I’VE GOT THAT JOY, JOY, JOY, JOY…

     And so goes the lyric of a “ditty” for (I guess) children, made popular (God help us) by Carey Landry. But this song is anything but real joy. Whatever else it means, it is nothing like “giddiness” or even “happy pleasure.” It has to be something much more important, much more authentic, much more real.

     “Joy,” C S Lewis wrote, “is the serious business of heaven.” It is, I want to suggest, the confluence of the terms I referred to in last Sunday’s homily: tzedek, chesed, emeth, & shalom.

Think of your interior state of mind/heart/soul if you were in a place where true justice, faithful love, peace, and security were a permanent reality for you. Yes, I think that would be a genuine start to understanding “joy.”

St Mother Teresa had a different view—“Give until it hurts, and so experience the joy of loving.” This is the kind of challenge that only a saint could offer, but for her and her sisters it is the path not only to holiness but also to eternal joy.

St Francis of Assisi also had a somewhat different perspective (narrated, however, in the very late collection of anecdotes the Fioretti, the “Little Flowers of St Francis). There, he and Brother Leo discuss “perfect joy, “ and Francis concludes—if they return to the Porziuncola and are driven away with curses and blows as if they were scoundrels and thieves, “…if we endure all those evils and insults and blows with joy and patience, reflecting that we must accept and bear the sufferings of the Blessed Christ patiently for love of Him, oh, Brother Leo, write: that is perfect joy!” (Fioretti #8).

So for St Francis joy is intimately bound up with willing identification with Christ suffering, desiring to share in the totality of Jesus, even to the Cross. It’s no wonder that, 2 years before his death, St Francis’ body was marked with the stigmata, the marks of the Passion of Christ, in his own body.

I think most of us are not ready to experience Francis’ level of “joy”! But can we at least see the distance between his vision and that of the “ditty” I mentioned at the beginning of this essay? One is trivial; the other is hopelessly hard. Is there a middle ground we can at least aspire to, on this Gaudete Sunday? I think there is.

We long for the life of total peace/security, constant love, and merciful justice. But perhaps we can dedicate any given day to living at least one of these blessings and so share that blessing with others. Can I in small ways, just for today, be a source of love, of peace, of mercy, to someone else? I am convinced that bringing a taste of joy to others is the most realistic way of experiencing joy in our own hearts. Let’s try it—Happy Gaudete (“Let’s all rejoice!”) Sunday.                                                               -Fr. David