Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice. Indeed, the Lord is near. 

Rejoice! Go on, rejoice! It’s the third week of Advent!! Gaudete Sunday! The Rose colored candle on our Advent wreath! The Rose colored vestments on our Priests! Gaudete, a Latin word which means REJOICE! I love this “permission” to rejoice, I also love this “reminder” to actually rejoice! Not run around doing all the things, not watching the chaos of the world and swirl with anxiety…..rejoice!  Why? Because we are in the season of Advent. We are preparing for our Lord to come. We get this week to taste a little of the Joy that we will get to enjoy fully  on Christmas. 

On November 30th this year, the first day of Advent, I put these words up on my board in our kitchen; Hope, Peace, Joy, Love, to remind myself, and my family, of what each candle of Advent represents. I was delighted when my “Scribble” fell on this third week. I hope I can encourage you (and me) to recognize what God is doing in our lives.  He sent us a savior.

“Come Holy Spirit”

These are the words I whisper inside my head as I sit in the most peaceful adoration Chapel, hoping to write a reflection on today’s Gospel.  I want the words to come from the Spirit, I want the Spirit to guide me. The desire I feel is to write about Joy…to write about the beautiful fruits of the Holy Spirit. How Paul lists them in Galatians 5:22-23 “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” I want to feel the abundance of these fruits bubbling up in my heart. Spilling over my cup so they are just pouring out into the lives of everyone I encounter…

I believe this is probably a familiar Gospel for you, and if you’re like me, it’s a bit confusing. So I sit and ask:  Lord give me your wisdom, give me ears to hear.  I think about yesterday’s Gospel with the seeds and the sower and what strikes me is yesterday’s Gospel was followed up with an explanation, a clear breakdown of what Jesus was teaching. I’m not finding that in today’s, so I had to  dig a little deeper. I had to find a few people much wiser than myself to break it down for me. 

I’m going to start with the last line of this Gospel “you cannot serve both God and mammon.” Mammon = money… aha! We know this, we know we should not worship money, wealth, fame…. But do we live this out? Is God first in our lives? Is He at the center of all I do, think, say? 

I have this desire to pull out each and every line of this Gospel; there is so much here that truly is speaking to my heart.  My ADD is in overdrive as I try to keep some order to my thoughts. I’ll try to start at the beginning, no, not in Genesis….but in Luke 12:32 when Jesus says to his disciples: “Do not be afraid any longer…” Are you afraid? Am I afraid?  I can read this and see the part that says; “Jesus says to his disciples” and I can mistakenly believe that He is not addressing me….but he is! That is kind of what we are all doing right? Being disciples? Trying our best to be followers of Christ? So if that's true,  then he is also  telling me, and YOU, do not be afraid any longer.

I love this, I love when the Gospels open up to me like a door, a door I can spiritually walk through.  Peter spoke the truest words he knew, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.”

Jesus’ reply, that His heavenly Father revealed this to Peter, is stunning and at the same time it's the only thing that makes sense. 

It’s the only thing that makes sense today.

If you have faith, and you believe that Jesus is the son of the living God….then do you know who revealed this to you?  The living God!

Why? I don’t know. 

‘I give you a new commandment; love one another.’ 

What word stood out to you? While I attempted to unpack this short and sweet Gospel, wanting desperately to pull out the Good News, my eyes lingered on one word……commandment! 

Jesus didn't make a suggestion to His disciples, he gave them a new COMMANDMENT. 

He made it very clear what he expected of them; love one another.  Not as we love ourselves, but ‘As I have loved you.’ Do you think the disciples were questioning, ‘well, how much do you love us Jesus?’  They very well may have.  He had not yet died on the cross, He had not yet

This Gospel is showing us how His mercy is offered to us, all of us!

We are infinitely loved, by God the Father.  This woman caught in adultery was infinitely loved.  Her accusers were infinitely loved!  

Has this passage become too familiar?? Has it lost the heaviness that we should be feeling when we read it?  I think it did for me. Is it because we know the end? We know Jesus shows her mercy, and we don’t let ourselves feel the weight of this moment? For me, this week, there it is, my assigned Gospel for my Scribble reflection. It is different when I am attempting to share my feelings about what the Gospels are saying to me.  

Imagine living this way…Imagine the freedom we would feel if we could start from this moment on, living with radical mercy?  The way Jesus lived, the way Jesus loved.  Would this set us apart? Would people notice if our love for others was radical and forgiving?  What stings a little when I read these really hard words, is Jesus saying, 

“And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?”

It's easy to love our family, it's easy to love those who love us….that's the easy part.  One of the things I like to remind my kids is,  we were made to do hard things, I was made to do hard things. We were not made to only do the easy, the comfortable, the “expected.” We were made to do hard things, and this “thing” that Jesus is asking us, is HARD!

The Baptism of the Lord. The “official” end of the Christmas season.  As we enter into Ordinary Time, I want to linger here. Maybe because I haven’t quite finished celebrating Christmas with my family yet.  This year was the first in 17 Christmases that all six of our kids haven't been under the same roof for Christmas morning.  Maybe I want to linger here because we started pulling out our Christmas decorations a lot closer to Christmas Eve than usual and I'm not ready to pack it all up…

Happy New Year!!  Our new liturgical calendar year has begun!

This is the time for expectant waiting and preparation.  I love it!  Most people do!  But it does often come with some difficulties.

This year, I’m thinking about how I am preparing.  Am I preparing for calm over chaos? Peace over panic? Love over angst?

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