Third Sunday of Advent

[Guadete Sunday]: December 15
EXTRACT FROM The Liturgical Year, Dom Guéranger, O.S.B.

TODAY, again, the Church is full of joy, and the joy is greater than it was. It
is true that her Lord has not come; but she feels that He is nearer than
before, and therefore she thinks it just to lessen somewhat the austerity of
this penitential season by the innocent cheerfulness of her sacred rites.
And first, this Sunday has had the name of Gaudete given to it, from the
first word of the Introit; it also is honored with those impressive exceptions
which belong to the fourth Sunday of Lent, called Lætare. The organ is
played at the Mass; the vestments are rose-color [optional]; the deacon
resumes the dalmatic, and the subdeacon the tunic; and in cathedral
churches the bishop assists with the precious miter. How touching are all
these usages, and how admirable this condescension of the Church,
wherewith she so beautifully blends together the unalterable strictness of
the dogmas of faith and the graceful poetry of the formulæ of her liturgy! Let
us enter into her spirit, and be glad on this third Sunday of her Advent,
because our Lord is now so near unto us. Tomorrow we will resume our
attitude of. servants mourning for the absence of their Lord and waiting for
Him; for every delay, however short, is painful and makes love sad.

The Station is kept in the basilica of St. Peter, at the Vatican. This august
temple, which contains the tomb of the prince of the Apostles, is the home
and refuge of all the faithful of the world; it is but natural that it should be
chosen to witness both the joy and the sadness of the Church.

The night Office commences with a new Invitatory. The voice of the Church
no longer invites the faithful to come and adore in fear and trembling the
King, our Lord, Who is to come. Her language assumes another character;
her tone is one of gladness; and now, every day, until the vigil of Christmas,
she begins her nocturnes with these grand words:

The Lord is now nigh; come, let us adore . . . O holy Roman Church, city of
our strength! Behold us thy children assembled within thy walls, around the
tomb of the fisherman, the prince of the Apostles, whose sacred relics
protect thee from their earthly shrine, and whose unchanging teaching
enlightens thee from Heaven. Yet, O city of strength: it is by the Savior,
Who is coming, that thou art strong. He is thy wall, for it is He that encircles,
with His tender mercy, all thy children; He is thy bulwark, for it is by Him
that thou art invincible, and that all the powers of Hell are powerless to
prevail against thee. Open wide thy gates, that all nations may enter thee;
for thou art mistress of holiness and the guardian of truth. May the old error,
which sets itself against the faith, soon disappear, and peace reign over the
whole fold! O holy Roman Church! thou hast forever put thy trust in the
Lord; and He, faithful to His promise, has humbled before thee the haughty
ones that defied thee, and the proud cities that were against thee. Where
now are the Cæsars, who boasted that they had drowned thee in thine own
blood? Where the emperors, who would ravish the inviolate virginity of thy
faith? Where the heretics, who, during the past centuries of thine existence,
have assailed every article of thy teaching, and denied what they listed?
Where the ungrateful princes, who would fain make a slave of thee, who
hadst made them what they were? Where that empire of Mahomet, which
has so many times raged against thee, for that thou, the defenseless State,
didst arrest the pride of its conquests? Where the reformers, who were bent
on giving the world a Christianity, in which thou wast to have no part?
Where the more modern sophists, in whose philosophy thou wast set down
as a system that had been tried, and was a failure, and is now a ruin; and
those kings who are acting the tyrant over thee, and those people that win
have liberty independently and at the risk of truth, where win they be in
another hundred years? Gone and forgotten as the noisy anger of a torrent;
whilst thou, O holy Church of Rome, built on the immovable rock, wilt be as
calm, as young, as unwrinkled as ever. Thy path through all the ages of this
world's duration, will be right as that of the just man; thou wilt ever be the
same unchanging Church, as thou hast been during the eighteen hundred
years past, whilst everything else under the sun has been but change.
Whence this thy stability, but from Him Who is very truth and justice? Glory
be to Him in thee! Each year, He visits thee; each year, He brings thee new
gifts, where with thou mayst go happily through thy pilgrimage; and to the
end of time, He will visit thee, and renew thee, not only with the power of
that look wherewith Peter was renewed, but by filling thee with Himself, as
He did the ever glorious Virgin, who is the object of thy most tender love,
after that which thou bearest to Jesus Himself. We pray with thee, O
Church, our mother, and here is our prayer: 'Come, Lord Jesus! Thy name
and Thy remembrance are the desire of our souls: they have desired Thee
in the night, yea, and early in the morning have they watched for Thee.'