Flee Fear By Joy
During Vespers last Wednesday evening I noticed a theme recurring throughout our evening of prayer: flee fear and pursue joy. Fear is a brutal tyrant, demoralizing everyone under its thumb, fomenting anxiety and second-guessing, and sewing discord and doubt in the fields of our lives. As heinous of a master it is, many people often find themselves enslaved to it in lesser or greater degrees. It can even masquerade, at times, as wisdom.
But joy, joy is something else entirely. Joy is a well-watered garden from which all life flows and overflows into life upon life. Joy is the life-giving nutrients in the vine that feed and are made manifest in the fruit of the vine. Joy is a life of simple contentment, resting in and on Christ.
Fr. Alexander Schmemann (For the Life of the World) wrote some forty years ago "...from its very beginning Christianity has been the proclamation of joy, of the only possible joy on earth." But that joy is not always made manifest in the life of the Church. Schmemann again: "Of all accusations against Christians, the most terrible one was uttered by Nietzsche when he said that Christians had no joy."
I'll be the first to confess that, at times, Nietzsche's statement accurately describes my life. I am not joyful because I have handed over the keys to Fear. More than that, I have forgotten–not merely the knowledge of, but the very reality of–what it means that Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again. Since (not if) this mystery of the faith is true, how can I not be a person of joy? That's an honest question. What reason or rationale do I have to not be joyful in all things? Perhaps it comes down to "I have forgotten my first love."
This is, in part, why worship is essential to this life and the life to come. There is much in this world that hampers us, weighs us down. We have need to be raised up on eagles wings as we do in our liturgy and worship, that we might be drawn back to our first love once again, to be fed his Word and to sit (for a while) at his Table.
Grace & Peace