The Word Of Peace
Homiletic Reflections On Peacemaking

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time - C

Jan 14, 2001

The Joy of Jesus

Faith is the supremely comic act. It takes joy in the fact that God enjoys people. It freely acknowledges the fact that we are owned. The believer is permitted no frowning disdain on the world’s passing parade….the Gospel announces that history’s final destiny has been graciously fixed in joy.

How true these words are from Pastor Ralph Wood. They are words that reflect the joy at the heart of the Gospel. And yet this joy can so easily be misunderstood as happiness. We know that joy and happiness are related but we also know that we are not happy every moment of our lives. Sometimes we grieve; sometimes we are angry or confused. But we also know that we are happy at times—but even more, for the believer there is a fundamental joy that runs through all experiences of life. For human beings happiness is usually fleeting, but joy is eternal. It the joy that comes from faith in the promise of God that all will be well. Isn’t this what we celebrate and hope for at wedding feasts?

Christian joy can best be understood as that confident hope and assurance that God’s reign is here and is coming in such a way where the disappointments and tragedies of human life will be taken over by the unlimited joyful love of God. This is what we see in the Wedding feast of Cana. This scene from John’s Gospel is rich in revelation. Jesus performs the first of his signs or miracles in Cana. But there is more here than water being turned to wine. This is the new wine, the wine of the Messianic feast of the Kingdom where joy and real life will be the order of the day. Just as the wine has been changed from water so are we called to change in the depths of our being that can only come from an intimate relationship with Jesus and the Father. This is the way that leads to the wine of joy that comes in relationship to Jesus.

This scene from John reveals that God enjoys people and wants share His joy with us. In accepting this relationship with God we accept that joy into our lives. St. Thomas Aquinas put it this way:

Sheer joy is God’s and this demands companionship with God.

God’s joy results in hope. It is a hope that says despite your exiles in life I am with you; I am coming to liberate you from the suffering and oppression that you have experienced in life. These exiles will and do take many forms. Some exist in the exile of drug addiction, homelessness, physical disability, political tyranny, self-hatred, and all of us from the still existent nuclear threat. God tells us in his Son that this is not what God wants for human beings. It doesn’t have to be this way. In Jesus we have God’s joy incarnate as the Word that is both dangerous and liberating. For the things and powers that oppress human beings, attempting to rob people of their joy this Word is dangerous. It is dangerous for the things and powers are shown to be illusions of power. Their power is temporary and has no future—it is nothingness. For those that proclaim this Word, living it in the world, they become dangerous because they undermine the powers with God’s hope and joy that say things will be different. Yet even in this dangerous situation a person or community can witness to the truth because they know the joy of the eternal kingdom and cannot be satisfied with less and will protest against any pretenders

This is a liberating Word because it assures us that the things and powers that attempt to rob us of our joy are illusions, temporary, even when they appear so real and invincible. M. Ghandi once remarked that he was able to go on even when his cause seemed doomed to failure because he understood history and the power of God’s joy. He knew that evil appeared invincible-that is key to its illusion—but that it was empty and eventually it would be shown to be a lie and would collapse. What’s more, we are assured that we will be given the gifts as a community to brings God’s festal joy to the world. Each gift is given to various members so those members can work together to make God’s dangerous and liberating joy present to the world.

We have seen this here at St. Joseph’s. Some members of our community have given their time and skills to help save a home for a Bristol resident, turning her anxiety and fear into peace and joy. Some members of our community have signed a petition to have the U.S. and Russia to take thousands of nuclear weapons off alert status in order to reassert the right of the people of the world to live free from this evil. Some members of our community visit the sick with communion; our priests visit those in prison. Still others have participated in programs designed to draw closer in solidarity with those that are suffering in the world.

The chief motivating and empowering factor, which compels our members, is nothing other than the joy of God in Jesus Christ. So long and as often as we surrender to this joy the more evil must give way in our world pointing to the coming messianic banquet with God, others and the world. Joy is the gift from our loving God that is always available to us when we turn to this God. Life will still come at us with trials and pain but these things are temporary and illusionary. If we accept God’s companionship into our lives then despite what happens and when good things happen to us God’s dangerous and liberating joy will be ours.

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.
Uploaded January 13, 2001