Bring Joy

On the Over-Seriousness of Today

The current age, with its technologies, its wars, its uncertainties and anxieties, is a gloomy and worried age. Rates of depression and anxiety have skyrocketed among younger generations and there is an ever-present burden upon everyone’s shoulders. The constant terrible photos and videos of the news cycle weigh upon our minds and hearts, as we are forced to hear about everything happening everywhere, all the time. Our phones and laptops keep us connected, even when we might desire to be left alone.  This is, certainly, a very serious age: we take everything seriously. Our jobs, our families, our economy and political affiliations, and, most dangerously, our religion. It has become a Serious Matter to attend Church on Sundays, to receive the sacraments, to profess the Creed. Of course, the Faith should be celebrated and embraced with dignity, but one of the key words is that it should be “celebrated.” Our faith is not meant to only be a dour and depressing hour of our week, in which we all silently sit and wait for it to be over, our minds and hearts occupied with the myriad horrible things occurring around us.

It ought to be a joyous part of life. Not only is the calendar replete with many first and second class feasts days, which demand celebration and excitement, but every Sunday is a solemnity in its own right. They are, in fact, so important that their solemnity overrides even the great penances of Lent and Advent. This art of celebrating, of coming joyously to the Mass and to the Faith, has been lost, and yet it is crucial to the completeness of the Church. We are not simply mourners, on the penitential road. We are Saints-in-the-making, on our way to the world of the Church Triumphant.  In The Man Who Was Thursday, G.K. Chesterton wrote, “A characteristic of great saints is their power of levity. Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly… Solemnity flows out of men naturally: but laughter is a leap.” The greatest saints were certainly described as being joyful for the Lord: as being bright beacons of gladness and peace. Do we ever read, in a biography of Francis of Assisi, that he was dour? That he spent his day frowning and fretting? Was he not, instead, an example of good cheer and good humor to everyone he encountered?

As Catholics, we are called to be “of the world, but not in it.” We are called to live in God’s kingdom on earth. Oftentimes, this is taken to mean that we should not care overmuch about the material world, or be burdened by the transience of things. It also means that we should allow the darkness of any given moment to swallow us, for there is nothing that can extinguish the Heavenly joy we have been given: the Resurrection. There is perhaps a tendency in the Catholic world to focus on the more penitential aspects of our faith, at least in the modern age. We remember the Crucifixion, maybe more vividly than we recall the Resurrection. But the Crucifixion, we might be tempted to forget, is certainly not the end of the Christian story. In some sense, it is really only the beginning. Every day, around the world, every priest recapitulates the Sacrifice of our Lord. But not of our dead and gone Lord: of our Living Lord. Christ is Risen, He is Risen indeed! In this, we might be well served to learn from the example of our Orthodox brothers and sisters, who focus much more on the Resurrection than on the Crucifixion. That is not to say, of course, that one must be remembered to the exclusion of the other; however, in a world where darkness is so present and enveloping, there is an even greater need to remember the Good and the Joyful. Every age has its vice and its virtue. In some ages, the merriment and frivolity of the people must be off-set by the austere and demanding practices of penance; in some ages, the shadows of the world must be combated with pure and brilliant joy at the mystery of our Salvation. 

We live in such an age. Joy has become our greatest weapon against evil, for evil does not thrive in light-hearted gladness. To paraphrase Chesterton once more, the devil fell by gravity, that is, the gravity of his own seriousness. Our greatest means of conversion is not through apologetics or through rational argumentation. We live in a world steeped in arguments and debates; it is not something that people are searching for more of. What people are searching for is a place to belong, to lay the burdens down, and to find joy once again. That is something that the Catholic Church can fully offer: that we ought to embrace: that we ought to celebrate.