I have always loved going to coffee shops to read books or write while listening to jazz, especially when autumn comes around. There’s something quite nice about sitting in such a warm and cheery place while the breeze begins to blow, the leaves turn their golden hue, and the world bustles on in the dreary winter weather. Around this time of the year, people begin shopping for Christmas, wreaths are put up on lampposts, and baristas play Christmas music. And it’s wonderful! But it’s easy for us Catholics to forget that we’re still in Advent.
Advent is a time riddled with paradox. During this season, we anticipate the celebration of a Virgin giving birth to God who became man. And though this happened in the fullness of time two thousand years ago, we still wait to celebrate it. In Advent, we are situated in the “already but not yet.” In the “already but not yet,” we joyfully await the Lord’s coming while the whole of creation groans for redemption.
It is fitting that the Church’s liturgical season reflects these great Adventen paradoxes. We sing the Alleluia, the season is filled with joyful anticipation, and the prayers are filled with themes of comfort and deliverance. And all the while, we don’t sing the Gloria, our priests wear violet, and we make small acts of penance to help prepare our hearts for Christmas.
This quasi-penitential season leaves us with an interesting question: what is the role of joy in the midst of the “already but not yet?”
As we enter further into Advent many of us will be faced with this tension between joy and sacrifice. In the midst of family gatherings and the holiday cheer, it is quite easy to over-indulge the “already” while losing sight of the “not yet.” I, myself, know the difficulty of keeping an Adventen mindset. “It’s not Christmas yet, it’s not Christmas yet,” I say, as I sip my hot chocolate and my cousins unwrap their gifts to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas…
It is in these moments that our spirit of joy seems most at odds with the season. But perhaps there’s no real contradiction. I would argue that joy is ultimately inextricable from a spirit of self-offering, and that in the quiet days leading up to the Nativity, we can sit solemnly with the Lord and offer a sacrifice of joy.
We hear in Psalm 27, “and now my head shall be raised above my foes who surround me and I shall offer within his tabernacle a sacrifice of joy.” In the scriptures, we often hear about sacrifices of goats and rams, offerings of incense, offerings of prayer, and even of praise. But a sacrifice of joy is less obvious.
How can joy be a sacrifice?
Well, we can certainly become habitually joyful in the midst of sacrifice by the grace of God. St. James exhorts us, “count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet various trials.” Enduring hardships allows us to draw near to the Lord when we offer those hardship up to him, and the same is true of our fasting and our prayers. And this is cause for joy! I think none of us are strangers to that. Although penance can be harsh and cold in the moment, it contains a hidden sweetness which rises up to the Lord. And as we grow closer to him, we too can begin to experience that sweetness of sacrifice, and joy becomes the fruit of our suffering. But perhaps joy and sacrifice are related in an even more intimate way—not just as effect and cause, but as object and action, respectively. Perhaps we can offer a sacrifice of joy itself.
G. K. Chesterton beautifully describes joy as “the gigantic secret of the Christian.” He explains that while Christ was bold to share his sorrow with us, plainly showing his tears, and while he shared his anger with us, throwing tables across the temple, “there was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.” With reverence, Chesterton ponders that it was his merriment, his laughter, his joy that he shared with the Father when he went up to pray.
In our post-puritanical culture and post-jansenistic religion, we are seldom encouraged to meditate on the laughter of Christ. But when we think of how our Lord truly acted in his humanity, we shall find that he happily accepted the hospitality of others, that he delighted to share meals with friends, and that he engaged in clever wordplay with those to whom he was ministering.
And likewise we know from the Psalms, “how pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity,” and how “wine gladdens the heart of man.” God created the world fully intending to bring us joy through that which he created, and Christ was no stranger to this. We can offer those things back to the Lord through a sacrifice of joy.
When we think our penances are the only thing we can offer—that the Lord desires only our sufferings—we oversell the weight of our piety and we undersell his goodness. I don’t mean to diminish the role of fasting and penance, but rather to point out how we limit our ability to make sacrifices to the Lord when penance becomes the only object of our sacrifice. But we can offer more than our penances to the Lord—we can offer those things that bring gladness to our hearts. When we offer prayers of thanksgiving and joy to the Father for all he has given us, we invite him to share in our joy. When we offer him our joy, we invite him into the present moment with us, that we might delight in him, just as he delights in us.
In seasons of penance, I should clarify that we ought not seek to indulge our desires, particularly as it pertains to entertainment, food, and drink, but rather that we can accept the charity and hospitality of others so long as we maintain a spirit of gratitude.
Christ shows us how to hold the things in which we find joy: with an open hand and a thankful heart. Likewise, we should view such things with reference to the joys of heaven—not valuing them for their own sake, but as a foretaste of things to come.
When I hold tightly to the things he gives me, whether that be a cookie at the insistence of my grandparents, or the freshly brewed coffee that I sip in the morning, or an edifying conversation with a dear friend—or even the friendship itself—I exclude the Lord from my joy, and these things turn into objects of greed. But conversely, when I shun these things, I close myself off to the joy the Lord wants to give me.
There is also a Marian dimension to all of this. In the months leading up to the Nativity, our blessed mother waited with joyful anticipation for the birth of her son. And her act of self-offering to the will of the Father is what prompted her to say, “my spirit rejoices exceedingly in God, my savior.” In those quiet days, with open hands and a thankful heart, blessed Mary was radically receptive to what the Lord had for her. And she rejoiced because there was cause for joy! She was to bear the Word of God in her womb! What a gift! And what did she do with that joy? She offered it back to the Lord. In offering her sacrifice of joy, our blessed mother invited God into that moment and allowed herself to delight in him, as he delighted in she who was full of grace.
And St. Elizabeth and St. John the Baptist echoed her receptivity, anticipating the coming of the Lord with great joy at the Visitation. St. Elizabeth couldn’t help but sing those words which we now pray every day, and St. John couldn’t help but dance in his mother’s womb.
“Rejoice in the Lord always,” St. Paul urges us, “again I say, rejoice. Indeed, the Lord is near.”
St. Peter Catholic Student Center | Waco, TX
Ryan P. Both 