A Pope Francis Lexicon by Cindy Wooden

Author:Cindy Wooden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Published: 2017-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

Joy

Timothy Radcliffe, OP

The face of Pope Francis, the best known in the world, is nearly always filled with joy and so it is fitting that his first apostolic exhortation should be called “The Joy of the Gospel.” “ ‘The identity card of a Christian is his joy, the joy of the Gospel, the joy of having been chosen by Jesus, saved by Jesus, regenerated by Jesus; the joy of the hope that Jesus is waiting for us. . . . In the crosses and sufferings of this life,’ Christians live that joy, expressing it in another way, with the ‘peace’ that comes from the ‘assurance that Jesus accompanies us, that he is with us’ ” (homily, May 23, 2016). We cannot preach the Gospel if we are “sourpusses” (Evangelii Gaudium 85).

This joy that pervades all that Pope Francis says and does is not just an emotion or a forced jollity. It is a sharing in the very being of God, the mutual delight of the Trinity. The promise of the Lord is that “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek 36:26). A heart of flesh will feel both pain and joy. The contrary of joy is a dead heart unable to feel anything at all. Indeed, suffering can hollow a space for a larger joy than we could have imagined.

In Amoris Laetitia, Francis assures us that the joy of a marriage may be deepened by shared trial: “Joy also grows through pain and sorrow. In the words of Saint Augustine, ‘the greater the danger in battle the greater is the joy of victory.’ After suffering and struggling together, spouses are able to experience that it was worth it, because they achieved some good, learned something as a couple, or came to appreciate what they have. Few human joys are as deep and thrilling as those experienced by two people who love one another and have achieved something as the result of a great, shared effort” (130).

Francis’s first expedition from Rome after his election was to Lampedusa, the island near which so many refugees fleeing Africa have perished. He lamented that we had lost our capacity to be touched by their pain, which means also a shrinking of our capacity for joy. In Buenos Aires as archbishop he was not so constantly joyful, pained by the suffering of his people. All this gave him a heart of flesh that overflows with the joy he now shares with the world.

This joy is to be shared with everyone, as boundless as the universe. “The joy of the Gospel is for all people: no one can be excluded. That is what the angel proclaimed to the shepherds in Bethlehem: ‘Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people’ (Lk 2:10). The Book of Revelation speaks

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