December 20th: Rejoice
Submitted by Brian Covell
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.” St. Paul’s admonition to some anxious folk in the fledgling Christian community in Philippi is a corrective, a spine-stiffener to those losing their sense of purpose under pressure. It’s also a line in a great Charles Wesley hymn, sung for centuries in Anglican cloisters.
But—“Rejoice in the Lord always.” Seriously? Our diplomatic family was in northern Italy this spring. Does the phrase, “It’s about to get real” mean anything to you? As the pandemic settled in this March, we saw images of the elderly on stretchers and caskets stacked up against cemetery walls like cordwood in the nearby city of Bergamo. Also vivid was the absence of sound—meaning the presence of anxiety—on city streets during a lockdown more restrictive than any experienced thus far in the United States. Though I didn’t mention it to loved ones, I found myself wondering whether we would ever get out of Italy alive.
We were moved to Rome for most of the spring. I filled many of those monotonous days by reading, prayer, and then reading about prayer. An Anglican priest friend sent me a Church of England text, “Praying at Home,” for a Holy Week this year with no in-person worship. In the stations of the cross section, there were sonnets from the English priest and poet Malcolm Guite. One line I read on a quiet, listless Good Friday, recounting Jesus at Golgotha, jumped out. The Spirit seemed to speak directly to that eerie, very anxious moment:
He falls and stumbles with us, hurt again
But still he holds the road and looks in love
On all of us who look on him. Our pain
As close to him as his.
My family and I are back in Arlington now. In this year’s Advent, deliverance has a double meaning: Christians can be accused of waiting for a vaccine as much as for the arrival of the Son of God. Also I wonder: is Advent about humans waiting for God, or is it about God waiting for us—to embrace the Christ Who is near when we suffer?
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.” Here’s an Advent message: await His birth, of course, but also come to the divine joyfully, specifically because of our frailty. This world of ours is reeling right now, but God is radiantly present to us. Let the people say, “Hallelujah!” Seen in this light, Paul’s words seem to me less a reminder than a necessity this Advent season.