Gaudete Sunday

Most families call it pink; the Church calls it rose, and the difference is the explanation. Rose is violet with the darkness taken out of it. Advent and Lent are kept in violet, the color of preparation and penance, and on one Sunday in the middle of each the Church lets that violet lighten, the way the sky lightens before the sun is up.

The rule itself is one short line. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal says rose “may be used, where it is the practice, on Gaudete Sunday” and on Laetare Sunday (no. 346). It is an option, not a requirement. The US bishops’ calendar prints the color of the day as “violet or rose,” and a priest in violet on this Sunday is doing exactly what the Missal allows.

The older practice went further. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1909 records that on this Sunday, as on Laetare, the organ and flowers came back into the church, the deacon and subdeacon put on their festive vestments again, and even the cardinals changed from purple to rose. In the city’s old round of station churches, the Mass of Gaudete was held at St. Peter’s, the grandest of the four Advent stations.

The Advent wreath took its color from the vestments. The wreath is a home custom rather than a rule of the liturgy, so candles differ from house to house, but where there is one rose candle it is the third, and this is the Sunday it is lit.

Advent 2026 opens Year B of the three-year cycle of Sunday readings, so on December 13 the Mass readings are Isaiah 61:1–2a, 10–11; the Magnificat, Luke 1:46–48, 49–50, 53–54, in place of a psalm; 1 Thessalonians 5:16–24; and John 1:6–8, 19–28.

The Sunday readings run on a three-year cycle, so the passages change, but in every year they are chosen for joy and for John the Baptist:

• Year A: Isaiah 35:1–6a, 10, the desert that blooms; Psalm 146; James 5:7–10, patience like a farmer waiting for the rain; Matthew 11:2–11, John’s question from prison and the answer Jesus sends back.
• Year B: Isaiah 61:1–2a, 10–11; Mary’s song, the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–48, 49–50, 53–54), sung where a psalm would be; 1 Thessalonians 5:16–24; John 1:6–8, 19–28.
• Year C: Zephaniah 3:14–18a, a call to the daughter of Zion to sing; Isaiah 12:2–6 in place of a psalm; Philippians 4:4–7, the very verses that give the day its name; Luke 3:10–18, the crowds asking John what they should do.

In Year B, joy runs through every reading. Isaiah sings, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, and my soul shall be joyful in my God” (Isaiah 61:10). Mary answers him: “And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour” (Luke 1:47). St. Paul packs it into three commands: “Always rejoice. Pray without ceasing. In all things give thanks” (1 Thessalonians 5:16–18). And John the Baptist tells the men sent from Jerusalem to question him, “there hath stood one in the midst of you, whom you know not” (John 1:26). That last line is the reason for all the rest: Christ is already among us, before we even know it.

Gaudete and Laetare Sundays are twins, one in each of the Church’s two seasons of preparation. Gaudete is the Third Sunday of Advent; Laetare is the Fourth Sunday of Lent. Both come a little past the middle of their season, both take their names from the first Latin word of the entrance antiphon, and both names mean the same thing: rejoice. Laetare’s antiphon comes from the prophet Isaiah: “Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all you that love her” (Isaiah 66:10).

The difference lies in the season around each one. Lent is the stricter season, so Laetare brings the bigger relief: for that Sunday the Missal relaxes the Lenten rules that keep flowers off the altar and limit the organ to accompanying the singing (nos. 305 and 313). Advent is gentler to begin with, and the Missal asks only for moderation in flowers and music all season, so on Gaudete what changes is the color and the tone more than the rules.

They also face different horizons. Laetare looks ahead to the Cross and the empty tomb, three weeks away. Gaudete looks toward Bethlehem and toward the Lord’s return at the end of time; its Gospel belongs to John the Baptist, the man whose whole work was pointing to Christ.

The name comes from the first words of that Sunday’s Mass, which are St. Paul’s, written to the church at Philippi: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I say, rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). The next verse gives the reason in four words: “The Lord is nigh.”

That reason is the whole day. Advent is a season of hopeful waiting with a penitential edge, kept in violet. In parts of the early Church it was a forty-day fast that opened once St. Martin’s feast in November was over, and those places knew it as St. Martin’s Lent. On its third Sunday, past the halfway point, the Church lets the mood lift for one day. Rose may replace violet in the vestments, the rose candle takes its turn as the wreath’s third light, and the readings turn almost entirely to gladness.

It is not a holiday from Advent, as if the waiting were put on hold. It is Advent at its most hopeful: the One we are waiting for is close enough that joy already makes sense.

Lent has a twin of this day. On its Fourth Sunday, Laetare Sunday, the Church does the same thing for the same reason. The Roman Missal names only these two Sundays of the year for rose.

Gaudete Sunday is kept like every Sunday: Mass that day, or on Saturday evening, fulfills the usual Sunday obligation, and the Church asks nothing more.

The color of the day is violet or rose. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal says rose “may be used, where it is the practice,” on this Sunday and on Laetare Sunday (no. 346), and the liturgical calendar of the US bishops prints the color as “violet or rose.” A parish that keeps violet that day is following the rubrics exactly.

The rest of Advent’s restraint stays in place. The Gloria is still left out of Sunday Mass (General Instruction, no. 53), and the Missal asks for moderation in altar flowers and in the organ through the whole season (nos. 305 and 313). For Laetare Sunday the Missal names exceptions for flowers and organ; for Gaudete it names only the color. Older books describe organ and flowers returning on this Sunday too, and some parishes still mark it that way.

Advent carries no fasting obligation today. Church law names Fridays and the season of Lent as the penitential days and times (canon 1250), not Advent.

Two feasts sit close by. December 12 is Our Lady of Guadalupe, a feast in the United States, and in 2026 the date is a Saturday. December 13 is St. Lucy, and in 2026 that date is a Sunday. When either date is itself the Third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday Mass is celebrated, because the Sundays of Advent take precedence even over solemnities (Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year, no. 5).

A family can keep Gaudete Sunday at home with a few small things, beginning at the Advent wreath.

Light the third candle. Light the two violet candles of the first two weeks, then the rose one, the candle of joy. If your wreath has no rose candle, light the third violet one and let the day be rose in other ways; the candle colors are a home custom, not a rule.

Give the day one deliberate joy. Not Christmas early, which Advent asks you to wait for, but one thing that is plainly a treat: dessert after Sunday dinner, a drive to see the lights, a call to someone who will be glad to hear your voice. Children grasp what rose means very quickly when it comes with something they can taste.

Say out loud what you are thankful for. Around the table or the wreath, let each person name one good thing God has done for them this year. It takes five minutes, and the youngest ones remember it.

Plan your confession before Christmas. Many parishes add confession times or hold a penance service in the last weeks of Advent, and the lines get longer the closer Christmas comes.

Keep an eye on December 13. In 2026 St. Lucy’s day falls on a Sunday. Her name shares a root with lux, Latin for light, and some families keep her at breakfast with candles on the table and something sweet, the way Swedish homes do with saffron buns carried in at dawn by a daughter wearing a crown of candles. In a year when her day is Gaudete Sunday itself, the Mass belongs to the Sunday, but the breakfast can still be hers.