Joy!

In the Gospel, Christ Our Lord says, again and again: "I have come that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete." But he also says: "There is a place in the plans of God for hardship, for suffering, for pain."

How do you harmonize these two-pain and joy? With God, all things are possible. And he does it! He gives us both at once: hardship, suffering, pain, laced with laughter and joy!

During the Japanese Occupation, in the internment camp at Los Baños, we suffered for lack of water. In the section of the camp where all the Religious were – the priests and nuns – called Vatican City, we had one faucet that gave water. The internees would troop down to this single, solitary faucet, with various containers, and line up for hours, to get water and carry it back to their barracks.

But, on rare occasions, the faucets in the wash rooms – one wash room between every two barracks – would run with water. Strangely enough, it was always sometime after midnight, about two in the morning. When this happened, the nuns in Barracks 20 would get up, and flock to the wash room, and do their laundry. It was hardship, suffering, pain to wash clothes at two in the morning, but they were so grateful to have water, and to be able to wash their clothing properly! For them, it was a joy.

And this joy is contagious! One nun was picking her way carefully down the middle of our muddy street, in the rainy season, wearing her bakya, and an old Englishman was leaning against a post in our kitchen – where we cooked the rice for everybody – watching her. He said to me: "I have read about it. I have heard it many times, in song and story. But this is the first time that I have seen it with my eyes – the whiteness of a nun’s veil?" It is true!

The whiteness of that veil, which the Sister washed at two in the morning, was a grace for the quiet, gentle, old Englishman. It meant the purity of the nun, the sanctity of the nun, the beauty of the nun, in the middle of the rain and mud, in the middle of all the hardship and brutality of war.

When the paratroopers jumped on us, the guerrilleros, who had been lying outside the barbed wire all night long, began to fire at the Japanese inside the camp. The bullets were singing through the barracks of the Sisters. One nun was a talker. Somehow, she never seemed to stop talking. The first bullet shot the coffee cup right out of her hand. She gasped, swallowed, and said: "That was the best cup in the barracks!" Then she lay down flat on the bamboo floor to avoid the bullets that were flying through the barracks.

For a full minute, she was quiet. Then she turned to the nun next to her, also lying on the floor, and said: "What was I saying?" The nun, to whom she spoke, laughed for a full five minutes. She said: "She lost her train of thought! This must really be something big!"

The bullets were whistling over their heads. The Japanese were running up and down the barracks, firing at the guerrilleros through the windows – and the nun on the floor could not stop laughing. It was hardship, alright. And suffering and pain. But it was laced with laughter. And with the joy of liberation.

The same thing happens with men. Commander O’Callahan, who was a Jesuit, and whose blood sister was a Maryknoll nun stationed in Quezon City, was on the Carrier Franklin. It was hit when no respectable carrier wants to be hit. The planes were lined up on the flight deck, when the Japanese squadron came out of the sun and destroyed them all before they could take off. Seven hundred men died on the Franklin in the first five minutes. The ladders leading up to the flight deck were crusted with bodies.

Father O’Callahan and members of the crew were throwing the ammunition overboard. It was stored in an ammunition room on the deck. They knew that if that room exploded, it was the end for all of them. They formed a line between the ammunition room and the nearest railing of the ship, and were passing the shells from arms to arms. O’Callahan tried to lift one of those shells, later, and could not get it off the deck. But in the middle of the action, he was carrying each shell like a baby. And he was praying: the Our Father, the Hail Mary. The sailors joined him in the prayer, while handing the shells from man to man. The sailor next to Father O’Callahan began to laugh. He said: "Gee, Father, this is different, huh? This is praise the Lord, and dump the ammunition!" The agony of war, laced with laughter!

Later, there was one loose shell rolling around loose on the burning deck. A sailor was playing a water hose on the shell, to prevent the heat of the burning deck from setting if off. O’Callahan leaned close to him, and shouted in his ear, over the roar of the flames: "Don’t play the water on the nose of that bomb! It is sensitive. It might go off!" The sailor looked at him, smiled, and then laughed. He said: "Yeah, Father, yeah! Let’s not take any extraordinary risks, huh, Father?" The bullets of the Japanese fighting planes were chipping up the deck on both sides of them; the ship was wrapped in flames; it was heeling over, so that one railing was almost on the water; and the priest and the sailor were laughing. Hardship, danger, death, and joy.

In the ordinary life of our people, it happens all the time: the mother with her newly born baby. The delivery was filled with pain, but when the baby is placed in her arms, she forgets the pain, for joy that a man has come into the world.

The father who is struggling to pay the tuition of his children at school, sacrificing to buy for them the things they need. His little girl gets to Grade Three, and he buys the white dress for her First Holy Communion. When she has made her First Communion, and comes to him afterwards, puts her arms around him, and kisses him – there is more joy in that than anything a man could buy for money in a night club.

When father and mother come up on the stage, at high school graduation, to hang the medal around the neck of their child – it has been hard to get this child through all the years of school. Night after night they stayed up, together, trying to see how they could make both ends meet. But that moment of graduation – the diploma, the medal, even if it is only the Loyalty Medal – is pure joy.

And when they reach their Golden Wedding, the bride and groom always weep. They are looking back on a rough journey, on some stormy days – but the beauty of lasting love touches them to the very soul. It is only here, in this life, that we have that magnificent mixture of light and shadow, of mountains and valleys, of laughter and tears. This is what makes life such a beautiful adventure.

Happiness is like a butterfly. If you pursue it, you will never catch it. If you turn away from it, and concentrate on doing what God wants you to do, it nestles on your shoulder.

God has given the Filipinos hardship, suffering, pain . . . . but with it, great joy. This is what amazes every foreigner who comes here. It fills them with wonder. "They have nothing! And yet they smile, and laugh, and love each other, and are very happy! How does this happen?"

The secret is the Gospel. We are a Christian nation. God has touched us with his hand, and it is like the touch of a King. If there was a sub-title for the Gospel, it should be:

The Way to Happiness by Christ Our Lord.