Laetare Sunday, Rejoice Sunday—I suppose because we’re half-way through Lent, which used to call for “giving things up” and maybe fasting for daily Communion—and adults’ fasting on assigned days each week.  So, “Rejoice Sunday” had a certain bite to it when I was a kid in the 1940s.

What I really remember of this different Sunday half-way through Lent, though, is that my mother and Aunt Mildred and Aunt Dolores (not family, the kids grew up together)—anyhow, on Laetare Sunday, they wore white gloves and their Easter/Christmas hats. My father wore the bow tie he wore every Sunday, Laetare or no.

Whatever they wore, the monsignor would remind them that Lent was a time of fasting, penance, and charity.  The monsignor was up against it In New Orleans, though, all Sundays were more like Josiah Royce’s Sundays, whose mother insisted on toting all the way from Iowa to California the foot-pedal organ she used in Evangelical church Sunday worship. Wherever he got it from, the great American philosopher promoted these as characteristic of the mature adult: sensitiveness, docility, and creativity.  

Sensitiveness names the basic ground of our relationships with one another. Docility names the basic ground for our relationship with the real world we live in. And creativity names how we contribute to this world.

Not a bad trinity to characterize the lives of the adult Catholic, and not only in Lent.  Actually, Laetare Sunday reminds us that, even absorbed in our secular world, if we follow Jesus maturely, our lives will be characterized by sensitiveness, docility, and creativity.

Jesus’ surely was, though with His  first miracle in mind—changing a lot of water in large standing jugs into the best wine in the wedding feast—you might add joy. Joy characterizes the typical response to the miraculous things Jesus did.

So: sensitiveness, docility, creativity, and joy. Go thou and do likewise, not just after Easter but right now during Lent.