On Sunday morning, I was at mass at a church in North Carolina. I arrived 20 minutes early and the parking lot was already filling up. By the time mass was going to start, the church, which can seat 750 people, was full. It was to the point that ushers were walking around finding space for people. It’s a large parish, with over 1,500 registered families and four weekend mass times, but I was still surprised to see the church so full. At my parish, I am used to attending mass with a lot of empty space, where you pretty much always have a pew to yourself, except for maybe someone else on the opposite end. It’s a small community, but there is not a lack of Catholics in the area, as evidenced by the number of families who send their kids to religious education. I often wonder, where is everyone? Maybe they have forgotten or have never discovered the joy of the Gospel and what God has done.
At mass, the priest gave a great homily about joy and what it means in our lives. He talked about how the nativity story, God becoming man to save us and so we could know Him, is a great reason for joy. But for many people, we’ve heard it so many times that we can forget how amazing it really is. He talked about our faith being the one place we find true joy and about how to live it in our daily lives.
There are a lot of misconceptions about what joy actually is. It’s not always feeling happy and excited, as these are feelings that are dependent on circumstances and can drift away. Joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit and it comes from an awareness of God’s presence and a relationship with Him, bringing a sense of peace. It is a deep inner state that remains no matter what is going on around us.
The greater trust we have in Jesus and the greater love we have for Him, the more our joy will increase. And this will be reflected in our lives.
It seems like many people are searching for joy in all the wrong places, looking in the world for something that is but a fleeting moment of happiness. There is a great joy found in Jesus and knowing Him and the Nativity story reminds us of this. My prayer for each of us is that we would not forget what God has done for us and the joy that comes from it!
Faith and The Good Stuff 