Today is a day for deep joy, as our choir and band expressed in joyful song on Sunday in Holy Boy, and in a variety of carols and readings in York Minster on Monday night, and in Christmas services around the world today. So this is a reflection about rejoicing.
As Christians, we are actually commanded to rejoice (more than a dozen times in Paul's letters, for example). CS Lewis wrote that: "Joy is the serious business of heaven".
Going back to the law of Moses, God taught his people to not only rest and rejoice one full day every week, but also three times a year to have a proper party. The great feasts of Passover, Succoth (aka shelters) and Pentecost were a full week of celebrating together as a community.
I think we often struggle with this concept because the individualist pursuit of personal gratification (hedonism) follows the law of diminishing returns and ultimately disappoints, so we stop seeking joy. There is also the issue that we often put off joy till tomorrow: we can't be happy until our conditions change, whatever they currently are (until we have a better job, more money, a husband, children etc). And how can we be happy when there is much suffering in the world?
But it turns out this is misleading: often the people closest to suffering have the most powerful joy. Mother Teresa was described by her friends as glowing with joy as she pursued her ministry of mercy. While Dietrich Bonhoeffer was in prison facing the threat of execution by the Nazis, one man imprisoned alongside him reported that:
"he seemed to me to spread an atmosphere of happiness and joy over the least incident, with profound gratitude for the mere fact he was alive".The purpose of rejoicing together is to exercise our capacity to see and feel goodness in the simple gifts of God. We are able to take delight today in something we wouldn't even have noticed yesterday, so our capacity for joy increases.
One person I know who practised this was a friend at work, who set himself a challenge that every day he would find something to delight in or really enjoy or be thankful for. He had previously suffered from depression caused by stress, saying that he had come pretty close to staring down the abyss. Having recovered, he was determined to create a workplace culture where people were not flattened by pressure, and he started with himself. Perhaps we should follow suit.
The next Advent/Christmas Reflection is available here, taking us into the Twelve Days of Christmas and looks at the other side of this coin: lament.
See also:
- Advent Reflections 6: A Time to Lament
- Advent Reflections 7: Finding Our Purpose
- Advent Reflections 1: What are we here for?
- Advent Reflections 4: The Advent Antiphons
- Learning to See
- What a Wonderful World
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