Choosing joy, despite the facts

My next “Faith Perspectives” column for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is a re-write of an earlier post from here back in February. Some of the details have changed but the theme hasn’t…My column went online this past Friday and was in the print edition Saturday morning. You can read my column below or online here: http://bit.ly/2PYGdQf

Kentucky novelist, poet, cultural critic and farmer Wendell Berry once entreated his readers to “Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.”

As Catholics, that can be a tough idea to get our heads around in the current state of uncertainty and doubt surrounding the abuse scandal and the subsequent divisiveness in some  quarters of the institutional Church, for it requires openness of mind and heart on our part. Like in all aspects of our lives, choosing joy requires a willingness to accept what life hands us with gratitude for what we have already received. It is, for example, looking death in the face and being thankful for life.

Choosing joy is an inclination to see the beautiful despite the ugly, and it is an invitation to see the dignity of human life despite those who would have us denigrate people and ideas we don’t agree with or understand. It is a chance to find the very best in others when all the cultural mores and signs direct us to find their faults and take advantage of them.

Perhaps especially within the Catholic Church right now, joy is a choice we must be prepared to make, even though the facts can be a bit disheartening and hope for deep and real change seems distant. Despite the facts, joy can still be found because we can still allow ourselves to be formed by our faith in Jesus Christ and his teachings of love, peace, justice, service to others, forgiveness and salvation.

Choosing joy means deciding to embrace the beauty of the church, its liturgy and traditions, and the searing truth of the Gospel while we wait for the many, many good priests and honorable leaders of the Church to find a way forward through the dark of the current moment. There have been many such moments in the history of the Church and these dark moments will not be the last. We are an imperfect church filled with imperfect people and we will continue to falter. What we must not ever be is a church that looks the other way when injustice occurs. Our foundation in the love of Christ tells us we are and must be better than that.

For me, choosing joy over the facts means continuing to seek the peace and communal unity  that flows from bringing myself before the altar each week, from kneeling before my still-creating and ever-creative God, from immersing myself in words of scripture, music of worship and fellowship of other Catholics.

For there is joy to be found in the midst of our ordinary days if we only look a little harder and more closely, if we only remind ourselves more frequently to be aware of the gifts that constantly flood our lives, if we remain diligent and committed to improving the lives of those around us who are not as fortunate, if we embrace justice for all instead of prosperity for a few as the guiding principle of our faith and life.

Choosing joy is not a call to blindness, to ignoring those things we would rather not see. Rather, it is a call to see our lives and world with new and joyful eyes of faith and then set out to help bring about real change, whether serving one person or helping to reform an institution in need of healing from the inside out.