Silent Joy

I believe our Christmas joy this year is a silent one. It is more profound but less wondrous, more extensive but less exuberant, more calming but less soothing. It has a disquieting sadness at its core. Bells don’t jingle and ring as much as toll.

Yet, with all its silence, we still recognize it as joy and open our hearts once again.

I thought of this kind of joy during WOC’s 45^th Anniversary Celebration. What a magnificent history; what brave pioneers; what energy and vision, what indefatigable diligence and dedication! If we achieved nothing else all of these years, we got to know and learn and receive inspiration from each other. What a gift! And yet we also did achieve so much; our Church and church experience has been transformed forever with new and ever-expanding models for the future happening worldwide. 

There is certainly much joy in that, but, alas, it is a still a quiet one. Forty-five years! All that hope and effort and striving still muted – and gender discrimination and exclusion in priesthood, in ministry, still persisting – in the largest religious institution in the world.  The core of sadness in the core of joy also persists in taking its toll.

I can even go further: The joy of promised release from the pandemic’s horrors is mitigated by the suffering and grief it has already caused. The joy of a new vision of national leadership is constrained by the huge task of reconciliation that still needs to happen. The joy of holiday feasts and feasting is blunted by the memory of those who are still so hungry or homeless or in danger.     

Silent joy, though, is still joy. Maybe that is why I am grateful this particular Christmas for the many gifts growing up Catholic has brought to me. Louise Erdrich in her novel, Future Home of the Living God, for example, quotes Thomas Merton: “With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst.” We know that presence in tales told to us every day. 

Author Robert Stone once wrote: “I think growing up Catholic, taking it seriously, compels you to live on a great many levels.” And so we float up and down among our levels of joy. Luckily, we know how to do that.

I wish you a joy-filled Christmas.