” Let your modesty be known to all men.” — From to-day’s Epistle

Similar to Mid- Lent Sunday, called “Laetare,” or “Be joyful” Sunday, this Mid-Advent Sunday is named ” Gaudete,” which also means “Be joyful.” Lent and Advent are penitential seasons, but our holy Catholic Religion is one of supreme happiness, and constantly inspires and exhorts us to rejoice in the Lord always, to perform even our acts of humiliation and penance with cheerful hearts. The Apostle is careful to add: Rejoice modestly; that is, in moderation, temperately. Do not exceed the bounds of Christian propriety and self-restraint. Enjoy your life reasonably, but never in such a way as to end in the loss of control over your senses. It is shameful and sinful for a Christian to let his senses get the better of him.

The Apostle, therefore, means to warn us against immoderation, excess, which is both irrational and irreligious, and the sign of mental and spiritual weakness. The sin of excessive sensual enjoyment is the glaring vice of these days. See what numbers of otherwise faithful Catholics — to say nothing of the crowds of unbridled, licentious pagans among whom we live — who dress, eat, drink, build or live in fine residences, read books and newspapers, amuse themselves in theatres, at games of strength or chance, greedily heaping up riches, and seeking their joy in life in all these things in such a way that it is plainly known to all men of sober mind and reflection that they put no restraint upon their senses. In many of these acts of life we mourn to see thousands who are as drunk as any drunkard on beer or liquor. When one’s senses get the upper hand of his reason then he is drunk. Look at that immoderately dressed — St. Paul would say, immodestly dressed — maid-servant, work-woman, young clerk or salaried business man. I say they and the like of them, even many rich men and women, are drunk on dress. Again there are plenty who may be said to be drunk on houses and furniture, it is all so luxurious, so sensual. Just look over the news-stands, which are the saloons of the reading drunkards, and you will see plenty of evidence that we have a vast army of such inebriates. Ride in the cars. What do you see all around you ? School-boys and school-girls, children as well as old men and women, the poor and the rich, all getting drunk on the debasing, intoxicating literary drams they have bought at the news-stand saloons.

Look at the great placards of amusement saloons posted all over the fences; or rather, don’t look at them if you have enough Christian sense of decency left in you to make you blush! Think of the enormous crowds in those packed theatres, night after night, drunken as fools over the beastly, immodest shows, which their eyes and ears are drinking in. Look at the horse-racing, the stock-broking, money-gambling; at the prize-fighting and much of the popular games of strength, if you want to look, and looking grieve over, the sight of a lot of people drunk with delirious excess of sense excitement, as unchristian, as wholly a pagan sight as ever was looked upon, go and look at them.

Brethren, it is high time that we Catholics, who have the example of Christ to set before the world, should sober up and take a good, Christian, Catholic pledge against these drunken excesses. We are Christians, let us rejoice like such, and not be like the heathen who know not God. Let the divine and the spiritual in us always keep the mastery over the animal and sensual. The miserable drunkard staggering out of the liquor-saloon is not the only drunkard who needs reformation in these days.

Five-minute Sermons for Low Masses on All Sundays of the Year
By the Priests of the Congregation of St. Paul, 1893