Today, the Fourth Sunday of Lent, is also known as Laetare Sunday.  The name comes from the first words of the entrance antiphon to today’s Mass: Laetare, Jerusalem: “Rejoice, Jerusalem!  Be glad for her, you who love her; rejoice with her, you who mourned for her, and you will find contentment at her consoling breasts.”  Today we are reminded that our desert experience of Lent is rapidly drawing to a close and that we will soon celebrate the most significant days in the history of humanity: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter.  Today, penitential violet gives way to joyful rose.  The flowers, banned from the altar throughout Lent, make a brief reappearance today in anticipation of the blossoming of new life at Easter.

Today, we rejoice in God and in the fulfillment of His promises to us.  In our first reading, from the Book of Joshua, we hear of the Israelites’ entry into the land of Canaan, the Promised Land.  They have left the slavery in Egypt, wandered for forty years in the desert, and now they have experienced the fulfillment of God’s promise to them.

Our own lives mirror this journey of ancient Israel.  Their slavery in Egypt is an icon of our former slavery to sin.  Their wandering in the desert is an icon of our journey through this world in a continuing process of conversion, a journey that is commemorated and activated in our lives in a special way each year during Lent.  Their entry into the Promised Land is an icon of our reconciliation to God accomplished through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, a reality we will celebrate at Easter.  It is also an icon of our hoped-for entry into heaven after we die.  Finally, there is an eschatological dimension as well, for the ancient Israelites’ entry into the Promised Land ultimately is an icon of the End Time, when all things have been subjected to Christ, when He returns in the Parousia, when the bodies we have behind are resurrected, and when those who have remained faithful to Him come to reign with Him forever.

Now, that’s deep.  Sometimes we forget, or perhaps never even realize, how all this works:  Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Abraham, Melchizedek, Isaac and Jacob, Moses and all the prophets, the twelve tribes of Israel, the apostles and martyrs, the Church, us.  It’s all of a piece, a seamless garment woven by God that speaks of His determination to gather to Himself in love the humanity He has created in love.

Human beings tend to compartmentalize and categorize things:  this here, and that there, and this over here, and so forth.  That’s fine, because it how we understand things and cope with them.  But at some point, in order to understand fully, we have to begin to integrate those compartments and categories.

What does all this Adam and Eve and Abraham and Israel’s entry into the Promised Land stuff have to do with me?  It is me.  It is my past.  It is part of who I am.  And the promises of God are my present and future: who I am and who I will become.

Beginning to understand that makes it possible to rejoice, in the way that God wants us to rejoice.

But we are not the only ones who rejoice in all this.  It is God’s work, and He rejoices as well.  He rejoices in us.  Sometimes, we miss that reality as well.

In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the father, who represents God, gives the younger son, who represents us, his inheritance.  And the son goes off and squanders it in a life of sin and dissipation.  Finally, when the son realizes that this life of sin has not brought him the joy and happiness that he thought it would, he returns to his Father.  And the Father does not condemn or reject him.  Instead, he is delighted at his son’s return and tells his older son, “But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.”

We have to be truly, deeply sorry and contrite for our sins, just as the younger son was in the parable.  But when we are sorry and approach God for mercy, we must also remember that He is ready and willing to give it.  And not only that, but that He rejoices in our return.

Too often, we fall to one extreme or the other.  We become so guilt-ridden over sin that we won’t allow ourselves to experience the love and mercy that God wishes us to have from Him.  Or, we become so unconcerned with our sins that we feel no guilt at all, and that also stops us from experiencing God’s love.

We have to keep a balanced perspective: true recognition of our sins and sorrow for them, while simultaneously recognizing that God loves us.  It is not His desire to condemn us, but to welcome us back – to put on us the finest robe, to put a ring on our finger and sandals on our feet, to celebrate a feast because we have returned home to Him.  If only we will let Him.