Today is the Fourth Sunday of Lent — Laetare Sunday. The name comes from the first word of the entrance antiphon: "Laetare, Ierusalem." Rejoice, Jerusalem.
In the middle of Lent — a penitential season of fasting, prayer, and self-examination — the Church interrupts itself to command joy. The priest wears rose vestments instead of purple. Flowers may be placed on the altar. The mood shifts.
I find this liturgical move extraordinarily intelligent. And I think it contains a lesson that is useful well beyond its religious context.
Why Laetare Exists
Lent is demanding. Forty days of voluntary restraint, of turning attention toward mortality and sin and the distance between what you are and what you should be, is not easy. Around the midpoint, the temptation is to become either grimly self-righteous — proud of the sacrifice — or simply exhausted and ready to quit.
Laetare interrupts both tendencies.
It says: the goal of all this is not suffering. The goal is joy. Real joy — not the shallow contentment of satiated appetites, but the deeper joy of a person who has made peace with reality and found it to be good.
You are in the middle of a difficult passage. The destination is worth it. Rejoice.
The World Right Now
I am writing this in the middle of a week in which Iran is at war, the Middle East is in crisis, European energy prices are spiking, the geopolitical order is accelerating its deterioration, and the news cycle is relentless and largely terrible.
It is possible to be clear-eyed about all of this — to be realist about risk, honest about danger, serious about preparation — and simultaneously to rejoice.
The two are not in tension. In fact, the man who cannot rejoice in the middle of difficulty is the man who has allowed the difficulty to define him. He has made the problem larger than the life it is a problem within.
The Catholic tradition has always insisted on this: the world is fallen and broken and dangerous. It is also created, redeemed, and ultimately held by God. The honest acknowledgment of the first does not negate the second. It is held in tension with it. And out of that tension comes the particular quality of Christian joy — not optimism, not denial, but something harder and more durable than either.
What I Rejoice In
Today I will light a candle in church and try to be genuinely grateful for what I have.
Ten children. A woman beside me who took on a broken man and rebuilt something with him. A business that does meaningful work for people who need it. The ability to think and write and try to say true things in public.
The world is difficult. My life has been difficult. But it has also been, in ways I am still trying to fully understand, extraordinarily good.
Laetare. Rejoice.
Work with Sebastian
No pitch today. But if you want to talk about building a life that is worth rejoicing in — which sometimes involves getting the financial and jurisdictional foundations right — I am here. Book a consultation.