On this Third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday, the Church dares to wear rose and invites us to rejoice. And if you are thinking, “Rejoice? With everything going on?” You are in good biblical company. John the Baptist asked the same question. From his prison cell, he sends messengers to Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or must we look for another?” Jesus answers: “Go and tell John what you see and hear.”

Isaiah’s vision is a map for discipleship today. Every time you encourage someone who has lost hope, a desert blooms. Every time you forgive, or make peace, or choose compassion over cynicism, lame hearts begin to walk again. Grace puts spring back in the human step. Isaiah is not offering poetry for greeting cards; he is announcing what happens when God steps into our barrenness. The desert blooms precisely because grace enters where we least expect it.

James urges us to be patient, like farmers waiting for rainfall. Advent patience is not passive. It is the discipline of refusing despair, the insistence that God is still sowing grace in hidden soil. Perhaps this week you may practice a small Advent discipline: be patient in traffic, gentle with someone anxious, or slow to speak when tempted to judge. These are tiny seeds of joy.

Again, John the Baptist in the Gospel was sitting in prison, wrestling with doubt, asked Jesus, “Are you the One?” Even saints have their moments of holy hesitations and questions. Jesus does not scold him; He simply points to the evidence: the blind see, the lame walk, the dead rise, the poor hear good news. In other words, “John, the Kingdom is happening, even in your darkness.”

So, what about us? Many of us carry hidden prisons: anxieties, disappointments, health struggles, fractured relationships. Like John, we sometimes whisper, “Lord, are You there?” And like John, Jesus answers not with theories but with signs, small healings, unexpected kindnesses, grace that arrives disguised as an ordinary day.

This Sunday invites us to practice JOY, not cheerfulness, and a deep Advent TRUST that God is moving even in deserts. Perhaps the gentle humor of the day is this: God is more patient with us than we are with ourselves. He does not rush His work, but He never stops working.

So, rejoice, quietly, steadfastly, confidently. The desert is already blooming. God is on the way. And He never arrives late.

Your Priest,

Fr. Charles Enyinnia