Day 7: Leaped for Joy

“For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy.”

-Luke 1:44

Me with a cookie, unable to find true joy from processed sugar

There are many days in our lives where “joy” is not the immediate emotion we experience waking up. Maybe it’s an emotion we don’t experience as much as we would like. When we think of joy, our first inclination is to think that it is just an emotion, but if we really ponder it, we realize the joy has to be a supernatural occurrence within ourselves. We see throughout scripture that joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23). That means it’s not something we can artificially create within ourselves. Unfortunately, we don’t experience true joy when we eat a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie, or when we get a new phone. Joy could never be something so trivial as that. 

I think the moments where I have experienced the deepest joy in my life was during moments of encounter with the Lord. My spirit “leaps for joy” when I find myself reflecting on a moment of ministry with the poor or the lost. I experience joy through the mercy of God after going to the Sacrament of Confession. Here, it becomes joy because God helps me through situations that I know I would not have the strength to do on my own, and it’s shared joy when I am united in that spirit with friends and family who “love me into joy.”

When we go to Luke’s account of the Visitation, we read that the child “leaped for joy” in Elizabeth’s womb. We can be reminded of what Jesus said about the faith of little children in this moment. Someone so small, so insignificant that they’ve never even seen the outside world can experience profound joy, even before taking their first breath outside the womb. True joy is found in God. We don’t pursue the feeling of joy because there’s no need. The God of Joy, Emmanuel, makes His dwelling among us. We can’t help but find joy in this fact!

I believe it was this same pursuit of spiritual joy that drove St. Francis to make the first nativity set. It’s the same light within that allows our hearts to see further than our minds. Within Our Blessed Mother, Christ first appears vulnerable as an unborn child. We can learn from such pure examples as those who wait joyfully for a God who cannot wait to be with us. 

It can take a lot out of us to try and be joyful when there is nothing “joyful” to see. If we are overwhelmed by the apparent lack of joy in our world today, we can take a few minutes and consider the lack of joy in Jesus’s time: Roman oppression, war, conquest, and rampant slavery with no end in sight. False joy can be in short supply in the world, but that wakes us up to real joy! If it is God’s gift to us, it can’t be counterfeit: the joy we can experience in anticipation for Christ’s arrival becomes all the more powerful in times when life is deficient in happiness.

This Advent, let nothing rob us of the fruit of the spirit. Joy is a precious gift that leaps freely from our encounters with Christ. Let us place our worries, fears, and despairs on Him, because our dark cold night gains a radiant warm light with every visitation of our Divine Joy. 

Question for Reflection: In a world where joy can be temporary and fleeting, how can you focus on the joy that comes from encountering God?

Br. Sam Roberts is a Capuchin Franciscan Friar studying at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He is currently a graduate student of theology in the M.Div program and is in his third year of simple vows. He loves to hone his passion for videography and photography through the @capuchincollegefriars Instagram page as well as creating videos for the Capuchin Province of St. Augustine. He enjoys time out with his Franciscan brothers, skiing, film, listening to music and playing the bass.