No one will take your joy from you. – Jn 16:22


-cf Br. Philip Nolan, OP

“Joy is not the primary goal of the Christian life; rather it is one of the results or “fruits” of that life. Because we cannot fake true joy, the Christian life does not consist of a forced smile and the platitude that “everything will be alright.” This false or forced joy will ultimately let us down. True joy must somehow coexist with the actual circumstances of our lives…

…But our awareness of God’s gaze on us is much more fickle than His love.   As St. John Cassian says:

“To cling to God unceasingly and to remain inseparably united to Him in contemplation is . . . impossible for the person who is enclosed in perishable flesh. But we ought to know where we should fix our mind’s attention. . . . And when our mind has been able to seize it, it should rejoice, and when it is distracted from it, it should mourn and sigh, realizing that it has fallen away from the highest good” (Conferences, 1.XIII.1).”

If our attention to God can so easily be distracted, how is it possible to receive this joy that no one, no circumstance or trial, can take away? The answer lies in the source of joy. Joy comes from love. As St. Thomas says, “joy is caused by love, either through the presence of the thing loved, or because one’s proper good exists and endures in the thing loved” (Summa theologiae II-II, a. 28, q. 1). …the impermanence of our attention to God will be dwarfed by the permanence of God’s gaze upon us.”

Love & His joy,
Matthew