Joy

Joy always rises at the most surprising times and in the most unexpected places. Here are three unlikely proponents of joy: a comedian, a novelist, and a pope.

First, the comedian. Stephen Colbert is currently star of The Colbert Report and one of America's funniest personalities, but there's more to his story than most television viewers know.  His father and two brothers were killed in a plane crash when he was 10 years old, and he was raised primarily by his mother.  Her faith marked him for life.  He teaches Sunday school and attends mass regularly with his family.  Colbert once appeared at Fordham University with Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan to discuss "humor, joy, and the spiritual life."  He told a packed crowd that "joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God."

Next, the novelist. Frederick Buechner adds his own light to this matter of joy:

In the Gospel of John, Jesus sums up pretty much everything by saying, "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full" (John 15:11). He said it at the supper that he knew was the last one at which he'd have a mouth to eat with. Happiness turns up more or less where you'd expect it to — a good marriage, a rewarding job, a pleasant vacation. Joy, on the other hand, is as notoriously unpredictable as the one who bequeaths it (Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words).

Finally, a pope weighs in on the matter of joy. Above everything else, John Paul II embodied passion and joy in Christ.  Consider this observation: "It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal."

Joy comes from an unshakeable confidence in God and an immovable conviction that He is for us. C. S. Lewis wrote that he was "surprised by joy." Joy will always be a surprise, but it will never be an accident.