The celebration of Gaudete Sunday sets the tone for the whole of Advent. The liturgy of this special day invites us explicitly to rejoice. “Brethren: Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice,” writes St Paul in the Letter to the Philippians (4:4), words that also form the Introitus of the Mass. The reason for this divine joy is clear: the Lord is near; His coming is at hand. This theme becomes the leitmotiv that leads us toward Christmastide, when the joy of our suppliant cry to heaven—that the clouds may rain down the Just One—is finally answered, and the divine dew descends in the Saviour of mankind. This is joy par excellence.
Christian joy is founded on the certainty that the Lord will come. For this reason, joy nurtures hope. Joy proclaims that the Kingdom of God is close; hope, in turn, perfects joy, because the Kingdom of God is already in our midst. Christ is with us—He is Emmanuel. True joy cannot exist without hope, and lasting hope is always filled with joy.
Yet, in our post-Christian society, hope is often viewed with suspicion. It is easily dismissed as a distraction from what is deemed truly necessary and indispensable, or as a way of diverting attention toward uncertainty. This raises a crucial question: is hope merely a form of passivity? In a gloomy present, the future, it is argued, cannot be founded on hope, for hope would then signify idleness or acquiescence.
According to a widespread atheistic critique—still influential today—Christian culture allegedly fostered an unconditioned trust in the future by interpreting time in a rigid sequence: the past as evil, the present as redemption, and the future as salvation. Such a vision, it is claimed, would encourage human inertia, since the future is presumed to be inevitably better. Without concrete action and human initiative, however, the future would never improve. Within this intramundane theory of non-hope, a similar threefold division of time is said to appear in Marxist revolution and, in a different form, in Freudian psychotherapy. In each case, the pattern is comparable: the past is seen as oppression or trauma, the present as liberation or therapy, and the future as happiness or healing. Salvation—whether communal, political, or psychological—is thus endlessly postponed and deferred to an undefined future.
But is this critique justified? Is Christian hope merely a conjecture about what may come? Such a condemnation of hope overlooks a central truth: Christ is not only the One who is to come; He is also the One who is already with us. Christ is the Word made flesh, the Logos of Life. He stands firm while the world changes. Stat Crux dum volvitur orbis, says the ancient Carthusian motto: the Cross stands unshaken while the world turns. Hope is therefore the presence of the mystery here and now. It does not delay fulfilment; rather, it brings fulfilment into the present.
Moreover, the tripartite scheme of sin, redemption, and salvation is not a rigid formula that can be mechanically transferred to other cultural or ideological models. It depends, on the one hand, on human freedom and sin, and on the other, on God’s loving providence. What ultimately drives history is not sin, but God’s love.
What, then, is Christian hope? One of its most profound definitions is found in the Letter to the Hebrews, from which the ancient symbol of the anchor-cross—used to represent Christianity—derives:
We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus, a forerunner on our behalf, has entered, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek (Heb 6:19–20).
Hope anchors our faith in Christ, who is the forerunner. He goes before us and thus becomes our Way. By His death on the Cross, He offered the sacrifice of salvation; by His Resurrection, He conquered death; and by His Ascension, He entered the heavenly sanctuary. This sanctuary is the true Holy of Holies, where only the High Priest could enter once a year on the Day of Atonement. Christ Himself is our atonement. He has passed behind the curtain of time and entered the eternal condition of heaven. From there, He intercedes for us and remains with us at every moment until the end of time. His eternity now gives direction to time itself. Christianity thus overcame the cyclical conception of time in Greek thought, endowing time with meaning and orientation: Christ, the One who is. Hope is anchored in Him—in a present that moves confidently toward the future.
A luminous model of Christian hope is St John the Baptist. To nurture true hope, we should imitate him who is the “voice” of the Word. When questioned by the Pharisees—“Who are you? … What have you to say about yourself?”—John replied: “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said” (Jn 1:22–23). Hope must be this very voice that allows the Word to resound. Only when hope becomes the voice of the Word can it remain authentic and sustainable.
Time, then, is given to us so that we may make straight the way of the Lord and adore Him in Bethlehem, thereby preparing ourselves to welcome Him at the end of time. For this reason, time cannot be reduced to a mere threefold division of past, present, and future—categories that are, in many ways, extensions of the soul. Rather, time should be understood as our capacity to be set in motion toward Christ by acknowledging who He is: the eternal Logos. Time is given to us so that we may enter into God’s eternity. This is why Christian hope can never deceive, nor can it ever amount to idle waiting for the future to unfold. Our action in time must be shaped after Christ Himself. Joy restores the meaning of hope, and true hope gives rise to unending joy.
Before concluding, one final question remains: how can we become people of hope who radiate Christian joy in an increasingly saddened society? The answer is humility. Like John the Baptist, we must recognize that we are the voice, while Christ alone is the Word, the Truth, and the meaning. A voice exists to seek meaning; when our lives give voice to the Word, we begin to live rightly. When we adore the Word, we discover the meaning of time and the source of joyful hope. Advent, leading to Christmas, is precisely this fulfilment of hope that gives us true joy.
St Augustine beautifully describes the mission of the Baptist—a mission that should also be our own—in a passage from his Sermon on the Birthday of John the Baptist (293, 3):
John is the voice, but the Lord is the Word who was in the beginning. John is the voice that lasts for a time; from the beginning Christ is the Word who lives forever. Take away the word, the meaning, and what is the voice? Where there is no understanding, there is only a meaningless sound. The voice without the word strikes the ear but does not build up the heart… He saw where his salvation lay. He understood that he was a lamp, and his fear was that it might be blown out by the wind of pride.
This humility is found even more profoundly in Our Lady, the Mother of our Saviour. The Blessed Virgin rejoiced when she heard the voice of the angel at the Annunciation and welcomed it—first in her intellect, then in her heart, and finally in her womb. May she, the Mother of the Word incarnate, help us rejoice in hearing the Word and in giving birth to Christ through our good works. This Marian joy is hope in action. Our future is not an unpredictable fate, but a confident present: Christ, who is and who is to come. Mary unfailingly points us to Him.
Fr Serafino M. Lanzetta