Joy.
It is the candle we light this week. Joy is a strange thing.
It is not a word we use that often. Joy is something we
immediately connect with smiles, happiness, pleasure, fun. Taking a moment
myself, here is a small sampling of the ways I experience joy:
·
watching my dog sleeping
peacefully on my knees
·
watching a family of ducklings
walking together
·
Babies in our Space programme
smiling at me
From
my more extensive list, I came to realise that Joy can certainly
be found in simple things anytime and anywhere and can be profoundly simple. And,
as Henri Nouwen insightfully writes, “Joy does not simply happen to us.
We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.”
I
am also mindful that there is much sorrow and ache that often encompasses this
season. The missing of a loved one lost, the ache of loneliness, broken
relationships and shattered dreams fill so many of our stories and seem to be
so much more poignant at Christmas. How can we find joy in such stations? I like what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French
philosopher and scientist, says, “Joy is the infallible sign of the
presence of God.”
On
the third Sunday of Advent, we are all called to rejoice. We rejoice because
Christmas is near. We rejoice because we know that Christ has
already come. We rejoice because he comes to us in the
Eucharistic table, he comes to us in the poor, and he will come again at the
end of time to judge the living and the dead. Joy
truly is the “infallible sign of the presence of God.” So let us rejoice
in word and deed.
Joyfully in Chrit,
Yukiko
