Rejoice, O Jerusalem: The Maternal Mystery of Laetare Sunday
A Lenten Conference on the Church as Mother and Guide in the Midst of Penance
By ✠Jerome OSJV, Primus of the Old Roman Apostolate

INTRODUCTION

Halfway through the great fast of Lent, the Church in her maternal wisdom grants a reprieve, a glimpse of Easter light amidst the penitential purple. The Fourth Sunday of Lent, clothed in rose, is no liturgical accident. It is Laetare Sunday: a sacred pause to lift up weary eyes toward the eternal Jerusalem, to recall the sweet maternity of the Church, and to steel the soul for the final ascent to the Cross.

She who is both Virgo Ecclesia Facta and Mater Ecclesia—the Virgin made Church and the Mother who bears us in grace—calls her children home. We are reminded that the Christian life is not an ideology, not a program, not a movement, but a supernatural birth into a Mystical Body—nourished, disciplined, and led by our Holy Mother, the Church.

Let us, then, consider the fivefold title traditionally given to this day: Laetare Sunday, Rose Sunday, Refreshment Sunday, Mothering Sunday, and the Fourth Sunday in Lent. Each name draws us deeper into the mysteries of grace, as befits a Church that thinks not like the world, but like a mother.

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I. Laetare Sunday: The Church Above, Our Mother

The introit thunders with joy: Laetare, Jerusalem… The prophet Isaiah speaks not of an earthly city, but of the heavenly Jerusalem, which St. Paul identifies as “our mother” (Galatians 4:26). This is the Church in her eschatological identity, the Bride descending from heaven, the freewoman whose children are born of the promise.

St. Augustine says: “You begin to have God as Father when you begin to have the Church as mother.” (Sermo 57.7)

And St. Cyprian exhorts with fatherly severity: “He can no longer have God for his Father who has not the Church for his mother.” (De Unitate Ecclesiae, 6)

Laetare Sunday confronts us with the truth of our origin and our destiny. We are not spiritual freelancers. We are children of a visible, teaching, sanctifying Church, born not of the flesh, but of water and the Holy Ghost. We were conceived in her womb through baptism and are nourished daily by her sacraments and doctrine. Her priests are spiritual fathers because she is the spiritual mother.

To rejoice today is to rejoice not merely in the promise of resurrection, but in the ecclesial life that has already begun to raise us. The Church leads us not to comfort, but to glory. And she does so not as a tyrant but as a mother—stern at times, but never abandoning her own.

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II. Rose Sunday: Mary, the Mystical Rose and Archetype of the Church

The rose vestments—liturgical joy tinted by penitence—remind us that beauty is not contrary to sacrifice. It is born of it. This is the beauty of Our Lady, the Rosa Mystica, who bears in herself both the sorrows of Calvary and the fragrance of Paradise.

St. Ambrose teaches: “The Church is like Mary: a virgin who conceived by faith, a mother who gives birth to the faithful by the Spirit.” (Expositio Evangelii sec. Lucam, II.7)

Mary is the mirror and the matrix of the Church. What she is in singular perfection, the Church is in the mode of pilgrimage: virgin and mother, sorrowful and rejoicing, immaculate in heaven and yet suffering on earth. In Mary, the Church sees her own vocation completed and crowned.

Pope Leo XIII affirms: “The Blessed Virgin is rightly called the Mother of the Church, for she is the mother of Christ and she is also the mother of all Christians.” (Adiutricem Populi, 1895)

On this Sunday, the Church blushes with the joy of Mary, anticipating the Resurrection while still dwelling in the valley of tears. The faithful should see in rose not a novelty, but a deep Marian symbolism. In the liturgy’s softness, we are reminded that Christ came to us through beauty, through the consent of a woman clothed in grace.

Rose Sunday proclaims that joy does not mean frivolity, and reverence does not exclude beauty. Mary teaches us to rejoice rightly—in humility, in obedience, in suffering accepted with love.

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III. Refreshment Sunday: The Church as Pilgrim and Provider

Traditionally associated with the Gospel of the multiplication of the loaves, this Sunday reminds us that Holy Mother Church feeds her children in the desert. The sacraments are not mere rituals—they are divine sustenance.

St. Leo the Great teaches: “What was visible in our Redeemer has passed into the sacraments.” (Sermo 74.2)

This Sunday is a foretaste of the relief that awaits us beyond Good Friday. But even now, Christ does not abandon us to our own strength. The Church is both Ark and Manna; she is the tabernacle in the wilderness, the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night.

She gives us not only food but formation. Her catechism, her liturgical calendar, her penitential practices—all are means of shaping the soul into the likeness of Christ. To enter the Church is not to find an oasis of emotional comfort, but a mountain path marked by sacraments.

Refreshment Sunday thus exhorts us: Do not turn back. Do not despair. Christ feeds us in the liturgy because He calls us onward. The Bread we eat is His Body, broken yet glorious. And the chalice we drink is our share in His Passion.

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IV. Mothering Sunday: Return to the Font of Life

In medieval England, this day became known as Mothering Sunday. It was the custom for servants and laborers to return to their home parish—their “mother church”—where they had been baptized and catechised. Along the way, they would often visit their earthly mothers, bringing flowers or small tokens of love.

The practice speaks to a profound Catholic instinct: to honor both natural and supernatural maternity. The Church is not an abstraction; she is rooted in places, rites, and relationships. One is not born into the Church by ideology but by baptism.

The English martyr-poet Robert Southwell, S.J., under persecution, could write: “The Church, though widowed of her spouse by violence, doth still give suck of grace to such as seek her breasts.” (Triumphs over Death)

To return to one’s mother church is to return to the womb of grace. It is to affirm that faith is not private, but ecclesial; not self-made, but received.

In our age of dislocation and rootlessness, this tradition speaks volumes. We are not souls adrift. We are children, begotten by grace, raised by discipline, and fed by the mystery of the altar. The recovery of local, incarnate piety—returning not only to our spiritual roots but to the sacred geography of our baptism—is no sentimentalism, but the path of sanctity.

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V. The Fourth Sunday in Lent: A Turning Point of Grace

The simplest of its names is also the most sobering: the Fourth Sunday in Lent. It marks the threshold of Passiontide. From here, the shadow of the Cross looms larger. The Church, having fed and consoled her children, now leads them up to Jerusalem.

St. Leo again exhorts: “Let the hearts of the faithful be stirred up to a holy joy, that those who are weary with fasting and prayer may be refreshed with spiritual consolations.” (Sermo 47)

This Sunday is a pivot, a moment for recollection. Lent is not about perfect execution of disciplines, but transformation of the heart. Have we truly embraced the Cross? Or merely carried it grudgingly? Have we surrendered more of ourselves each day? Or are we clinging still to our idols?

The Church offers no condemnation today—only the strong encouragement of a mother. She reminds us that there is still time. The Bridegroom has not yet arrived, but the cry has gone out. Trim your lamps. Rise from sleep. Gird your loins for the final ascent.

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CONCLUSION

Laetare Sunday is a liturgical jewel set in the stern gold of Lent. It is the smile of the Church—tender but unwavering—as she leads her children through sorrow to glory, through fasting to the feast, through the tomb to the throne.

To speak of Laetare is to speak of the Church who gives us birth, of Mary who shows us the way, of Christ who is our food, our hope, and our joy. The five names for this day are five notes in a single canticle: the Church, maternal and majestic, sings to her children—Rejoice, O Jerusalem, and come together, all you that love her…

Let us receive this Sunday not as an interruption but as an intensification—a moment where beauty and doctrine, memory and mission, converge to restore our focus on Christ crucified and risen. Let us rejoice because we have been claimed, formed, and sent by a Church who knows the weakness of her children and yet never ceases to nourish them with divine strength.

May this Sunday of joy steel our wills for the sorrow of the Passion, and temper our sorrow with the radiant hope of the Resurrection. For the joy of Laetare is not escapism—it is prophecy. It proclaims, in the midst of sacrifice, that love shall triumph, that death shall be undone, and that the children of the Church shall one day enter the New Jerusalem, rejoicing.

Laetare, anima mea. Rejoice, O my soul—for your Mother goes before you, and your Lord awaits you.

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Lent Conferences 2025

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