beguile itself with sensation and momentary pleasures, looks at this Lenten time with frank incomprehension. Yet, with God's help, this time is readily understandable; a patient people, a solid people, a faithful people, finds in these days of Lent a time of gladness, a time of thanksgiving at the earth's increase, a time of cheer even in repentance, and most of all, a time of expectancy of Resurrection.
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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, California. The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any organization, diocese, or parish. This post is an adaptation of a post originally written almost 20 years ago, and updated since. It is not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice or as catechesis/instruction in the Faith.
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