3rd Sunday of Advent 12.12.10 Joy
We often find ourselves looking forward to certain things, like holidays. The anticipated delight of these events sometimes exceeds the reality. I might see myself enjoying a tropical paradise walking on the sands surrounded by palm trees, but in reality my luggage is lost and I am being eaten by mosquitoes.
In one case at least this letdown will not happen. We dare to anticipate one day going to heaven, seeing Almighty God face to face. This particular joy will be greater, not less, than we could imagine it to be.
This is because with our limited intelligence and experience we cannot grasp these mysteries; but they are no less real for that. We will find a level of happiness there that we could barely begin to describe here (cf St Paul in his heavenly apparition cf 2 Co 12).
Yet we dare to hope. With all our experience of disappointed hopes in this life we know we can feel differently about this one. Even though it is a much greater thing we expect we draw confidence from God Himself.
He has promised us this reward if we are faithful to Him and He never breaks His promises.
He does not promise happiness on our holidays or other earthly projects but He does promise us eternal life.
All other pleasures and joys are subservient to the ‘big one’ – the only one that matters in the long run – eternal life.
Today, Gaudete Sunday, we force ourselves to reflect on the reasons we should be joyful. So that, as the epistle tells us, we should rejoice always and never be anxious about anything.
Whereas, in reality, we are anxious about many things most of the time and hardly ever really feel undiluted joy.
When we reflect on the ultimate happiness to which we are heading we realize how much we have to be pleased about.
The difficulty is how to ‘use’ this knowledge to help us in the ups and downs of daily life.
Of course heaven is not just when we die. We can bring heaven down to us insofar as we can live in union with God already and create paradise-like conditions around us by the way we live.
(Paradise at least in terms of things like love and justice. We can't stop it being hot or cold or eliminate sickness but we can at least behave like we are in heaven.)
There are two clouds on the horizon:
One, that we are not entirely sure these things are true. We believe it to some degree, but we still allow doubts to assail us. What if there is nothing there? We need reassurance. We need more faith.
Two, that we fear we might not make it to heaven, because too sinful.
We can work on these two difficulties.
As with all things we need God’s help. If we are to rejoice we need to ask Him to help us rejoice, to deepen our faith, to come to know Him better. To know Him to such a degree that we can never doubt for a second that He will honour His promises and bring us to Heaven.
The other cloud: that He will forgive us, and give us grace to live holy lives, and so possess salvation with absolute certainty. (Not the complacency so prevalent today that everyone goes to heaven... I mean a real certainty.)
With the hope of heaven to anchor us we can deal with any rise or fall in present circumstances. This is the basis of our joy; and it is a joy that nothing can take away, unless our own renunciation of faith. Not being that silly, we allow the joy of eternity to filter through our everyday lives until we arrive at this place where all hopes are fulfilled.
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