We all like to be
praised. As humans, we have widely
varying tastes and preferences in oh-so-many things, but being praised is
almost universally liked, I think.
Sometimes being praised is utilitarian, a good grade, or letter of
recommendation, or positive feedback from a reviewer: there, sometimes, the
pleasure at the praise is really pleasure at what we can use the praise to
do. But there’s a deeper type of
pleasure at being praised, a holier one, even, and that’s when we know that the
praise comes from someone being really overjoyed because of us, and we rejoice
in response not because the person’s important, but because we love them, and
stimulating joy in someone we love is wonderful.
Well, the
prophet Zephaniah dreams of a day when God will rejoice over us, and his dream
is prophetic: it speaks forth something deeply true. He pictures God so joyful over us that He
sings out with joy, as at a festival.
And he says that that joy, God’s joy, will renew us in our love. God doesn’t rejoice because we’ve got this
loving-people business down pat, he rejoices, because it’s only in His joy that
our love can be strengthened to the point that we can love like Him.
Because joy is
contagious. So is hatred and fear, but God
has acted definitively in Christ to break that cycle, as Jesus shows us a love
so great that not even death, death at our hands, could keep him from being
with us. That’s a wonder Paul so
marveled at, that he could write such exhortations as “Rejoice in the Lord
always!” even in the midst of great suffering.
He’s writing this letter to the Philippians from prison, and while
incarceration in the Roman Empire varied from place to place, we can
reconstruct with some probability what that meant: it meant no sun light; it
meant no heat if this was a winter’s night, no form of cooling if it was a
summer’s day; it meant no way of getting rid of sewage; it meant regular
beatings; it meant witnessing suicide and spontaneous executions and knowing
you could be next. But, from prison,
Paul writes the most joyful letter we have from him.
That doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense and that’s the point,
because love isn’t meant to make sense.
Love is meant to make joy, and that’s totally different. Think of the folly of pulling totally useless
plants out of the ground and presenting them to someone. At times, being joyful is as ridiculous as
giving a loved one flowers. Just as
ridiculous; just as lovely.
Pope Francis named his
first apostolic exhortation “The Gospel of Joy” and had this to say:
“I realize of course that
joy is not expressed the same way at all times in life, especially at moments
of great difficulty. Joy adapts and
changes, but it always endures, even as a flicker of light born of our personal
certainty that, when everything is said and done, we are infinitely loved. I understand the grief of people who have to
endure great suffering, yet slowly and surely we all have to let the joy of
faith slowly revive as a quiet yet firm trust… I can say that the most
beautiful and natural expressions of joy which I have seen in my life were in
poor people who had little to hold on to.
I also think of the real joy shown by others who, even amid pressing
professional obligations, were able to preserve, in detachment and simplicity,
a heart full of faith. In their own way,
all these instances of joy flow from the infinite love of God, who has revealed
himself to us in Jesus Christ.”
That’s what grounds our
Advent joy: that love, and that contagious divine joy. Because the joy of being alert to that
presence leads to the realization that our everyday life can, and in fact must,
become a prayer. That we can, as Paul
put it, entrust all our needs to God in prayer, with thanksgiving. And we can give thanks in all circumstances,
not for all circumstances, but because we can learn to see God’s hand at work.
Our world tries to teach
us a script of pessimism and cynicism, but the Spirit has a better script for
us. Joy, prayer and gratitude are the
tools we use to rewrite our script.
Every night before bed, I try to look back at my day with three words:
thank you, sorry and wow. The words
train me in spotting what I have to be grateful for, where I have failed to
make my life a prayer, and how I have been amazed and delighted throughout the
day. Then, I look forward to the next
day, with one word: please. I know that
tomorrow will have its own woes, mine or those of people I’m called to be there
for, and I stand in need of gift to get through tomorrow, to make it prayer.
Those four words, that
make up what’s called the prayer of Examen, train us to see God’s joy. They train us to see that God has washed us and
clothed us with his own Spirit, and the Spirit gives us our joy, our gratitude,
our prayer.
I’m wearing rose tonight
to literally be clothed in joy for an hour.
We are all really, spiritually clothed in a far greater joy throughout
our lives. Gaudete!
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