“My soul doth magnify the Lord!” Overture vol. 4, no. 12 © 2023 Felicia Smith. All Rights Reserved.

The Church celebrates today Gaudéte Sunday, which takes its name from the first word of the Introit for the Mass: Gaudéte . . . REJOICE! 

The proclamation of the Gospel today gives us the Virgin Mary’s response to her elderly cousin Elizabeth’s proclamation that Happy is she who has had faith that the Lord’s promise to her would be fulfilled:

“My soul doth magnify the Lord!”[1]

The Third Sunday of Advent is a marked departure from Advent’s penitential character. 

Thus, on Gaudéte Sunday the Priest wears a Rose chasuble instead of the Violet worn for the other Sundays of Advent.  Similarly, the Advent Wreath signifies today’s special character, because we also light the Rose Candle.

We are invited today to Rejoice because the Lord is near![2]

WATCH. “Gaudéte Sunday Vespers, 2023” | National Shrine of Saint Alphonsus Liguori

I offer the following choral meditations for Gaudéte Sunday:

WATCH.   Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, “Magnificat (IV toni)” | Antonio Sanna (conductor) and Cantori della Resurrezione

WATCH.  J.S. Bach, “Magnificat in D Major (BWV 243)” | John Eliot Gardiner (conductor), English Baroque Soloists, and Monteverdi Choir

And for the pipe organ Finale, I recommend another work by Maestro Bach: “Toccata and Fugue in d minor” | Xaver Varnus (organist) performing on the Sauer Organ of the Berliner Dom. WATCH.

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—FS

      . . . And that’s all she wrote!

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[1]                 “Magníficat ánima mea Dóminum.”  See, “Magnificat,” Luke 1:46-55.  

Following the Angel Gabriel’s appearance announcing that the Lord God had chosen her to be the mother of His Son Jesus Christ (the “Annunciation”), the Virgin Mary set out in haste to attend to her elderly cousin Elizabeth, who was in the latter stages of her own miraculous pregnancy.  See, Luke 1:26-55. 

[N.B.  The translation of Elizabeth’s proclamation, Happy is she who has had faith that the Lord’s promise to her would be fulfilled, is from The Revised English Bible with the Apocrypha (Oxford & Cambridge)]

[2]                 See, Philippians 4:5.