Sermons: Lent IV (Laetare Sunday)

March 2, 2008

Today we celebrate Laetare Sunday. Laetare comes to us from the Latin word meaning “to rejoice” and it was combined with the word “Jerusalem” to indicate “Rejoice O Jerusalem” Sunday. Of course the name designation is derived from today’s epistle in which St. Paul exhorts the Galatian Christians and us to see that Jerusalem which is above is free, the Mother of us all. And so today is also called “Mothering Sunday” from the epistle, and it directs our spiritual gaze to our true “alma mater” or nourishing mother, which is the Spouse of Christ and the Heavenly Mother of us all. And so as our Alma Mater Sunday it is also known as refreshment Sunday, the day on which our heavenly mother nourishes, feeds or refreshes us.

In French Canada today is known as “Mi-Careme” or Mid-Lent, and on this day people dress up in disguise and go from house to house asking for treats, singing and dancing in the mumming tradition, seeking out, as it were, the joyful things that true mothers always provide for their obedient children. In Acadia, the French section of the Canadian Maritime provinces, an old woman mummer dresses up and gives treats to good children.

And finally, in Rome, we find that this Laetare Sunday, this Mothering Sunday, this Mid-Lent is also known as Rose Sunday. For from the eleventh century on, starting with the Pontificate of Leo IX we find that Rose Sunday was observed. And so we have a wonderful sermon delivered by one of Leo’s successors, Pope Innocent III at the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem on this great day.

As Lætare Sunday, the day set apart for the function, represents love after hate, joy after sorrow, and fullness after hunger, so does the rose designate by its color, odor, and taste…love, joy, and satiety or satisfaction respectively."

Innocent also says that the rose is the flower spoken of in Isaiah 11, 1: "there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root". This Rejoicing Sunday, this Mothering Sunday is also Rose Sunday, the rose which will grow in the midst of its thorns to exude and manifest the rising power of beauty, love and wisdom in the Resurrection of Christ.

So today we celebrate Laetare Sunday. Remember that we are going up to Jerusalem. And the first point that we make today is that our journey is up to Jerusalem in two senses. As with the other Sundays in Lent, we are going up in the historical and literal sense to the Jerusalem of the Cross. We are, as we have said, going up to see the love of God in the ongoing sacrifice of Christ the Word, the Expression, the Meaning and Communication of God the Father for us. What we shall see is the Word made Flesh enduring hatred and rejection, mocking and deriding, whipping and stripping, crowning with thorns and the nailing to the Tree. We shall see and experience love as Love suffers and dies for you and for me. That is the first Jerusalem that we encounter.

But on this Sunday we are reminded also of the second Jerusalem that is, as it were, present within and behind the first Jerusalem, as our ultimate goal and end, our true homeland and destination. For within and behind the suffering love that Loves in the historical Jerusalem- the love that will come to us from Love Himself, or Jesus Christ in his suffering and dying, is the victorious, joyous and free Love that will conquer sin and death, evil and nothingness. So on this Sunday, while we go up to the one Jerusalem, we remember that other Jerusalem will emerge from backstage, behind the curtain that will be opened or torn in two, within and behind suffering love, to burst forth as the truth on Easter Sunday.

So today’s Refreshing News on this Rose Sunday is that our Alma Mater, our nourishing Mother, the free lady Jerusalem, which is above, calls us forward with the deepest hope and joy that will take the suffering and death of Christ, the suffering and death of ourselves, and transform them both into joy and new life.

So with St. Paul on this day we are called out of one reality and into another by the hope that lies before and within the events that we shall observe. We are not, he says, to be the sons of the bondwoman. Abraham, thinking that he would have no progeny, legacy or offspring mated with Hagar the slave woman and she bore him a son, whose name was Ishmael. Hagar is the natural mate or mother. She was able to give Abraham a man child through the normal operations of her body and human nature. But she was not his wife.

Sarah, on the other hand, Abraham’s true wife, was unable to provide her husband with a child. She was, in her body and according to nature, unable to bear a son. But by supernature- the supernatural, the power and strength that is from above and from God, she would give Abraham as son, and he would be called Isaac. And so St. Paul tells us that “Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid or slavewoman, and the other by his wife, the freewoman. He who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh, but he of the freewoman was born by promise.” Ishmael was born after the flesh according to the normal operations of nature. Isaac was a child of promise, the child of God’s assurance, one given to Sarah who was barren, given to her by God, by the strength of his Heavenly power, responsive to human hope.

And so St. Paul says that these two children symbolize for us two allegories or symbolisms that teach us about our faith and journey. We can be the children of our own human nature. We can base our understanding of ourselves, our knowledge of others, our relationships, our hopes and despairs for ourselves and others upon the rationality and expectations of this world. We can be slaves, the sons of Hagar, the siblings of Ishmael, offspring of human nature with all of its glories…and its hopeless limitations. We can be those who do not hope for another country and do not reach out and beyond to a world that is beyond us and for us. Do we hope? Do we believe is what God can do for us beyond nature, its accidents, its sadness and pain, its torture and seeming meaninglessness?

Or can we can be the children of promise? We learn today that we can be free men and women, the sons of Sarah, the siblings of Isaac, offspring of the supernatural, birth from above, birth anew, birth again, with all of its glories….and its hope filled promise of no limitations to what God can do. But…We can become the children of God, the children born from above, only when we approach our Saviour and his Bride- our Nurturing Mother, for care, nourishment and satisfaction. We approach our Saviour, who alone can feed us, taking something small and making it great, taking something simple and making it profound, taking something natural and making it supernatural.

For what else is it that we read in today’s Gospel, but that our Saviour takes something small, little, and not great and through the miracle of the loaves and fishes makes it large, big and great enough to satisfy hunger and to enable a continued journey? What is it in today’s Gospel that our Saviour does but to take something as simple as fishes and bread and make them into powerful vehicles to overcome hunger and yield nourishment and satisfaction?

And what else is it that our Saviour does for us but to take something natural, common, ordinary and make it supernatural, uncommon and extra-ordinary? Christ does this. He effects the changes necessary to bring our nourishment and satisfaction about. He communicates this reality to us through his bride, at this point his fiancée as it were- the Apostles who will make up his Bride the Church, for it is the Apostles or disciples who feed us with his present promises.

Can we be the children of Jesus Christ and his hopeful Bride, mother Church, our Alma Mater, our Nourishing Mother, the cause of this Rejoicing Sunday? Can we be the recipients of Innocent the Third’s golden rose, the rose that is the sign of God’s beauty with us in Jesus, the scent of Heaven’s perfume, the presence of life within the threats of the thorns of otherness? Can we embrace his message, through the presentation of the golden rose, of love after hate? Our own hatred for Jesus and his presence, and his subsequent love for us in this “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do?” Our own joy after sorrow, where he will conquer our own sorrows and sadness with the dawn of a new morning that will bring happiness and joy, and his subsequent message to us which says ,”Behold I make all things new?” Our own satisfaction after hunger, where he feed us with the multitudes in today’s Gospel in way completely unexpected when he says “I am the Bread of life?”

My friends let us remember today that this is Mothering Sunday, in the which Mother Church nourishes and comforts us with the promise of that love, wisdom and power which will emerge from behind and within the life of her spouse, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Even as we journey up to Jerusalem being penitent, with contrition and purposeful amendment of life, we are the children of hope. Our Nourishing Mother, with us all the way, comforts us with this knowedge. Our Alma Mater, the mother of the free, points us to her bridegroom and spouse, who is with us and for us every step of the way. She reminds us today that her Spouse, before he ascends the throne of the Cross, is with us, for us, and feeding us.

“The feeding of the five thousand points to the perpetual activity of Christ Jesus throughout all ages. He came that men might have life, and they might have it more abundantly. He promised that when he was no longer visibly present among his followers, His Spirit should enable them to live the power of His Life.”

It is by the Spirit of Christ that men attain to the promises and ideals that He offers to them. It is by the Grace that he gives, the Grace of his own life, the Grace of his love for his Spouse, for the Mother of his church, that his followers become like Him.