Please note: The reflections and opinions expressed in this piece are those of the author and are shared in the spirit of personal faith and contemplation. They do not necessarily reflect the official views of the Diocese of Palmerston North.
What is joy? Every now and again in church circles we talk about joy. Perhaps we do so because we think our Christian lives are not as joyful as they might be.
If lay persons want to know, or perhaps see, what joy looks like, we can look at St. Luke’s account of the Visitation (which falls on Trinity Sunday this year.) Here we read about two holy women, both with child, both bubbling over with joy. It bursts out of them; it seems it cannot help but do so.
In this story our lovely God is holding Mary and Elizabeth in the palms of his hands as they experience overwhelming joy. Those lovely hands generously hold so much more: two little bundles of joy, growing gracefully in utero — a great prophet and the Messiah.
Our desire for joy is good. It is a manifestation of our love of life itself. Joy, like so many of the spiritual gifts, is a little elusive. It seems to hide in God, being one of those things we cannot quite understand or apprehend fully by our own efforts.
Wherever joy is experienced, suffering is never far away. Those who receive the joy that comes with knowing Jesus Christ are often surprised by it. It comes unexpectedly as a short, swift arrow which pierces the heart. This experience of joy is internal, less noticed by others. It can choke a person up, watering the eyes, leaving them feeling exposed to the world.
In the first reading for this feast day, the prophet Zephaniah speaks to us of great past suffering undergone by God’s people. He prophesies the great joy that is about to burst through suffering, bringing with it the dawning of a new era. Perhaps this is where the Church finds herself today.
She has many good persons lovingly desiring joy, always trying to follow Jesus Christ as best they can but not experiencing the joy that comes with knowing him. Getting to know him brings suffering into our spiritual lives. We feel the loneliness of the Cross. We feel the simple, everyday suffering of being human, of having a loving but flawed nature, of sinning and being absolved. All these little things, lived painfully for the sake of knowing Jesus Christ, invite joy into our lay lives.
It is our desire for joy — and joy itself — flowing out of our everyday lay lives that is attractive to those outside the Church. It is the joyful lay person, the cheerful giver abroad, who evangelises because he or she knows Jesus Christ. That knowledge is lively, itching to act. It is sacred and soft, precious and hidden inside a person, as it should be. It is always ready to evangelise. It rises gloriously out of a person, bursting into the world in Magnificat mode, singing somehow of God’s great love.