Joy

3rd Sunday of Advent

When a couple is getting ready to get married, the waiting time for the wedding can seem very long. But as the wedding begins to approach, certain things they have to do, such as the final preparations; trials in the Church; the meeting of guests who come home with gifts; they all show them that the long-awaited moment has now come very near.

This season, the reminder that Christmas is near, arrives on the third Sunday of Advent. From the color of the candle – which is pink and not purple – to the priest’s dress which is also pink, everything indicates that this Sunday has a special meaning and different from that of the other three Sundays. The prayer, almost carb, ‘Come on Emmanuel’, this Sunday turns into Congratulations, Congratulations!’.

When we look at our children at this time of anticipation for Christmas, we see that there is little need to remind them to rejoice. With every chocolate they eat from the Advent calendar, with every ‘movie’ they watch about Christmas and with every day that passes and brings them closer to the holidays, we see in them a growing joy and enthusiasm because they realize that Christmas, with all that means to them, is really near.

Unfortunately, when we grow up, we adults lose a little (or a lot) of this child innocence. This time begins to mean a lot of spending, a lot of preparations and thoughts about gifts, activities and a hundred other things. Many times, instead of rejoicing that Christmas is upon us, we end up saying ‘It happens to pass’ because we are already exhausted with everything that is going on in our lives.

However, the third Sunday of Advent reminds us that even we adults need to rejoice. And the reason for the joy we should have is something much deeper than the gifts that are often the source of children’s joy. The joy that Advent invites us to is the joy of the fact that on the first Christmas a love story began, the result of which was the Salvation of us all; hope even where we think there is no more where to hope; peace even in the toughest realities.

This week the children will be presented with the figures of the Shepherds. The Shepherds were some of the poorest people of the time Jesus was born. No wonder they were so happy when the angels told them that the Messiah had been born! The more you recognize your smallness and poverty, the more you rejoice when you hear that someone has come who can make you rich and great in his eyes. That is also why these days Our Lady is so central, because she knew her smallness, and she could really rejoice in what was happening in and around her.

As parents we will no doubt be filled with joy when we see our children so happy these days. This year in particular, perhaps more and more we are making an effort so that our children still have a beautiful Christmas despite the pandemic having changed things so much. However, on this third Sunday of Advent let us rejoice that we realize that the joy of Christmas is not only something we can only see in the eyes of children, but a joy that we can also see in our eyes and in our hearts. if we truly understand what the birth of Jesus meant to us and to the whole world.

We read in the Bible that a group of shepherds was visited by an angel of the Lord and they were, in fact, the first to see and worship the Son of God made man (Luke 2:8-20). Shepherds, however, were not always seen by other people in good light, so why did God choose them to be the first to know of the birth of the Messiah?

An important event in the Bible is the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, which is narrated in the book of Exodus. This took place sometime around the 13th century before the birth of Jesus. Back then, God – through Moses – asked the Israelites to eat a one-year-old lamb just before being ordered to leave the land of Egypt, where they were slaves. They were to paint the sides and tops of the doors on their houses with its blood, so as the angel of death would not enter the house and keep all who are inside safe.

The Passover

The Jews still celebrate this event to this day, known as the Passover, by eating a one-year-old lamb each year. There are approximately 1,500 years between the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and the time when Jesus was born, so for 1,500 years shepherds played a key role in God’s plan to provide enough lambs so that all Israelite families could remember the Passover and worship God according to His will.

The angel told the shepherds of Jesus and his birth

With Jesus’s birth, however, there would be no more need to slaughter lambs from the flock year after year to secure God’s favour and forgiveness of sin. The once-for-all Lamb of God has arrived. The significance of the Lamb of God being born would not be lost on the shepherds.

In Malta we also have a very important character in our traditional crib who was also a shepherd: l-Għaġeb. The word refers to a fussy person, and most of the time this is a figure of ridicule; he is the freak, the one exaggerates things.

L-Għaġeb, however, is often one of the few characters in our cribs who expresses wonder and who lets himself be surprised and astonished by what is seeing in front of his eyes: God has just become man! Rather than being the character we should laugh at, he is the one we should admire!

While drawing the picture of the shepherd/l-Għaġeb to place it next to the animals and the angels in your crib, think about the following: Have you ever been to a catechesis class when you knew the story well before the catechist has stopped reading from the Bible? What did you do? Did you stop paying attention because you already knew the ending? That is not what l-Għaġeb would have done. By being aware of what was going on around him, l-Għaġeb teaches us to take nothing for granted and to be always grateful for our families, educators and friends.

The shepherd/l-GħaġebDownload