Surprised by joy

When I made my First Vows on this day - a Saturday - in 1996 I knew it was the feast of St John of the Cross. But apart from that, I was so caught up in my own preparations and anticipation, so overflowing with my own joy, that I barely registered where we were in Advent. Turning up at Mass the following morning I was, quite literally, surprised by joy. It was, of course, Gaudete Sunday, but it could just as easily have been a liturgy I'd put together to celebrate my continued rejoicing, especially as the psalm was the Magnificat, which had featured heavily the day before. 

This year there's been a reversal, in that Gaudete Sunday was yesterday. This year it didn't take me by surprise, though maybe the intensity of my memories did. And this year I heard with a new clarity the final line of the second reading - a line I was probably too new and excited to take in fully twenty-four years ago, but can better comprehend now: God has called you and he will not fail you. (I Thess 5.24). Yes indeed; God is ever, steadfastly, faithful.

This year, too, the preparation for joy began some days ago. I wrote last week about some friends sharing lines from Maria Boulding's The Coming of God on Twitter. One early sharing was this sentence, which I initially assumed to be a paraphrase of Isaiah at his most exultant, and which has somehow found a home within me. There is a wonder and a mystery to these words, which also, somehow, contain echoes of our core vocation as RSCJ, to glorify the Heart of Jesus. A mystery, but not one to be solved; rather, one which I must savour and allow to unfold, at its own pace...

But of course, we don't make vows simply for our own enjoyment, or to hug God deliciously to ourselves. I had already started my ministry whilst still a novice, and returned to it on the Monday after my vows ceremony. It felt like absolutely the rightest thing to be doing; I had, after all, just vowed to live and give my life in love and service. And there was a strong reminder of all this in the Pope's Gaudete Sunday Angelus address, which I read yesterday evening...

This is the first condition of Christian joy: to decentralise from oneself and place Jesus at the centre... he is the light that gives full meaning to the life of every man and woman who comes into this world. It is the same dynamism of love, which leads me to come out of myself not to lose myself but to find myself again, while I give myself, while I seek the good of others...

This is joy: directing toward Jesus. And joy must be the characteristic of our faith. And in dark moments, that inner joy, of knowing that the Lord is with me, that the Lord is with us, that the Lord is Risen... This is the centre of our life, and this is the centre of our joy.

Memories... mystery... mission... and a deep, quiet, joy, even in dark moments; the presence of the Love Who gives full meaning to my life...