"Rejoice in the Lord always! I shall say it again, Rejoice!" St Paul tells us in our second reading from his Letter to the Philippians. We Catholics have referred to this Third Sunday of Advent as "Gaudete Sunday" or "Rejoice Sunday" from the first word in Latin of the entrance antiphon for Mass today, taken from this very verse of Philippians, "Gaudete semper in Domino!"
          Joy seems like a very rare commodity today. I know many people who would describe their lives as anything BUT joyful. On the contrary, their lives are decidedly "un-joyful." So where does true joy come from, the joy that the Gospel calls us to -- the joy that St Paul urged the early Christians to have, a joy that does not fade away with the normal ups and downs of daily life?
          In these few verses of the Letter to the Philippians, St Paul instructs us how to have this joy that should characterize the life of a disciple of Christ. The most important thing he says is, "The Lord is near." This is the true source of our joy: the fact that God has come to us, by sending His Son into the world to share our human condition, to redeem us, to set us free from the powers of sin and death. Our joy rests upon what God has done in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. The Lord is near, not because of anything we have done or not done, but because God has chosen to come to us. Or to put it another way, as we sang for our Responsorial Psalm, "Cry out with joy and gladness! For among you is the Great and Holy One of Israel!"
          And it is precisely because God has drawn near to us in the Person of His only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ that you and I can "have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make (our) requests known to God," as St Paul tells us we should. We can place all our requests, all our prayers and petitions before the Lord, with no anxiety and in a spirit of thanksgiving, because we know that the Lord is closer to us than we are to ourselves. There is the source of our confidence in prayer, as well as our true lasting joy: "the Lord is near!"
          And if we do that - if we lay our anxieties down at the feet of the Lord, if we pray to the Lord with confident assurance, knowing that He is near, then St Paul promises "the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." And we will know joy.
          But there's one other verse of this short passage from the Letter to the Philippians that I have not touched upon yet. And if we put St Paul's words into action in our lives, not only will it be a source of joy for us, but it will contribute greatly to the joy of others as well. It will help to bring "Joy to the World," as we sing at this time of year. The words I am referring to are: "Your kindness should be known by all."
          "Your kindness should be known by all." In what does kindness consist? Does it mean just "being a nice guy"? "Nice never got anyone into heaven," as I like to say, so the "kindness" St Paul is talking about must mean more than simply "being nice." Here St Paul is teaching us how a community that wants to bear witness to joy and make it credible to others must conduct itself. You and I need to rediscover the human value of this virtue of kindness. Kindness is a virtue that is at risk, or, more exactly, that seems all but extinct in the society in which we live.
          There's the gratuitous violence in films and on television and in video games; there's language that is intentionally vulgar; the competition in the media to go beyond the limits with regard to brutality and explicit sex, that desensitizes us to every expression of ugliness and vulgarity. Much of what passes for art these days revels in, celebrates, all that is ugly and dark and vulgar.
          Kindness towards one another, on the other hand, is a source of peace and joy in human relationships. Family life would be so much better if there were more kindness in our gestures, in our words, and above all, in the feelings we harbor in our hearts towards one another. Nothing saps the joy out of being together as family, as friends, more than a certain harshness in our behavior towards each other, the opposite of kindness.
          But alongside this human usefulness of kindness, there's also the Gospel value of kindness. The biblical terms "meek" and "lowly," as in "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth," do not have the passive sense of "subjected," "repressed," but rather the active sense of a person who acts with respect, courtesy, compassion toward others. Kindness goes along way for those who want to help others find Christ. As a priest, I see this all the time. Just like any other human being, priests have their "off days," their "bad days." But an unthinking, unreflective, unkind or harsh word from a priest can have devastating effects on some people's faith, while a kind word, a courteous word can go along way to building up faith and hope in people's hearts. You might be tempted to say, "Well, if their faith can be shaken by an unkind word or act from a priest, then they didn't have much faith to begin with!" But really, that's neither here nor there. The fact of that matter is, the simple human virtue of kindness can go along way to leading others closer to Christ, closer to the Gospel. St Peter, in his first Letter, recommends to the Christians of his day to be "ready to give a reason for their hope," but adds immediately: "But this must be done with sweetness and respect", which is to say, with kindness.
          So there's a good spiritual exercise for all of us this third week of Advent, as our celebration of Christmas rapidly approaches: to exercise the human and Christian virtue of kindness a little more diligently to all those around us, both to those who are closest to us and to the stranger.
          "Rejoice in the Lord always, I say it again, rejoice! Your kindness should be known by all. The Lord is near!"