Fundamental Joy

"Man is more himself...when joy is the fundamental thing in him...."

The other day I had the privilege of seeing two friends at the most joyful peak of their lives thus far—and bearing what seemed the most radiantly-happy beaming faces I have ever seen.  It was a glimpse of true love.  In that joy they seemed all the more themselves, as if the joy arose from their evangelical descent into the truth, shedding away all layers of falsity and pretention and leaving only their bright shining souls.

My heart rose in answer to their joy.  I wanted to be so gloriously, unashamedly myself.

Their joy seemed too deep for words, as if it must burst forth from them in acts of self-giving love.  For these two dear young women were taking the next step in their new mission of service, taking new names for each to encapsulate her individual mission as she ventured further into the heart of Christ.

I also have no more words: merely joy and awe and gratitude to have attended the Mass where these two Sisters received their habit and took their new names.  God's blessings be upon you, dear Sisters!

Now I will leave you with the full quotation of which I gave you a glimpse above, taken from Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton:

"Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live…. The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick-room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear."