Mirrors of joy

In May the Southern Cross pilgrims travelling in the Holy Land and Italy with Archbishop William Slattery attracted attention from other visitors to holy shrines when they sang the hymns at their Masses in exuberant African harmonies.

Pilgrims and tourists would stop to watch the liturgy being celebrated not with solemn gravity but with an energetic joy which was unfamiliar to these observers, who likely were used to more reserved hymn-singing at Mass and at holy sites.

We have also witnessed jubilant enthusiasm at successive World Youth Days as young people showed their joy in being Catholics, in loud cheering as well as in quiet prayer.

This is the image which Pope Francis keeps asking us to project to the world, echoing the challenge St Paul posed in his letter to the Christian community of Philippi: “Be joyful always” (4:4).

Pope Francis, who has a way with vivid language, recently asked those in the consecrated life to not wear “the face of a pickled pepper” but instead to be visibly joyful, because joy, he said, is contagious.

It is a message that is also directed at those who are not in the consecrated life.

Joy, Pope Francis has said, “springs from an encounter, a relation with others; it comes from feeling accepted, understood and loved, and from accepting, understanding and loving others”.

This is why, he said on another occasion, God expects us to be merciful and loving towards others.

According to Pope Francis, “God always wants this: mercy and not [people] going around condemning everyone.”

Indeed, there can be no true Christian joy in locating the sins of others to judge them.

There can be no Christian joy in the act of judging and condemning others when one is, inevitably, also burdened by sin—indeed, the act of judging others is an occasion for sin. What hypocrisy resides in us when we presume to judge without first revealing our own sins?

Where is the Christian joy in Catholics making severe pronouncements about the lives of other people, as if the final judgment falls under their jurisdiction?

Where is the Christian joy in doctrinal grand-standing, that contest for asserting greater adherence to orthodoxy, where matters of doctrine and discipline seem to trump Christ-like love?

Where is the Christian joy in angrily denouncing those with whom one disagrees, instead of engaging with them in the spirit of a shared faith?

There is no visible joy in doctrinal contest, in condemnation, in anger towards others.

Doctrinal contest, condemnation and anger give the Church a contorted face, like the pickled pepper of Pope Francis’ simile. How can such a Church communicate the Good News? How can it evangelise?

Of course, we are not called to pretend to be happy when we are not, to grin absurdly when we are feeling sad. Our joys and our hopes are the flip side of the sorrows and despair that frequently accompany us on our life’s pilgrimage.

But even in our grief, suffering and powerlessness we have the interior joy of consolation in Christ through prayer, the sacraments, Scripture and the promise of salvation which provide us with God’s gift of the life-giving waters of hope.

Pope Francis put it like this on Palm Sunday: “A Christian can never be sad. […] Ours is not a joy that comes from having many possessions, but from having encountered a Person: Jesus, from knowing that with him we are never alone, even at difficult moments, even when our life’s journey comes up against problems and obstacles that seem insurmountable.”

Our faith—including its network of teachings—gives our lives purpose and meaning. This is why Catholics must present their faith to others not as something restrictive, but liberating.

In talking about their faith and in celebrating it, Catholics must show the world that their faith brings joy, as the South African pilgrims in the Holy Land and the young people at World Youth Day did with such an attractive passion.

This is the key to the New Evangelisation: all Catholics are called to be mirrors of joy.