The joy
of the gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who
accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness
and loneliness. With Christ joy is constantly born anew. In this Exhortation I
wish to encourage the Christian faithful to embark upon a new chapter of
evangelization marked by this joy, while pointing out new paths for the
Church’s journey in years to come.
The great
danger in today’s world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation
and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of
frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience. Whenever our interior life
becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room
for others, no place for the poor. God’s voice is no longer heard, the quiet
joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades. This is a
very real danger for believers too. Many fall prey to it, and end up resentful,
angry and listless. That is no way to live a dignified and fulfilled life; it
is not God’s will for us, nor is it the life in the Spirit which has its source
in the heart of the risen Christ.
I invite
all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal
encounter with Jesus Christ, or at least an openness to letting him encounter
them; I ask all of you to do this unfailingly each day. No one should think
that this invitation is not meant for him or her, since “no one is excluded
from the joy brought by the Lord”. The Lord does not disappoint those who take
this risk; whenever we take a step towards Jesus, we come to realize that he is
already there, waiting for us with open arms.
Pope
Francis, Evangelium Gaudii
Reflection – Gaudete in Domino semper!
Iterum dico gaudete! Dominus enim prope est. The words of the Entrance antiphon for today’s Mass give us
the traditional name for this Gaudete Sunday. If your Latin is a bit rusty (or
non-existent), it goes: “Rejoice in the Lord always! Again I say, rejoice! For
the Lord is near.”
Joy is the
word of the day in the Church, with Pope Francis’ first apostolic exhortation
choosing to highlight it as the key evangelical virtue and the characteristic
note of Christian life. This is something all of us are called to meditate on,
just a bit anyhow, in response to the invitation of our Holy Father.
My own
conviction is that it is as natural for a Christian to be joyful as it is
natural for any human being to be breathing. Joy is meant to spring up from the
Christian heart, the graced heart, spontaneously and immediately. In other
words, it would be very wrong and counter-productive to think that we have to
somehow manufacture joy, whip ourselves up towards joy, and meanwhile put on
some kind of joyful countenance that is really a mask for our true inner
reality. ‘Put on a happy face’ is not a liturgical text.
Really, it’s
not a question of ‘trying to be joyful’ so much as identifying what blocks joy
in us, and removing those blockages. There’s a big difference between removing
blockages to something that is actually there, and trying to make something be
there that doesn’t exist.
And the Pope
does a good job identifying some of the main blockages to joy in the human
heart: “the desolation and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the
feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience… our interior life becomes caught up in its own
interests and concerns.., no longer room for others.., God’s voice is no longer
heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good
fades... [we] end up resentful, angry and listless.
Ultimately it
is selfishness and the determination to get one’s own way in life that kills
joy. Affliction and suffering can moderate joy, can make our joy be expressed
in a quieter, more interior way, but these things alone cannot kill joy. We
have all, I hope, seen people in great pain and travail who nonetheless have a
quiet stream of joy flowing from their hearts.
No, the great
block to joy in our lives is when we decide life is about getting what we want
and our whole concern lies in pursuing our own interests and concerns. When we
turn away from the real wellsprings of joy, the daily encounter with Christ,
the remembrance of his love and his grace, and throw ourselves into all sorts
of pursuits and feverish activities that are not taking us anywhere.
The joy of the
Gospel is that the Lord is near, that God is with us, and that the presence and
power of love is real, is true, and is available to us. The call of the
Christian is to focus our eyes, minds, and hearts on this divine love and make
it the substance, source, and goal of our lives. Joy flows from this, be it a
quiet inner joy or an exuberant boisterous joy. And it is this joy that the sad
grim angry world above all needs to see and hear in us, if our proclamation of
the Gospel is to be credible and effective.
So let’s get
cracking, removing the obstacles in our life, and letting the joy of God find
us and flow into and through us freely.
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