ON A RAINY day in 1984, one of my co-Jesuit novices told an elderly American Jesuit: “Father Paul, what a gloomy, rainy day.” The ever-cheerful Fr. Paul O’Brien, SJ, looked out and, with a smiling face, said: “Well, it’s a nice day for the ducks.”

 

There is optimism and there is joyful optimism. Both are good, but joyful optimism is battle-scarred—not to mean what we normally refer to as guarded optimism, but scarred into joyful optimism.

 

Today, Gaudete Sunday or the Third Sunday of Advent, is derived from St. Paul’s exhortation from his letter to the Philippians: “Gaudete in Domino semper! Iterum dico, gaudete (Rejoice in the Lord always! I say it again)!”

 

A faith of joy

 

This Sunday is an emphatic statement of the Church that our faith is a faith of joy that comes from the certainty that Christ will come again—a certainty established by his death and resurrection.

 

This is the joy we celebrate today, one that comes from a “sure and certain hope” that our life has meaning and a sense of mission because Christ will come again. This second coming is guaranteed by Christmas or his becoming Emmanuel (God is with us) and by Easter or his triumphant Resurrection.

 

This is our joyful optimism.

 

We have seen this joyful optimism in the stories that inspire and shape our own story. Christ’s is the central story, which has inspired the stories of millions who have lived this joyful optimism.

 

Daring to hope

 

One of the earliest legends on the cheerful, joyful follower of Christ is the famous story of St. Lawrence’s martyrdom. Lawrence was not simply burned at the stake, but was roasted to death. Legend has it that after much suffering, he told his executioners in jest, “I am well done. Turn me over.” (This earned him the titles of Patron of Cooks and Patron of Comedians.)

 

Across eras, generations, races and cultures, we come across men and women who have lived this joyful optimism rooted in “the great promise in which we now dare to hope.”

 

In “The Power of Ideals, The Real Story of Moral Choice,” authors William Damon and Anne Colby tell the stories of six 20th century leaders, moral exemplars all, and how through thick and thin, good times and bad, they lived in joyful optimism.

 

Jane Addams, the 1931 Nobel Prize winner, introduced to the world a new paradigm in social reform, particularly providing for the dignity of workers at the early stages of the evils of the industrialization of the world.

 

Another Nobel laureate, Nelson Mandela, fought and dismantled apartheid in his beloved South Africa. He became the international hero of reconciliation and forgiveness and is perhaps the greatest nonviolent proponent in the political arena after Mahatma Gandhi.

 

Social justice

 

Eleanor Roosevelt, more than being a first lady of the United States, advanced the cause of peace and social justice way after her husband’s death. Her initial work on human rights became one of the key elements in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

 

UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld was one of the most influential figures who shaped the core identity and mission of the United Nations in its early years.

 

Two religious figures, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, emerged from the evils of Hitler’s Nazi movement and—way after their time—continue to be a beacon of wisdom and inspiration not just in religious circles but also in the human strivings for a just and moral world order.

 

These men and women dared to hope that a better order, whether in their societies or on the international stage, can be established—one that is more just, peaceful and loving.

 

These women and men lived their life with joyful optimism—discovering a cause, a meaning, a mission, and dedicating their whole being to pursuing it.

 

In the Christian paradigm, it is the transformation of the Cross and Resurrection. This transformation leads us to “dare to hope in the great promise that Christ will come again.”

 

It is in this hope that joyful optimism is rooted and grounded in. This is what we celebrate today.

 

In the midst of joys and pains, doubts and encouragements, depression and inspiration, setbacks and triumphs, “I say it again, rejoice!”