Traffic. Delays. Lines. We experience waiting on a daily basis. It is usually met with frustration and an elevated emotional response toward those people or circumstances that seem to create or aggravate our waiting. In short, we don’t like it or look forward to it.

A few years back during the holiday season I was flying back to California to visit family when a storm canceled my flight. While I was in line waiting to reschedule, a man yelled to the airline employee, “Well I have to be somewhere!” I thought to myself, “So do I. We all do; it’s an airport.” After all, who goes to an airport to visit the airport? But his indignation has stayed with me for sometime because I think in a perverse way he captures the angst most of us experience during the holiday season: arriving somewhere.

The joy of the Advent season calls us to recall the joy in the mundane, the anticipation, the journey. The third Sunday of Advent is known as Gaudete Sunday or a time to rejoice in preparation for the birth of Jesus. [Liturgical footnote: it’s also only one of two Sundays where the priest wears rose color vestments; the 4th Sunday in Lent, Laetare Sunday, is the other]. As a child I remember seeing the rose candle in the Advent wreath and thinking, “We’re almost there!” This December, let’s all remember to enjoy this element of moving closer to something, however slowly it may feel.

It’s a Great Day to be a Bulldog!