Gaudete!

Today is the third Sunday of Advent, called "Gaudete Sunday" and best known as one of only two days a year for which the liturgical color is pink. (The other is "Laetare Sunday", the fourth Sunday of Lent.)

"Gaudete!" means "Rejoice!" Advent - the four Sundays leading up to Christmas - is a penitential season, a time for solemn contemplation. But Gaudete Sunday is a day of what might be described as anticipatory joy, a foretaste of Christmas celebrations.

I feel the spirit of Gaudete Sunday this year more than ever before. The vaccine approval is a spark of light in the darkness of our COVID world. The pandemic is far from over, but the news is a reminder that it will end someday.

I love Gaudete Sunday for another, more ordinary reason, too: it shares a name with my very favorite Christmas carol! "Gaudete, Christus est Natus" is a carol dating from the 16th century. It's one of the songs on Anúna's album "Christmas Memories," which my mom played every year when I was a kid. Different artists interpret the song in many different ways, but in my opinion it should be sung fast and loud. My mom had to remind me on multiple occasions not to jump up and down next to the stereo when it came on - I was making the CD skip! Perhaps the best recommendation I can give for the song is that, even though little me demanded we play it multiple times a day for most of December, it's still one of my mom's favorites, too!

This is the version I listened to as a kid:

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My favorite version these days is by The Sixteen, from their album "Christus Natus Est: An Early English Christmas." In my opinion, every track on that album is well worth listening to - it's one of my go-to Christmas albums.

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These are the lyrics: ( Read more... )