The liturgical colour used during Lent is purple, a sober color that recalls the penitential character of this season. But on the Fourth Sunday of Lent—halfway through the six weeks marked by sacrifice and the call to conversion—churches are dressed in pink. This Sunday, like Gaudete Sunday of Advent, is characterized by joy. Likewise, it takes the name of Lætáre Sunday because the entrance antiphon of the Mass for this Sunday begins with the words “Lætáre Jerúsalem”: “Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her, all you her friends; leap for joy, all you who shared her sorrow; so you will rejoice and be filled with her consolation,” taken and adapted from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah 66, 10-11.
Unlike the other days of Lent, as on solemnities, on this Sunday flowers can also be used on the altar (Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship, Circular Letter on the Preparation and Celebration of the Lord’s Passover, Paschales Solemnitatis, 16 January 1988, par. 25). Actually, the liturgical colour is not pink but rose—a shade of pink sometimes referred to as “old rose” in English. Despite it is characterized by light—in Year A, the Baptismal cycle—white is still not used because “it is not a cloudless sky we contemplate on this Sunday.” This light that leads us to see brings with it challenges and difficulties, as experienced by the blind man when he received the light of faith and was expelled from the synagogue by the Jews because he confessed his belief in Jesus who gave him light (see Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Homilical Directory, 2015, par. 73-74).
In the other liturgical years, the readings also revolve around this same theme of joy. In Year B we find ourselves in a scene of darkness: Nicodemus who goes to Jesus at night in the hope of obtaining some light. And even Jesus speaks again about light in a struggle with darkness:
“this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God.”
John 3:19-21
But it is precisely in this account that we find one of the most powerful sentences found in the Gospels and which we can say summarizes the entire Good News: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16).
Then, this year, Year C, we encounter a story of sorrow and joy of a family in which the son leaves far away but returns to the bosom of his father who has not stopped waiting for him, while the father also goes out to meet the eldest son who was unhappy with the treatment that the father gave his brother … both were dead and at that time were given the chance to rise again, they were lost—some far away and some in their own home—and now they could be found.