On this Sunday we are asked to continue our Advent preparation, and to do so with a sense of joy.

'Tis the season to be jolly, as the song goes. But even if the jolly gene has managed to escape you, or this particular season finds you with plenty of specific reasons not to be happy, there is cause for rejoicing here, as the Bible tells us.

The crowd asked John the Baptist, “Then what are we supposed to do?”

It is a tradition we often see at weddings. Fathers and daughters take to the dance floor for a sentimental dance that brings tears to the eyes of many guests. When our daughters married a few years ago, they chose songs that were not typical, I suppose, for their father-daughter dances.

The church calls this Gaudete Sunday, which means “rejoice.” Gaudete Sunday always reminds me of Fezziwig. Fezziwig is a character in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, a man from Scrooge’s memory of Christmas Past.

“Have no anxiety at all,” Saint Paul tells us in today’s reading. Sorry Paul, but at Christmastime, your plea falls on deaf ears. And that prayer at Mass for God to “protect us from all anxiety”—that doesn’t seem to be working either, at least not for anyone I know.

To open ourselves to God’s joy, let us pray for forgiveness of our failings and sins.

The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.