Author
Liturgical Date
Readings
Today, the Church puts aside her purple vestments and puts on rose-colored vestments to express her joy that the Lord is nearly here. Precisely because the theme of today’s liturgy is joy, I would like to explore this theme. What does joy consist of? A short time ago, I saw an advertisement mounted on an enormous panel about 6 meters long, which presented a new perfume called “Joy”. The caption underneath said: “Experience true joy.” In other words, whoever wore this perfume, in that almost magical moment, would have experienced joy. Obviously, all of this is nothing but a deception. True joy does not consist in a perfume! So, what does it consist in?
Natural joy
Let’s begin with a description which St. Thomas Aquinas provides of natural joy (IIa-IIae, q.28). The Angelic Doctor points out the close relationship which exists between joy and love, and based on this intuition, he gives two definitions of the word “joy”.
- The first is this: joy is that emotion which we experience every time we find ourselves in the presence of the ones we love. For example, when a dear friend comes from afar for a visit. Or, to use an example taken from the Gospels, when John the Baptist is in the presence of Jesus and says: “He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore, this joy of mine is now full” (Jn 3:29).
- The second definition is a nuance of the preceding one. Even if we can enjoy the physical presence of a person or of a loved one—if we are separated by geographic distance, for example—we can experience joy, simply, when the person we love is well. For example, parents rejoice for their children if even living far away they are well.
These two observations are simple, but acute. Moreover, St. Thomas points out that we can understand “joy” better when we consider the opposite emotion, namely, sadness. And also here, there are two definitions.
- Here is the first: we experience sadness when the thing or the person loved is missing or absent. For example, the lover suffers within for the lack of the loved one.
- The second definition is based on the first: even if the person we love is present, we are sad if that person is not well. For example, if one’s daughter or son is at home, but has various problems, then the parents suffer because their children are not well.
So, in what does joy consist? In the presence of the person we love, and in the fact that the person we love is well. Based on these intuitions, we can better understand why we aren’t more joyful. The advertisement which desperately searched for joy indicates, in reality, a privation. Why aren’t we more joyful? We see that joy depends on love but our love is often disordered. The object of our love can be wrong: if we love fleeting and ephemeral things. What often happens is that we’re dominated by love itself, which is the root of all vices, and does not bring us to joy. This is why we’re not more joyful.
From a human perspective, therefore, joy—even if it is possible and desirable—is often far from us, and that joy which we experience is often mingled with sadness. St. Paul exhorts us saying: “Rejoice!” And we respond: “I want to be joyous, but I don’t know how.”
Spiritual joy
The key is to find another type of joy, a supernatural joy. Today’s reading doesn’t simply say “Rejoice”, but rather “Rejoice in the Lord”. If we rejoice in the Lord, we will find true joy. There exists a spiritual joy which has as its object; love, not of created things, but of God. This spiritual joy comes not from us, but from the Holy Spirit. The joy at this level is supernatural, profound, and lasting.
We have said that we experience joy when we find ourselves in the presence of a beloved person. This definition works also for spiritual joy. St. John says: “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 Jn 4:16). If we love God, then, we always find himself in his presence. The love of God gets communicated to us interiorly through the Holy Spirit, as St. Paul says: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). Spiritual joy has God as its object, and it is the fruit of divine charity.
Even here, St. Thomas gives us a two-fold definition: we can experience spiritual joy, the joy which one rejoices in God, in two different ways:
- Firstly, we can rejoice in God simply because he is good—this is the objective aspect of our joy. For example, we see a particularly beautiful sunset, and we say: How great are your works, O Lord, for having created such a beautiful thing! God is good!
- But there is also a subjective aspect: we rejoice in God in the measure in which we participate in his divine goodness. For example, he who dedicates time to prayer experiences, on occasion, the almost tangible presence of God, and the heart of him who prays enlarges with the unspeakable sweetness of love.
Spiritual joy depends on the love of God, of divine charity. This type of joy is not fragile, like human joy, but is strong, secure, always trustworthy and steadfast.
Dominus prope est
Today, the third Sunday of Advent, the liturgy offers us the possibility of experiencing supernatural joy. In what sense? Scripture says: “Rejoice in the Lord” and then explains the reason: “Because the Lord is at hand” (Phil 4:4-5). If we experience joy when we find ourselves in the presence of our beloved, we have to hope—because in two weeks “the beloved of my heart” will come, as the Song of Songs says, who will come as the spouse of the nuptial bed, of the nuptial room, he will come to dwell among us.
There is another reason for supernatural joy—our participation in divine goodness. But no participation in God would ever be possible if God himself had not first taken the initiative, building a bridge to fill the abyss which separates man from God. In the Incarnation, the Son of God took unto himself our human nature, just to give us the possibility to participate in his divine nature. Here is the reason for the greatest joy possible. The beloved of our heart is at hand and he permits us to be with him, to participate in his very divine life.
Human joy is nice when it’s there, but it’s more often mingled with sadness. Supernatural joy, on the other hand, never fades.
“Gaudete in Domino semper! Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I say, Rejoice…the Lord is at hand”