“Daniele, before you came here things were a lot quieter.” Padre Gervais said this to me about two months into my permanency here in Florence. Now, yes, it can be taken as a slight criticism, “Daniele, you need to chill out,” but I don’t think that’s what Padre Gervais meant. One of my favorite parts about living here with new brothers is washing dishes together after meals (“table fellowship,” as it’s called). We laugh, we sing hymns, we make jokes, we rib each other good-naturedly, we enjoy each other’s company, just being together. As Psalm 133 says that this brotherhood is “good and pleasant….like precious oil poured on the head….For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.” Honestly, before coming to Florence, I was scared that I would be entering a community that was old, lifeless, and stodgy, following the old-priest stereotype. Sure, Fr. John’s primary e-mails helped quell that fear when I learned about my amazing brothers Padre Lwanga and Gervais, young Congolese priests “who are really excited to meet you.” Padre Gervais said that even in reading my e-mails that I wrote to them before coming, they could tell I was “full of life, joyful.”
Joy has taken on paramount importance in my life since my experience in Urbino. Yes, I know, everything in my life seems to go back to those five beautiful months, but put yourself in my shoes and just try not to be profoundly affected by what I lived. Then you’ll understand. 😉 I need joy in my life. We all do. Joy is what creates Heaven on Earth. 🙂
But even with my firm convictions, I was still wary of the changes that could possibly occur when I entered a convent. Would I have to stop smiling? Could I not laugh like I do (My sister once compared me to Anderson Cooper…see below 😉 🙂 )? Would I have to become deadly serious?
“FEAR NOT!” was the message I got from reading Fr. Jim Martin’s (yes, by now I’m certifiably obsessed haha 🙂 ) Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life. Here’s the answer: “When you’re deadly serious, you’re seriously dead. A better goal for believers is to be joyfully alive.” Fr. Jim says that this conclusion seems obvious, but many people don’t get it, because they’ve been raised in the faith differently. Heck, I wrote a college essay on my early experience in the faith, writing how it was so lifeless that I came away not knowing who God really was. The only time I really understood that God was love was when Sean Forrest came to our church to give my Confirmation retreat, breaking out his guitar and telling us the story about how he saw our Mother during one of his pot binges in Jamaica. He laughed, sang, smiled. He was essentially joyful. And his approached worked. I had never seen my peers cry in school before I saw them cry that night, out of gratitude, joy, and love. Sean Forrest’s joy started my walk to Jesus. As Timothy Cardinal Dolan stated in a 2009 New York Times interview when asked how to increase vocations to the priesthood: “Happiness attracts.” Cardinal Dolan knows what’s up, bro! 🙂
Religious men and women need to live their vocation joyfully. Vocation is service that gives you identity, it is who you are its deepest. And service, in order to be true, needs to be joyful. Rabindranath Tragore, the Indian writer and Nobel laureate, writes,
“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I act and behold, service was joy.”
Father Jim hits the nail on the head in adding:
“In helping others, we move out of our comfort zones, into unexpected areas of vulnerability, where it is often easier to meet God. When we are in unfamiliar places and our defenses are down, it may be easier for God to break in.”
The majority of my moments of grace here in Florence have come from spontaneous moments of service, in which I was thrust into a situation, with no idea what I was doing, said, “O.K., God, you lead me and I’ll follow. I have no idea what I’m doing here.” Ask and you shall receive 😉 and receive a 100 times more than what you ever gave in the first place. 🙂 Service is amazing like that. 🙂
Fr. Jim commented how many believers are waiting to be told that it’s OK to be religious and enjoy themselves at Mass. I’ve been lucky enough to have grown into maturity in the faith in some very joyful environments: the Benedictine Grange in Redding, and Assumption. And I’m sure that my CMCT family and my fellow Hounds are also laughing at Father Jim when they read that assertion. 😉 🙂 But here’s the point of it all: I’m incredibly blessed to be a part of these communities, where laughter is heard frequently, and tears of joy are shed often. 🙂
But we can’t be content living in our own little joyful faith bubbles. In Lumen fidei, Pope Francis writes:
“Our belief is expressed in response to an invitation, to a word which must be heard and which is not my own; it exists as part of a dialogue and cannot be merely a profession originating in an individual. We can respond in the singular — “I believe” — only because we are part of a greater fellowship, only because we also say “We believe”. This openness to the ecclesial “We” reflects the openness of God’s own love, which is not only a relationship between the Father and the Son, between an “I” and a “Thou”, but is also, in the Spirit, a “We”, a communion of persons. Here we see why those who believe are never alone, and why faith tends to spread, as it invites others to share in its joy.” (n. 39)
a sentiment that he puts into overdrive in his recent Evangelii gaudium. How much clearer does he have to be??? OUR FAITH NEEDS JOY IN ORDER TO GROW! IT’S IN THE TITLE! 🙂 🙂 🙂
Here in Florence, I’ve had many experiences where God has shown me that joy is truly one of the most effective evangelical tools. Joy makes people feel at home. It lets them know that you see them purely as a son or daughter of God, not as someone to “save” or “heal.” It lets them know that your intentions are based purely in love. And, no, you don’t have to run up to someone and hug them with gusto, as if you’re trying to squeeze the bad out of them. That will just turn them off. I look to Mother Teresa who says, “Peace begins with a smile.” She adds in another quote, “Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.” She knew that joy doesn’t have to be a grand showing. It’s as simple as a smile, an action that tells someone, “I love you simply for who you are. I love you and I know you’re worth it. I love you and I know God is reflected through you.” We need to live out Jesus’s “discipleship of equals.”
Jesus repeatedly calls on his disciples to be joyful. So why shouldn’t we be? Especially when we think about what our identity as son or daughter of God means: It means that God loves all of you, even in your weakness. Saint Bernard takes this farther in asserting (I’m paraphrasing here), “God doesn’t want my virtue. God wants my weakness.” One of the most amazing things about God is that we can’t make Him love us any less. His love is truly unconditional. Better yet, it’s easier to feel God’s love when you’re broken, cracked, open. There have been days here where I feel unworthy, sad, and ashamed of my sinful state. I think, “Why on Earth would God want me?” But it’s in those moments, where we feel like no one, not even God, should give us the time of day, where He is most present. He’s waiting for us to turn to Him again. And when we do, when we unlock the bonds of shame and unworthiness in our hearts and let Him in, even slightly….HE BUSTS THE DOORS WIDE OPEN!!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂 Trust me, it’s the most amazing thing in the world. Don’t despair, because God is never far away. He’s knocking patiently, even when we don’t want to answer the door…. 😉
So, yes, we’re joyful because we know God loves every part of us. But Christian joy in’t just about identity. It also stems from what Jesus sacrificed for you and me. He took all of our sins upon Himself, and washed them away with His blood. Yes, all of us. He didn’t say, “OK, my sacrifice is for you, you, and you, but not for you.” All of humanity was given new life, a new beginning. A new springtime of the soul. 🙂 Fr. Jim comments that one the most joyful psalms is Psalm 65, in which even “the grasslands of the wilderness overflow; the hills are clothed with gladness. The meadows are covered with flocks and the valleys are mantled with grain; they shout for joy and sing.” The joy of the Resurrection is truly all-encompassing.
But the Resurrection isn’t just about knowing you’re worth it. It’s about knowing for certain that life will always conquer death. This is especially crucial when dealing with the loss of loved ones. Now, I’m not saying we should go up to our friends who are grieving and say, “Buck up! Put a smile on! She’s not really dead!” And even so, it would be really hard to act like this. When Erin and Colleen passed, I certainly wasn’t feeling joy. All Hounds were united in grief, as they should have been. Because death matters. It has to. It’s about really understanding what that person meant (means) to you, the gifts and the joy that she brought into your life. So grieving is natural, vital even. But within the grief lies that belief that Erin, Colleen, and all our angels, continue to live on with Him. 🙂
Joy, when it comes down to it, as Fr. Jim states, shows that we trust God. 🙂 He has our best interests at heart. In his analysis of the development of joy in the spiritual life, Fr. Jim mentioned how many priests in the Medieval church chose to focus on “ways their followers might fail, rather than suggest ways they might flourish,” depicting God as a joyless judge. Damned if you do, damned if you, don’t 😦 I, for one, am so glad I wasn’t born in 1267 😉
Priests should focus more on lightness of heart, rather than heaviness of spirit, he continues. That lightness is often conveyed in stories. I love a priest who is a good storyteller, bro. 🙂 🙂 🙂 When I was an on-campus-Hound, I sat captivated as Fr. Barry and Fr. John paced in front of us telling stories, all the while proclaiming and helping shed light on God’s word. 🙂 Here in Florence, I love listening to Padre Sandro preach. It’s like listening to a grandfather tell you about how things were “back in the day.” I’ve also gotten hooked on Fr. Mike Schmitz’s homilies. He works at the University of Minnesota’s Newman Center, and he is incredibly dynamic, engaging, fun, and funny. When I smile during a homily, I know I’ve gotten something out of it 🙂
Funny. Joy in action is humor. Look at Pope John XXIII. He was a super jokester! 🙂 Fr. Jim writes:
“His humor seemed to flow naturally from his joy. His joy made him comfortable enough to laugh at himself and poke fun at his office and invited others into his humorous outlook on the world. And that joy made him comfortable with the absurdities of the world.”
Humor is a byproduct of joy. Your guard is down because you know God loves you fully, and this freedom is addictive: it puts other people at ease and attracts them, as previously stated. St. Philip Neri was known to shave half of his beard in order to calm his flock. Francis of Assisi was known to preach naked (feelin’ some Indian Lake vibes… 😉 )!
Now, some of you might think, “Well, they’re whack jobs!” But faith needs whack jobs, faith needs people that say, “Chill out, bro. Hang loose. Live big.” St. Paul states, “We are fools for Christ.” And besides, being absurd might mean that you see beyond the absurdity of the world, you understand it, like Pope John 🙂 The jester is often the one who knows the truth. 🙂 Sheik Jamal Rahman notes how in the Sufi tradition, not laughing means that our knowledge is limited, that we don’t understand the true nature of reality. Deep-seeded laughter shows things as they really are. 🙂
Look at the youngest among us: children, who we often feel are foolish and lacking perspective. But Fr. Jim and I know htat to be the farthest thing from the truth. In my years working as a camp counselor for pre-school aged children in Redding, I’ve learned to live with innocence and a constant gaze of wonder, as these children do.
But they also do something else: they don’t take themselves too seriously. As GK Chesterton writes, “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.” I don’t think it’s any coincidence that many of my days as a counselor felt like a free trip to Paradise. 🙂 Those kids are my little angels here on Earth, bro. 🙂 To take the analogy even farther, Karl Barth adds, “Laughter is the closest thing to God’s grace.” 🙂 🙂 🙂
And if we need another source of good perspective, we can always look to the saints. Fr. Jim calls them “companions, fellow travelers along the way to God,” and I couldn’t agree more. After reading the works of a few saints and blessed men and women while discerning, it’s impossible not to want to follow their example. These men and women, Fr. Jim explains, knew to take the long view of things, to laugh at life’s absurdities (and themselves), place their trust in God, and they knew the importance of self-awareness (a realistic sense of their own flaws and foibles). They had a clear-eyed outlook on life, in that they took the serious things seriously, and the not-so-serious things not so seriously.
I need to learn how to do the latter. In discernment, I get caught up in mental knots that sometimes are so miniscule in that they can be undone simply by turning to God in prayer. Which leads into another important area of saintly wisdom: spiritual poverty, a key (and incredibly interesting) element of a sound spiritual life. In a moment of spiritual pride, I think, “I can do it on my own. God doesn’t really need to help. I’ve got this.” But, time and time, again, I end up running to him asking for forgiveness and He says the same thing: “Just trust me, bro.” Trust. Laughing at yourself shows that you trust that God will make you whole, make you into the person you are meant to be, despite your clear human limitations. We are not Jesus. With spiritual poverty, Fr. Jim writes, “you have the freedom to say, ‘It’s not all up to me.'”
I also need to learn how to not be so concerned with what other people think about me, which stems from taking myself too seriously. The other day, I watched Brené Brown’s TED Talk, “The Power of Vulnerability”:
In it, she says this (among others) amazing thing:
“Because when we work from a place, I believe, that says, ‘I’m enough,’ then we stop screaming and start listening, we’re kinder and gentler to the people around us, and we’re kinder and gentler to ourselves.”
See, sometimes I think that I’m not enough for God. I’m not worthy to be discerning. And sometimes that makes me defensive towards others, even internally judgmental. I shouldn’t care what anyone else (including the voice in my head) thinks. I need to look to Jesus. In fact, when I feel these feelings coming on I just close myself in our little chapel and meditate for a bit, look upon the Cross, remind myself that His love and approval is what I should be striving for. And He always gives love (even the suffering is in our best interest), so what do I really have to worry about at the end of the day? 🙂
Fr. Jim also advises that we engage in self-deprecatory humor to help curb spiritual pride. The truly holy are truly humble. This doesn’t mean saying, “Haha, I’m nothing.” It means thinking and living simply, being aware of our own limitations, and being joyful (not pompous) in the midst of accomplishments. Turning the humor on yourself is also a sure-fire way to avoid hurting others. “One of the easiest ways to wound people is to encourage others to laugh at them,” writes Fr. Jim. Before making a joke towards someone else, ask yourself, “Is it true? Is it helpful? Is it kind?” 😉
One of the most awesome jokes I’ve heard in my discernment came in an e-mail from my brother. He wrote simply, “Sorry this isn’t a ‘Daniele-sized’ e-mail….” When I read it, I had to laugh. 🙂 Because it’s true: I write, and I talk, a lot. After apologizing to one of my sisters from Assumption during a Skype chat for having spoken for 10 straight minutes without realizing it, I said I wish I didn’t speak so much and write so much. And she said, “How do you do it?” It takes a great friend to good-naturedly poke fun at your foibles. 🙂 Whenever I think of that phrase “Daniele-sized e-mail” it reminds me to rein in my loquaciousness a bit (which, I admit, may seem pretty ironic judging how long this blog post is turning out to be…. 😮 😉 ).
I can also relate very strongly to Fr. Jim’s claim that joy helps your prayer life. I’ve always felt that being in love is the best state to be in for prayer. No, this feeling is certainly not exclusive to having a boyfriend or girlfriend, a husband or wife. It’s about feeling God’s love, either through someone or something, even an amazing dawn sky 😉
I literally woke up and said, “Wow, God. You rule.” Absolutely breath-taking…. 🙂
When I feel God’s love, I just want to jump out of my skin for joy. I wish I could run up to Heaven and give Him a hug. Karl Barth says it outright: “Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.” But let me be clear: I’m not talking about happiness. Happiness is conditional. Joy is a deep-down feeling, something that truly lifts the soul. There’s a huge difference between a beautiful dawn and a new I-Pod…..Joy teaches us to measure our gratitude in God alone.
Father Jim also suggests that we look to God as a friend, who wants to essentially like us as individuals, not just love us collectively. He, “Can you allow yourself to think of God as playful? Can you allow God to be playful with you? Can you imagine a God who enters into a lighthearted relationship with you? Can you imagine God delighting in you?”
And, Father Jim adds (this is my favorite part of the book….) “Can you surprise God?” Yes, God may seem to have everything planned out. But He also gave us free will, a gateway to great possibilities. It’s our chance to really live, really practice that joy that God gave. So here’s a challenge to me and to you: surprise God. Give Him the biggest smile He’s ever gotten! 🙂 Be that leaven that inspires others to rise ever closer to Him 🙂
It’s impossible not to feel filled with joy after listening to this jam 😉
Journey of the Prodigal Son 