By Sister Emma Luz, O.C.D
My first year teaching, I remember creating a bulletin board with a quote spread out across the chalkboard, “Joy is the echo of God’s life in us.” I’m not sure what my fourth graders understood by this, but it was a good reminder to me that joy comes by abiding with the Lord dwelling within me and that it is not dependent upon circumstances or events. It’s a feeling of deep inner gladness and delight in God within the soul, a perfection formed in us by the Holy Spirit and a kind of foretaste of eternal glory, heaven experienced now.
Many times in the Gospels, Jesus reveals to us what joy is and how to possess it. “I have told you this so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” (Jn. 15:11). Jesus is promising us the same experience of joy He has in the Father which is a giving in all fullness. “God is not close-fisted” as St. John of the Cross would say. When He gives, He gives an unmeasurable outpouring of His love, always, eternally, and it trickles into our hearts like an endless, eternal flowing stream when we open ourselves to it.
St. Paul reminds us, “God’s love had been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given us” (Rom 5:5). When we have proper ordering in our life, joy comes because our priorities, what’s most important and meaningful affect the choices we make. You have probably heard of the acronym for JOY: “JESUS first, OTHERS next, YOURSELF last”. It’s a pithy way to express this right order in our relationships. There is joy in giving, in living for others, being forgetful of self. Christ in us makes this possible to live. He is the source of our joy because He alone is the One who upholds and sustains us at every moment of our existence. In His providential embrace, may we find the completion of joy in Him, the first fruit of eternal glory.
