"Recovery of Joy"

Meditation for a Sunday morning

  "The kingdom of God does not consist of food and drink, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit." 

(Letter to the Romans, chapter 14 verse 17, NET)

"From its very beginning Christianity has been the proclamation of joy, of the only possible joy on earth... Without the proclamation of this joy Christianity is incomprehensible. It was only as joy that the Church was victorious in the world, and it lost the world when it lost the joy, when it ceased to be a credible witness to it. Of all accusations against Christians, the most terrible one was uttered by Nietzsche when he said that Christianity had no joy... 'For behold, I bring you tidings of great  joy' -- thus begins the Gospel, and its end is: 'And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy...' (Gospel of Luke 2.10, 24,52). And we must recover the meaning of this great joy.

Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World (1988), p. 24