Mariano Fortuny. Naked Old Man in the Sun. Museo Del Prado.
Sing, my tongue: sing my hand;
sing, my feet, my knee,
my loins, my whole body.
Indeed I am His
choir.
-St. Thomas Aquinas
Joy is at the heart of the way of Christ. Jesus entered the world on a high note of jubilation: “I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all people.” 1 He left the world bestowing His joy to His disciples: “These things I have spoken that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”2 Joy, in the process of our redemption, is the ultimate of divine gifts.
The carefree spirit of joyful living is a holy sacrament when it is lived in acceptance of its sufferings and in celebration of its myriad joys. All of life flows in intimate proximity to the sacred, and this proximity endows everything that exists with ultimate meaning, supernal beauty, and marvelous mystery. Such beauty extinguishes our separateness and ignites in us an extraordinary knowing that all of life is held in the mystery of God’s love. To live immersed in this flow is to live in vibrant harmony with all of life. When this joyous wave swells in our hearts, its crest infused by wondrous Light, the awesome reality of God trembles through our veins, opening a glimpse of the Eternal—the Beyond in our midst. God answers with love, our trembling awe.
Learning to savor these moments of joy and heightened perception brings us into a more profound oneness and love relationship with God. Penetrating our hearts is the realization that we can live perpetually in this jubilee of freedom in spite of the pain. From this divinely enabled space flows the redemption of our families, communities, and all of society. Such freedom and joy cannot help but call forth celebration.
One morning I got up early to walk up the mountain. It was a brilliantly sunny day, and I don’t think there is anything more beautiful than the early morning sunlight highlighting a color change. It is so exquisite it makes you cry. I walked and walked and walked and filled up and filled up and filled up, but I just couldn’t get enough of the warm feeling of God’s presence. So when evening came, I went to a place where the sun sets and closed my day with God, looking out over the glorious painting of creation that He had made and makes new every fall. I was experiencing a profound sense of oneness and knew that God was walking with me. I understood, finally, that God’s love encompasses all of creation and all of humanity with oneness. He creates it all, loves it all, and sustains it all. I was waking up to the wonder and beauty of God in a deep, deep interior place. God, for me, was coming out of the box I had put Him in with my opinions, fears, and cultural conditioning and was speaking to me through the magnificence of that spectacular color change.”
The Hidden Life Awakened p165.
I walked out of myself today
into a light so pure, so bright
it gilded my meadow in a mystical way
as to make it a paradise, a place to pray.
I had never been bathed in such Love before.
The shadow lines stretched long and westward,
mountain upon mountain upon mountain.
My eye, the only moat in the endless beams
of grays and of blues and of greens.
O Love, struggling to break through,
why am I so blind to wondrous things?
The hush of Your Presence that the meadow brings
are but fragments of infinite loving, never my own.
The depths of Your secrets are still hidden from view
way beyond mountains, meadows, and skies.
Please, Love, embrace me, open my eyes,
burn in me brightly, light the whole world.