Joy and happiness are all too fleeting and many children of God are unable to enjoy either. Daily struggles affected/created by human frailties, illness, poverty, the absence of love, human anguish pain remains constant, overpowering true fulfillment toward the above. Even though our world is filled with injustice, pain, and horror, can true joy slice through the horrors and pain of life?
Happiness, that pleasurable feeling, belief life is going well – for the moment. A response, reaction to circumstances. It’s temporary, resulting through various sensations, your favorite team wins, a good meal, a book, luck, prosperity for yourself, someone you love, care for, even a stranger. It is contentment. It’s limited. It’s an emotion. Is its opposite sadness, melancholy or boredom, emptiness?
Joy
Joy is powerful, penetrating, passionate, delving deep into body and soul. It’s a state, of mind, of soul’s growth. Its intensity confirms wisdom, “Sofia”, an, acceptance of life’s events, good and bad – a recognition of something beyond circumstances, wonderful or horrific. Saint Maximilian Kolbe is a shining example that joy is not dependant on circumstances. Auschwitz inmate who voluntarily took the place of another prisoner and with ten others, taken to an underground cell and starved to death. St. Kolbe survived without food or water for two weeks. He was the last to die, then executed by lethal injection.
There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousand truths which come about us like birds seeking inlet, but we are shut up to them and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away (Henry Ward Beecher).
Joy is more than mere happiness. It is something to be obtained, sought, and aspired through discipline, faith, spirituality, education, and a mentor. The further along the individual is in procuring the above, the deeper and more lasting the joy.
Take a saint, and put him into any condition, and he knows how to rejoice in the Lord (Walter Cradock).
Joy is an illumination (Adam Potkay, The Story of Joy From the Bible to Late Romanticism).
Are emptiness and depression the opposite of joy? Can the individual recognize Joy’s absence over the world’s mass of distractions, illusions, pain, disease, and trauma? Is it possible, the absence of Joy, can bring upon a search, in a world focused on physical pleasures? Is the individual capable on their own ability to develop the true joy of the soul?
Joy humanistically arises from kinship; it is a harmony between our actions and values. It is caring, kind, and compassionate. Joy is a mandatory obligation, I believe, for those with joy to share with everyone. Charity if not shared is a sin of omission and a sin of neglect. A joyous person sees love, God in All. It is in our Holy Scriptures and the Holy Scriptures of other Faiths. Faith brings Joy, and Joy must be shared. Is joy a moral imperative, an obligation for each individual?
Joy is Mudita, (Buddhism) a sympathetic or unselfish joy, joy in the good fortune of others. Has no counterpart in English (it should) of the Four Immeasurables (Brahma-vihara).
Joy- Faith, Hope, Love
Joy is Faith, hope, love: The response of the soul to a great and wonderful discovery. From the smallest to the greatest, a bird, a child, a newborn, the first flower of spring. Fulfillment, sense of completeness. Nothing in life is needed except basic necessities. A deep spirituality: this world is a shadowland: despite life’s difficulties, frailties and incompleteness. Mystery’s inclusiveness, wholeness await. You are part of the Greater.
The fruits of charity are joy, peace, and mercy; charity demands beneficence and fraternal correction; it is benevolence; it fosters reciprocity and remains disinterested and generous; it is friendship and communion: Love is itself the fulfillment of all our works (CCC 1829).
Can Christians maintain a life of joy? Consider Randy Hain’s suggestions in Six Practical Steps to Catholic Joy:
- Surrender to Christ. How? Say the words and try. I can’t do it alone and need His help. So I walk, slowly, within the self’s limitations, trying not to look beyond today, in a world focused only on tomorrow. Let go, let God.
- Go to frequent Reconciliation. If only more frequent and totally less self-conscience. And Anointing of the Sick. And reconcile to the self, family, all. Know thyself.
- Be thankful for my blessings. You try, but thoughts disappear in a moment’s fleeting. The mind is crowded with darkness, pain, loneliness. Constant reflection, spiritual mediations are necessary, along with spiritual readings. And don’t forget humor. Or – we walk blindly
- Stay out of the “Catholic Cafeteria Line.” You try, but life….. . Maintain discipline. Enjoy the community of our Church. There is comfort in the communal village. No one is an island, unto themselves. We are designed by Him to be one cooperative spirit.
- Start with the end in mind. Serve others and hope. “Well done, good and faithful servant.” My goal is Heaven and I must live a life that leads me there. Seeing the end of this mystery, beyond physical and mental vision’s limitations, beyond the concrete and steel of the man-made, beyond the black-tarred streets, beyond evening lights blocking the stars of infinity. Beyond judging. Beyond hate.
The above suggestions are an excellent path to guide us about how to live joyfully. However, the key is trust in God. Maybe one day, soon, I will trust God is in control:
Paul and James both say that we should rejoice in our trials because of their beneficial results. It is not the adversity considered in itself that is to be the ground of our joy. Rather, it is the expectation of the results, the development of our character that should cause us to rejoice in adversity. God does not ask us to rejoice because we have lost our job, or a loved one has been stricken with cancer, or a child has been born with an incurable birth defect. But He does tell us to rejoice because we believe He is in control of those circumstances and is at work through them for our ultimate good (Jerry Bridges).
This Article first appeared on The Catholic Stand
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