What is joy? We might hear many people describe it synonymously with happiness; the dictionary defines it as “a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.” But in that sense, joy seems a shallow experience — a surface level emotion that will shift as soon as the cause of pleasure fades.
The film “Inside Out” provides a very helpful understanding of the importance of letting ourselves feel sadness to find healing, but for much of the movie, the character Joy is a rather pushy personality, determined to keep Sadness “under control” and ensure that Riley remains her parents’ “happy girl” even when she is experiencing loss and challenges in a new city and school. Again, this doesn’t seem to reach to the heart of what joy is really about.
Understanding freedom
The world we live in proposes that the only way we can find joy is by choosing to live however we like. This is the same world that pushes children and teenagers to define themselves by their own preferences, from stereotypes that somehow measure someone’s masculinity or femininity and yet are also to be rejected as norms, to staking one’s identity in one’s sexual attractions and choosing one’s own pronouns and name. All of this seems to stake joy on personal choice.
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Freedom, of course, is a must for human thriving. However, as Pope St. John Paul II said, “Freedom consists not in doing whatever we like, but in having the ability to do what we ought.” The world we live in thinks freedom is about autonomy and self-determination. However, our faith tells us differently. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: “With creation, God does not abandon his creatures to themselves. He not only gives them being and existence, but also, and at every moment, upholds and sustains them in being, enables them to act and brings them to their final end. Recognizing this utter dependence with respect to the Creator is a source of wisdom and freedom, of joy and confidence …” (No. 301).
God creates all that exists, and he does not do so in a once-and-for-all fashion. God is continuously creating and infinitely creative. God not only gives me my life, but God sustains my life. God not only gives me existence but also my identity. He creates me as male or female in love. He gives me my personality and gifts. He calls me by name.
It comes from receiving
Joy is also one of the 12 fruits of the Holy Spirit. What I think is so interesting here is that joy comes from receiving. Pope Benedict XVI said that joy “is the expression of happiness, of being in harmony with ourselves, that which can only come from being in harmony with God and with his creation.” Joy is something that comes from receiving who I am from my Creator. My choices that I make for my own pleasure do not necessarily lead to joy.
This is why so many people, I think, are confused about their own unhappiness. They do what they want, and yet they feel empty. However, when I receive from the Lord with open hands and open heart, and I receive from him my existence, my identity, my purpose, my mission, then I can know with confidence that he will not allow anything to come my way that I cannot face with him. On the night before his own great suffering, Jesus told the apostles: “Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid. … I have told you this so that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be complete” (Jn 14:27, 15:11). Later in the same discourse he says, “take courage, I have conquered the world” (Jn 16:33).
Accepting suffering
In my experience, joy is related to freedom in the sense that we have the ability to choose how we respond to our circumstances. Viktor Frankl explained this in his memoirs about his time in Auschwitz as a prisoner. He said: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” We cannot control whether or not we will suffer. We live in a world that is broken by sin and on its way to being redeemed (insofar as we are cooperating with God’s grace).
The Church is full of saints who experienced intense suffering, and yet were known for their incredible and contagious joy. Pope Benedict XVI said: “It belongs to the nature of joy to be radiant; it must communicate itself.” Look at the smile of St. Teresa of Calcutta, even as she was in the midst of intense spiritual dryness and desolation. Look at the joy of Pope St. John Paul II, a man who had seen his country suffer through so much and had lost many of his friends and his entire family before he was 25. Look at the joy of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, who said: “You ask me whether I am in good spirits. How could I not be so? As long as Faith gives me strength, I will always be joyful. … the purpose for which we have been created shows us the path; even if strewn with many thorns, it is not a sad path. It is joyful even in the face of sorrow.”
Joy is a gift
How is this depth of joy possible in the midst of suffering? I think the answer is found again in the receiving of our identity. When I know who I am because we know whose I am, then no matter what happens to me, I can know that I am loved by God and I am willed by him to be here in this time and place. St. Josephine Bakhita, a victim of slavery and incredible abuse, once said: “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.” Even if I am in sorrow, I can know that God has not permitted this sorrow without being able to bring something infinitely more beautiful out of it than I can imagine. And that confidence in God’s love for me and his abundant goodness is the cause of my joy. Jesus and his love are the cause of my joy. (One of my favorite titles for the Blessed Mother is “Cause of Our Joy”.)
Joy is a gift. It does not come from self-creation, but from receiving who we are from God. It does not come from making myself lovable, but knowing that I am loved. It does not come from my own choices, but from choosing in harmony with God’s loving plan for each day of my life. It does not come from my circumstances, but from the God who is with me in all circumstances.
Don’t just choose joy, sister. Receive it from the One who loved you into existence.
