Joy at Christmas

Christmas season is a season of joy. And rightly so because the angels who greeted the Child’s birth were heard to have sung “Joy to the world, the Lord is come!” It was not a mindless joy but joy for an extremely important reason: Salvation of man.

For 42 generations from Abraham to Jesus’ birth the prophets longed and pined for that Bethlehem event. And when it finally happened, who would not rejoice?

The shepherds of course could not rejoice because pure-hearted as they were their simple innocence could not penetrate the mystery behind what they saw. Fear was their first reaction and panic had overcome them. It was only after the angelic apparitions disappeared that they came to their senses and went in search of the newborn Holy One.

Like the shepherds, many of us 21st century folks have not fully understood the meaning of the Nativity. It’s a God-becoming-man affair, we know this. But what’s the big deal? Isn’t God obliged to do something for those he created to populate this planet? Why the hassle about it all? The Church of course has the significance of the event closeted in its treasury of faith. It has tried to open man’s eyes and heart to the grandness of the Divine Love, and to this some two billion Christians have said amen. But saying amen is one thing and interiorizing one’s faith is another. That’s why towards the Nativity there’s a varied reaction even among Christians. There’s a varying kind of joy too.

The devout are joyful because they recall the day of their deliverance. The lukewarm are joyful too for a mixed reason half spiritual half material. But the prodigal? Of course, their joy is phenomenal because completely secular. Their joy is of the world, not to the world, therefore unrestrained and exuberant.

This is the kind of joy that seeks for big bangs and blaze of lights, for wine and songs and partying. The senses are its target filling the cup to overflowing until sanity and reason are flushed down the drain. Eat, drink and be merry; life is short so why not enjoy? A jug of wine and a loaf of bread, and thou beside me singing, O wilderness is paradise enough! so sings a poet.

How good, if there’s real joy in all these. But there’s none. Perhaps, for a fleeting moment one can say he had the best of time. The senses, however, can take in only so much, and before one knows it, it’s already morning and time for reckoning. Then one realizes it was all delusions, colored bubbles that float and entice and disappear with the wind. Then restlessness sets in.

My heart is restless until it rests on Thee, exclaimed a saint. How true! Every heart is never at peace even if it has everything the world has to offer. For the soul thirsts for something beyond the fading gleam, and unless it gets filled with it there’s no way it can take repose.

A person gripped in the claws of the real world cannot of course grasp the import of this truth nor could he feel even a hint of it because the world has drugged him to the core. But if for some strange ways he awakens from his lethargy and returns to the embrace of his Father like the prodigal son, he would understand why he has been restless all these years.

At Christmas most of us Filipinos gravitate towards the solemnities in the church. That’s why at Misa de Gallo we are there as we try to rediscover ourselves in the presence of the Most High. We are there too to quench the restlessness that inflicts our hearts. Many of us have barely enough for ourselves and our families. But our hearts are full of hope that our heavenly Father would take care of our needs, for did not Jesus caution us not to spend our days worrying? (“Do not worry and say: What are we going to eat? What are we going to drink…your heavenly father knows that you need them all…”)

Sure, we know that we don’t have to be poor to be spiritually charged. The Lord said blessed are the poor in spirit, but he also said that he had come to give us life and have it abundantly.

So we strive to make peace with him so that our hearts would be open to the inflowing of his bounty and become stronger supernaturally. Is there joy in this? Indeed there is, for the joy of the Lord comes quietly to the soul like the quietude of the sea at full tide. In the blush of an awakening day, in the silence of an unfolding flower, in the smile of an infant darling – these have God’s quintessence of joy lovingly offered to us – if and only if our hearts are open.

The joy of the spirit of God is therefore a silent joy. It’s not found in partying where eating and laughing abound. Nor in a sojourn to expensive places where the self is lost in its escapade with luxury and splendor. It is found in accepting whatever we are and have been and in placing ourselves in the hands of the Lord..