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Brookline Carmel Bulletin                         J M J T

April 24, 1960

 

 

Cogitatio Sancta

(Holy Meditation)

 

Easter Joy

 

 

“Haec dies quam fecit Dominus:  exsultemus et laetemur in ea!” – “This is the day which the Lord hath made:  Let us be glad and rejoice therein!”  These words from Psalm 117 are sung again and again in the Mass and Divine Office of the Easter octave.  They express the joy on Our Lord’s final triumph, His victory over death itself.  This joy should have a very personal note for each one of us, since it was Our Lord’s victory over death which enabled us to be victorious over this most certain of all realities.  We know that we must die, but we know that beyond the portal of death lies another life.

 

Christian joy is not always easy to understand, much less to attain.  It is not the superficial joy of the worldling when “everything’s going my way.”  Such joy tends to evaporate when a morning comes that is not so beautiful.  Christian joy is deeply rooted in the Christian Faith.  It would be wrong to make it consist in pleasures of sense or in worldly prosperity.  Such things are too ephemeral to afford the lasting peace upon which Christian joy is built.  That peace can come only from a firm faith – a firm conviction that God loves us, that He sent His Son to redeem us, that His Son did indeed redeem us by His death on the cross, that as a result of this redemption we are eligible for a place in heaven, where an everlasting joy shall be ours.  The Christian joy we experience here on earth is a foretaste of that everlasting joy of heaven.

 

The pagans seek an earthly paradise.  They theorize that if conditions in the world can be made perfect, then every one will be happy.  The Jews of the Old Testament often fell into this error.  The Apostles expected Our Lord to set up an earthly kingdom.  Even many Christians put far too much stress on earthly prosperity as a requisite for happiness.  It is true enough that we should strive for a betterment of conditions in the world.  Christians have always been outstanding in this program.  Yet we deceive ourselves if we think that there will ever be a time when conditions here on earth will be perfect, as long as human nature remains what it is.  There will always be some trials, some sufferings, some injustices to be borne.  It is not the absence of these things that will bring true happiness, but a proper Christian attitude toward them.  We must be in the world but not of it.  Our Lord’s kingdom is “not of this world.”  Our joy as Christians must come not from this world, as such, but from the supernatural world of which we are members by divine grace.  Our life of grace is the initial, “earthly” stage of our life of glory, which will reach full development in heaven.  It is in this life of grace that our true Christian joy lies, and this joy increases as our participation in the life of grace increases.  The closer we are to God, the more conformed we are to His will, the more joy we shall have.  But this joy will never consist in a life free from all inconveniences and sufferings, nor in the possession of a comfortable amount of earthly goods.  No man can guarantee us such a life, no matter how sublime his theories of social betterment.  Only God could grant us such a life – but He does not.  And if He does not, it must be that such a life of painless ease would not be good for us.  He allows the inevitable crosses to come into our lives as a painful reminder that our thoughts should not rest here below but should rise to higher things.

 

A Christian who finds no joy in his faith must revise his notion of what true joy consists in.  The aridity that God often causes in a soul has for its purpose to bring about such a revision – to wean the soul away from lower, earthly pleasures and to develop in it a taste for higher, spiritual joy.  This process is often long and painful.  St. John of the Cross describes in frightening terms the horrors of the “night of sense” and the “night of spirit.”  Yet we should realize that the suffering is due to the soul’s slowness to relinquish its old ways of thinking and acting.  It is the gift of contemplation itself – the sublime supernatural joy of being intimately united with God – which at first causes intense suffering, because the soul is not yet able to appreciate it.  But gradually, as the soul’s “taste for Higher things” develops, this intense suffering turns to intense joy.  “You shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.”  (John 16:20)

 

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