There are no sourpusses in this photo...
only a sour pup! But that's ok, we'll cheer him up
by reading Evangelii Gaudium! Cheer up puppy!
Afterall, it is Advent!
One of the common threads in many, if not most papal documents, is this tendency to look at the world and sigh. Not literally of course, but with reflections of how bad things are among human beings. Perhaps it's a necessary stage of reflecting on the state of the world, one that is necessary to help us understand what we're dealing with in our every day life, so that our faith can better interact with the world. At the same time, I don't always appreciate these reflections: Not all of them are rooted in reality, but are simply 'simplifications' or an 'generalization' of the situation.What gets me more irate, is the fact that many times, Popes aren't afraid to take an honest look at the world, but they hold back from taking an honest look at problems among the faithful.
Pope Francis has not shied away from this in his papacy, and even less so in this document! Already, in the section we looked at yesterday, he was bemoaning the fact that there are Christians who live their faith as if it were Lent without an Easter. (EG 6) Sounds like a radical statement, but in section 7 and 8, he clarifies that a bit more by lifting up a mirror to the universal Church, and the world. He uses the wisdom of Paul VI's Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete in Domino to speak of our world that has been so bombarded by occasions of pleasure,that it struggles to find joy, and worse, is much more prone to complain if their occasions for pleasure are not met. (EG 7) Catholics are unfortunately not immune from this dependency on pleasure, especially pleasure generated from wordly goods. I include myself in this group: I don't know how I'd live without my laptop and music!
Francis backs that statement up with a simple truth that only a few people truly know: The happiest people in the world..those who truly know God's joy, are the poorest of the poor (EG 7). They don't cling to useless possessions, they don't let 'things' define them. To quote Porgy and Bess, having plenty of Nothing is plenty enough for them. And by the way: no, Francis is not saying that only poor people can be happy. God's infinite love flow out to everyone, and we all receive some of that love and joy in our life. He's merely saying that those who are poor rely more on that authentic source of joy than the rest of us who depend on external things for joy, like a faster internet connection provided by Rogers, who it appears, are trying to convince us this season that faster internet will double our joy.
And when don't have that faster internet of that flat screen tv,or can't find the right video to watch -or don't have access to it-... yeah,we might become like sourpusses. We might look to those who do have what we want, and may become bitter and sad. This is why, the encounter with Jesus ( EG 1, 3, 7,8....apparently joy isn't the only big theme in this document!!) is so crucial in this season: It 'liberates us from narrowness and self absorption' ( EG 8). It is this encounter that takes us away from the sadness, and into the joy. This is a nice idea, but as we've already seen in previous entries, this encounter is not without its challenges: Francis suggests that we can only become fully human when we let God "bring us beyond ourselves to attain the fullest truth of our being." In other words, to encounter Christ, to be at one with God, we need to go beyond our understanding of the human experience. Personally, I would not want to be the one that goes out into the world with this message: " Sorry, whatever you're doing now, that's not your full humanity. I know you feel you're living life to the fullest, but all you're doing is filling your days with stuff to do. That's not living life". Ouch.
And yet...it makes sense: Once you've discovered the fullness of God's love in your life, things aren't the same. You're not as concerned about watching all the latest t.v shows, or getting the nicest clothes. Suddenly, your spiritual health, your connection to others, and your appreciation for the simpler things in life increases and blossoms. And once you have discovered it, why would you want to keep it for yourself (a point that was made in the second blog entry in this series). This is where evangelization comes in! Oh, I know, like this idea of the fullness of our humanity, it can be a scary word for us. I guess, all we can do is pray that God give us the freedom to receive the scariness, and to with the help of the spirit, and the heart of Jesus in our own hearts, turn it into joy!
7. Sometimes we are tempted to find
excuses and complain, acting as if we could only be happy if a thousand
conditions were met. To some extent this is because our “technological society
has succeeded in multiplying occasions of pleasure, yet has found it very
difficult to engender joy”.[2] I
can say that the most beautiful and natural expressions of joy which I have
seen in my life were in poor people who had little to hold on to. I also think
of the real joy shown by others who, even amid pressing professional
obligations, were able to preserve, in detachment and simplicity, a heart full
of faith. In their own way, all these instances of joy flow from the infinite
love of God, who has revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ. I never tire of
repeating those words of Benedict XVI which take us to the very heart of the
Gospel: “Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty
idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon
and a decisive direction”.[3]
8. Thanks solely to this encounter –
or renewed encounter – with God’s love, which blossoms into an enriching
friendship, we are liberated from our narrowness and self-absorption. We become
fully human when we become more than human, when we let God bring us beyond
ourselves in order to attain the fullest truth of our being. Here we find the
source and inspiration of all our efforts at evangelization. For if we have
received the love which restores meaning to our lives, how can we fail to share
that love with others?
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