Luceat!

A couple of years ago when I joined FOCUS staff, I was taught a principle that dramatically reshaped the way I saw the world. Now, as I look back on my experience as a missionary at the University of Illinois last semester, I am reminded of this principle once more as I believe that it points to an integral aspect of the New Evangelization: the call to Joy.

As Aristotle famously asserts in his writing on ethics, all human persons are chasing after happiness - for true, authentic Joy. But the point that most of us miss is that Joy is not an end in itself; rather, Joy is the bi-product of healthy relationships - healthy relationships with God and with one another.

Curtis Martin once commented that the stereotypical college freshman’s dream is to “live the beer commercial:” beautiful women and muscular men, dressed in clothing that leaves little to the imagination, spending hours of carefree timelessness flirting at the beach, with plenty of beer to go around. And everyone seems to be having the time of their lives.

But are they really?

One only has to look into the empty eyes of a man or woman who has made the pursuit of pleasure the end of their lives to know the answer. When we give in to every desire that arises in us, this desires are not extinguished, “on the contrary, (they do) not reach the sources of inner peace and only touch the most external levels of the human individual.” We observe that those “whose will is occupied with satisfying the senses does not find rest nor does he find himself, but on the contrary, he consumes himself.” (Theology of the Body 39:2) The truth is, that by pursuing pleasure as an end, we destroy our relationship with God by cutting ourselves off from grace, with others by treating them as objects of pleasure rather than with the dignity which belongs to the human person, and with ourselves by becoming slaves to our senses. There is no room for Joy in this equation.

By God’s grace, the life that I shared with my teammatesstands in stark contrast to the “beer commercial.” As opposed to grasping at happiness through the pursuit of pleasure, we sought to order our lives towards heaven, seeking to imitate our Lord Jesus Christ by giving a “sincere gift of self” back to the Father, to our teammates, and to every soul whom Christ placed in our path (See Gaudium et Spes 24:3). As a team we prayed hard, we worked hard, and we loved our students with all our might.

And then we played hard! And I had the time of my life! Things that I never would have considered to be even remotely enjoyable activities (…to name a few… a) attending a local High School basketball game and cheering like mad for kids I didn’t know, b) learning the ancient art of line dancing c) drinking a warm PBR out of a can in the middle of an Illinois corn field) were transformed by the company I kept - my much loved U of I teammates. I can’t remember when I’ve laughed so hard! But more than the holy leisure I shared with my team, I found that sharing everyday life with these men and women who grew to be my dearest friends brought me more joy than I ever wanted for myself.

The point of all of this, is that Joy is attractive. It is authentic, not a counterfeit as pleasure becomes when it is pursued for its own sake. Joy is multiplied when it is shared with others; pleasure is diminished. Joy is oriented toward others, while pleasure isolates, pointing us to selfishness rather than selflessness.

And it is selflessness that allows us to find ourselves - to discover our most authentic selves, for it is in giving a sincere gift of ourselves that we find ourselves. This seems paradoxical, yet it resonates in our experience. Why? In short, because we are made in the image of a Trinitarian God who exists as a communion of persons in a relationship of total life giving love. God is Love. Love is to give a sincere gift of self. God the Father, Son, and Spirit give a sincere gift of themselves to each other for all eternity. To paraphrase the words of the Second Vatican Council, the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, reveals man to himself when he offers himself totally back to the Father on the cross, pointing us to the reality that we, like Jesus, cannot fully find ourselves except through a sincere gift of ourselves.

Some refer to this as the “Law of the Gift.” And the surest mark of one who is living a life that conforms with the reality of the “Law of the Gift” is Joy. It was the Joy of the FOCUS missionaries on my campus that made me desire to be a missionary myself, and it is this same joy that continues to draw students to Christ. It is the joy of finding yourself through a sincere gift of yourself, and it cannot be purchased at any price. This Joy has given me not only something worth living for, it has given me something worth dying for…

“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the Joy set before him endured the cross…” Hebrews 12:2