Yes, you guessed it. Here is your Theology of the Body Advent reflection for week three. This time from Fr. Martin Connor, LC:
In 2000, the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, made the following comment: “The deepest poverty is the inability of joy, the tediousness of a life considered absurd and contradictory… the inability of joy presupposes and produces the inability to love, produces jealousy, avarice — all defects that devastate the life of individuals and of the world.” On the third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday, the Church calls all of us to remember the importance and the power of joy (gaudete) in our lives. It is truly our singular duty to bring joy into this world which is steeped in so much spiritual poverty. The Prophet Isaiah could not say it more directly to us: “He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor.” If I do not first find joy in my own life, in my very spirit, I will be unable to give this joy to others. The key to finding this joy begins with prayer.
St Paul, in the second reading, calls us to “pray without ceasing,” in other words, be connected to the spirit of God by developing a more “listening” demeanor in all things. Blessed John Paul II called this listening demeanor, “receptivity.” We are all called to a deeper and more profound “receptivity” of the presence of God in our life. Given the extreme activism of our world, we fall into thinking that with prayer we need to be “doing” something. Yet quickly we find that perhaps “It is not working.” “Nothing is happening.” “I do not sense the presence of God even with all my efforts.” Where are we to find this joy? Perhaps rather than busily “looking for it” in our lives, let’s just have joy find us. Let’s take the joys that come to us day by day in the little things and “receive.” True joy comes in first recognizing that we have received so much and this leads us to give thanks.