ADVENT 2024: As Pepperdine president, we learned in hardship Christ brings light

December 15, 2024, is the third Sunday of Advent, known in many Christian traditions as Gaudete Sunday. 

The name stems from the Latin Vulgate translation of Philippians 4:4: Gaudete in Domino semper. Our English translation reads, “Rejoice in the Lord always.”  

This particular Sunday marks a turn in the Advent liturgy. For the previous two weeks, our focus has been on waiting, preparing and repenting, symbolized by the deep purple candles on the Advent wreath. But they are replaced by the rose-colored candle, a bright symbol of joy breaking into the darkness. Gaudete Sunday reminds us that the coming of Christ is — as the angel announced to the shepherds — good news of great joy. 

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At first glance, the call to “rejoice always” or, in some translations, to “rejoice in all circumstances” may seem odd. The circumstances around us do not always seem to warrant rejoicing. The reality of evil and suffering in the world is undeniable. 

But Paul was no stranger to this reality when he gave us this encouragement. Whipped, beaten, stoned, shipwrecked and left for dead, he was intimately acquainted with suffering. And yet Paul, in meeting the risen Christ, had experienced a foretaste of a reality deeper even than the suffering he endured. Indeed, he experienced a joy so profound that it transformed even his greatest suffering into what he called a “light momentary affliction” when compared to the “eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17). 

This is the distinction between happiness and Christian joy. Happiness ebbs and flows with the tides of present circumstances. But joy is something more abiding. It is a lasting fruit of the Holy Spirit’s enduring presence in our lives – transcending our situations and steadfast, even in sorrow. 

I have seen this reality firsthand in my role as president of Pepperdine University. Just recently, our Malibu campus and community faced the specter of fear and loss as the Franklin Fire burned near campus. And in recent years, we have walked through some of the darkest times in our community’s history — the isolation and uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, the devastation of the Woolsey Fire and 2023’s heartbreaking loss of four students along the Pacific Coast Highway. The weight of these kinds of tragedies cannot be overstated. The darkness is palpable and real.  

And yet I have been encouraged beyond measure to witness our campus walking through tragedy and difficulty in a way that acknowledges the weight of suffering without being overcome by it. I have seen our students, faculty and staff walk alongside one another, pray for one another and weep with one another. In doing so, they have shown that deep mourning is not inconsistent with deep joy. We have experienced the truth that in bearing one another’s burdens, we allow the light of Christ to shine into even the darkest times of our lives. 

This is the paradox of Advent. Christ entered the suffering and darkness of the human experience — not to escape it, but to transform it. The prophet Isaiah foretold: 

“He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. 

Like one from whom people hide their faces, he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed (Isaiah 53:3-5).”  

Christ not only entered the world’s suffering; He brought into it His unconquerable light. As John writes: “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).  

Saint Augustine reminds us in his magisterial work “The City of God” that evil has no real life of its own. It is, rather, a parasite, a subtraction, a lessening of the good. Darkness cannot be said to truly exist — it is merely the absence of light. You won’t find a “flash-dark” available alongside the flashlights at your local hardware store. When a lamp is illuminated, shadows have no choice but to flee.  

When a light shines in the darkness, the darkness cannot overcome it.  

This is what we celebrate on Gaudete Sunday. Lighting the rose-colored candle is more than a ritual – it is a proclamation of hope and joy. Like Andy Dufresne broadcasting Mozart to his fellow prisoners in “The Shawshank Redemption,” Christian joy is a signal to the world that there is a reality beyond the brokenness so evident around us. As Andy puts it, “There’s something inside … that they can’t get to, that they can’t touch.”  

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It is a light shining in the darkness. 

As we light the candle, we echo the words of the “Ode to Joy” — Friedrich Schiller’s soaring poem set to the triumphant final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The first lines of the Ode read: 

Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee,
God of glory, Lord of love;
Hearts unfold like flow’rs before Thee,
Op’ning to the sun above.
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness;
Drive the dark of doubt away;
Giver of immortal gladness,
Fill us with the light of day!

This is our prayer on this third Sunday of Advent. We celebrate the coming of our Lord and Savior — our light shining in the darkness. We live in the already of His death and resurrection, and we hope in the not yet of His return. We rejoice, knowing now in part what we will soon see in whole. 

This is the paradox of Advent. Christ entered the suffering and darkness of the human experience — not to escape it, but to transform it. The prophet Isaiah foretold: “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. 

As the hymn concludes: 

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Mortals, join the mighty chorus,  
Which the morning stars began;  
Father love is reigning o’er us,  
Brother love binds man to man.  
Ever singing, march we onward,  
Victors in the midst of strife,  
Joyful music leads us Sunward  
In the triumph song of life. 

May we walk forward with the joy of Christ resounding in our hearts and in our lives, both this Gaudete Sunday and every day.