 at St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney 15 December 2024. ){kind=link}
This is the edited text for Gaudete Sunday (3rd Sunday of Advent) at St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney 15 December 2024.
Can we measure happiness? One way might simply be to ask people how happy they feel on a scale of 1 to 10. But what about something more “scientific,” like the way we assess physical or mental health by testing bloods, VO2 Max and other observable symptoms? Can’t we pinpoint something equally objective that means someone is really happy?
Some think so. A few years ago, Matthieu Ricard, a French-Nepalese monk and disciple of the Dalai Lama was crowned “the world’s happiest person.” Ricard earned the title at the end of a 12-year study by neuroscientists from the University of Wisconsin. It involved hooking Ricard up to sensors measuring brain activity and presenting various stimuli or asking him to think various thoughts. When Ricard meditated on compassion, those regions of the brain associated with wellbeing lit up at levels previously unseen by scientists. His happiness was off the charts!
Whilst initially embarrassed by the “world’s happiest” title, Ricard leant into it with a series of books and lectures on what happiness is and the principles he believes underpin it, such as altruism, benevolence, resilience, and gratitude.
That we should avoid selfishness and attend to others, especially those most in need, strive to be decent, compassionate and grateful people, be clear-eyed about both blessings and challenges, and be a little less materialistic and more ascetical, is common to the world’s great religions and philosophies. And most would agree that happiness is somehow connected to such virtues and ideals. So, what’s the Christian take on this?
In today’s Gospel our own guru, clad in animal skins and living on wild honey and locusts, makes the case for a similar type of living. John the Baptist has been preaching “repentance for the forgiveness of sins” and the need to prep ourselves for the coming of “God’s salvation”—in Hebrew Yehoshua, Jesus (Lk 3:3-6). John had been very direct about the failure of the children of Abraham to live up to the covenant and to produce the fruit of living God’s Law (Lk 3:7-9). But now the crowds press him: “What exactly are we to do?” (Lk 3:10-18) His reply is not too dissimilar to Ricard’s: if you’ve got more than you need, share it with others; be fair, not exploitative, in all your dealings. Repentance is not just an idea, a theory, a mental state: it plays out in behaviour, especially active love of God and neighbour. A meditative tranquillity is all very well, but it must not make us impervious to the needs of others.
After answering the crowds so clearly and practically, John follows up with something more mysterious. He’s worried that some are thinking that he is the promised Messiah. So he sets them straight: “I baptise you with mere water—for repentance—but the one who is coming will baptise with the fire of the Holy Spirit—for a whole new life. If you think what I’m offering is important, just wait and see what the Christ will bring. I’m no-one compared to that fellow!”
It’s instructive. Right relations with creation, humanity, familiars are important. We should strive to be just and merciful in our relationships. Morality matters—enough for John to die for it. But our own efforts alone won’t bring deep and lasting happiness. For that we need a right relationship with our Father God. So, today’s Gospel passage concludes with John not only exhorted people to live a better life, but preaching the Gospel of salvation to them. Only with our maker’s instruction manual will we know all that makes for the fully human life. Only fuelled by Holy Spirit power will we be able to live all its demands. Only by God’s grace will we attain the peace we crave, the spiritual joy beyond ordinary human contentment.
Spiritual joy is more than a passing emotion. We don’t generate it ourselves, even if there are things we can do to predispose ourselves to it. We don’t earn it, precisely, though it’s not random either. It is graciously given by God and received by us. Pope Francis calls it the upshot or overglow of a true encounter with Jesus. So St Paul says it is a fruit of the Holy Spirit—the Fire that Jesus brings—love, joy and peace, forbearance, kindness and goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal 5:22-23). Paul tells us in our epistle (Phil 4:4-7) that all he wants for us is that we be happy, always happy, but with that happiness that is “in the Lord,” and so Paul’s wisdom becomes our benediction: “May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God and of his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This, my friends, is the source of our Advent joy. Not our own spiritual exercises, our own cultivation of virtue, our own good deeds—important as all these are. But something beyond us, greater than us, something that comes to us in word and Sacrament, something coming in ten short days. God himself is coming to meet us, and share himself with us, as one of us. So we sweep out the manger of our hearts in response to John’s call to repentance and to make straight the way for the Lord. We open the inn of our minds to make room for the Babe and his Blessed Mother. In a world of strife, we yearn for his coming with an abiding peace and joy—real happiness. And our Gospel good news is that the Lord is already in our midst and yearns for our friendship. So shout for joy, daughters of Zion, Australia’s sons shout aloud! Rejoice, exult with all your heart, daughters of Jerusalem, sons of Sydney. For the Lord is coming. He will exult with you in joy, and dance with you on the day of his festival! (cf. Zeph 3:14-18)