Friends, Fathers, and Joy

I’m afraid I have not read any Abolition of Man this week.  I have entirely failed.  I don’t think Mary made it much farther, but blame me!  I stole her away from her hometown to come visit me J  I felt bad leaving a week behind, though, so I thought I would just share something small with you.  I have been thinking a lot about the Screwtape Letters this past week and one particular passage seems to keep cropping up in my mind:

“You will see [Joy] among friends united on the eve of a holiday.”

Such a short statement for something so important and complex as the concept of Joy!  And yet, with my birthday this past week, with seeing Mary again this weekend and having all of my friends together, and just this evening as my family celebrated Father’s Day for both my own dad and my brother whose first daughter will be born this July, I have found that Screwtape managed to summarize the concept surprisingly well. 

It is difficult to describe the language of the heart and it seems so often that Joy can only be described in such a language.  But as I sat in my living room today surrounded by six people who love each other despite all of our hardships and dysfunctions, I swear I could almost feel that “acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience” that we glimpse in these small celebrations and reunions, in laughter and music and dance.  This will be the experience of entering heaven – like the moment when you see a friend and only then realize just how much you missed him.  Like coming together with your family on the eve of a holiday.

How can the devil break through where there is Joy?  Perhaps that is why Screwtape gives it only one line in his letter.  There is nothing a devil can say to tempt us away.  God is Joy in the same way that He is Love.  When we allow ourselves to be filled with Joy, to speak with it, and laugh in it, we come closer to Our Father.  So when you hand your present to your dad on Father’s Day, play the piano with him no matter how terribly, and listen to his puns, listen as your heart speaks the language it knows.  Allow yourself to be caught up in the Love and Joy of the present moment and you will be caught up in the constant outpouring of Love of the Most Holy Trinity.  This is how the Son loves the Father: not by suffering alone, but with great Joy.  May your hearts be filled with such Joy on this wonderful solemnity.      

Happy Father’s Day.