The Joy in the Lord
The Joy in the Lord¹
We are now in the period of the forty days in which the Lord Christ was with His holy apostles, who said to them, “I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” And truly, when they saw Him, they rejoiced in Him. They rejoiced because they saw Him standing among them, having triumphed over death. They rejoiced in His Resurrection and in His power, and because His Resurrection is the pledge of the resurrection of everyone who believes in Him. And the Holy Gospel says: “Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord” (Jn 20:20).
And the matter did not stop at seeing Him, but He spent forty days among them, appearing to them and speaking to them of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God (Acts 1).
And we in the Church celebrate this period, for it is a period of joy, with no fasting in it nor prostrations. We chant in it the hymn of the Resurrection. Even if a dead person is brought into the church in a funeral, we receive him with the hymns of joy and the hymn of the Resurrection.
We live with the disciples this period of joy: the joy in the Lord.
And we would like to speak with you now about the joy in the Lord…
There are many reasons that gladden the human heart, but the deepest of them, and the purest of them, is the joy in the Lord.
Not the joy in the blessings that the Lord gives him, but the joy in the Lord Himself.
God is not merely a means for your joy, but He ought to be the subject of your joy, He is the cause of your joy. And He is your delight and your gladness.
You rejoice first because you have known the Lord and because you have found Him.
Just as the Samaritan woman rejoiced because she found the Messiah (Jn 4), and as Nathanael and Philip rejoiced because they had found Jesus (Jn 1), and as Mary Magdalene and the other Mary rejoiced at seeing the Lord after the Resurrection (Mt 28).
You rejoice because something new entered your life when you knew the Lord, so your life became of value, and of meaning, and of taste…
You rejoice because the Lord has satisfied you… All the matters of the world and its pleasures and delights floated on the surface of your life, but the joy in the Lord entered into your depth for the first time.
But you do not rejoice in the Lord if your heart is attached to something else!
The rich young man found Christ, and yet he did not rejoice (Mt 9). Rather, he went away sorrowful, because his heart was occupied with other things in which he placed his happiness. And as the Scripture says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Those who rejoice in the matters of the world see the commandments of the Lord as heavy. For they are commandments that stand as a barrier between them and their worldly desires, and prevent them from their bodily pleasures, and their hopes that they bind around material things…
These see that the way of the Lord requires from them effort and struggle, in order to conquer the flesh and to triumph over the perverse will, and to resist thoughts, and to control themselves, and to control their tongues and senses and the desires of their hearts, and in all this they deprive themselves of pleasures which they think make them happy!!
Therefore the commandments of God are like a yoke on their shoulders. And they wish to rid themselves of this yoke, as happened at first with the prodigal son, when he freed himself from his father’s house in order to live as he wished (Lk 15)!
But those who have stripped themselves of worldliness rejoice in the Lord who has freed them, so that no material desire enslaves their hearts any longer. As though they say to the Lord: From the day we knew You, and our views of life changed, and by the working of Your Spirit in us we entered into the renewal of our minds (Rom 12:3), and we began to find delight in the spiritual things from which we had been far previously. And the name of the Lord became sweet in our mouths, and we began to find all happiness—our happiness—in the fellowship of the Lord.
There is a great difference between a person who goes to the house of God as a spiritual duty, and his conscience troubles him if he falls short in it, and a person who says from his depths, “I was glad when they said to me, Let us go into the house of the Lord,” “My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord.” Truly there is a difference between love and the mere performance of duty…
A difference between a person who prays because religion commands him to do so, and another person who prays saying to the Lord, “In Your name I lift up my hands, and my soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness”…
A person may begin his spiritual life with the fear of the Lord, but with care and with self-compulsion and with self-denial, he soon enters into the love of God, and his life reaches the joy in the Lord.
There is no doubt that the joy in the Lord is connected with our love for Him.
As with any person you love, you rejoice at meeting him, and rejoice at being with him, and rejoice at speaking about him and everything that reminds you of him. Thus you rejoice in God and in all His work in you, and rejoice that He leads you in the triumph of His victory. You rejoice in the Lord and in His many promises concerning the blessed eternity with Him, as He said in the Book of Revelation: “He who overcomes, I will give him to eat from the tree of life… and to eat of the hidden manna… and I will give him a new name… and he shall be a pillar in the temple of God” (Rev 2, 3).
He who rejoices in the Lord will find eternity joyful, for it is life with Him.
The Second Coming is joyful for those whom the Lord takes up with Him on the clouds (1 Th 4), or those who come with Him in His Coming… It is a joyful Coming, of which the Psalm says, “The earth rejoices… the many coastlands are glad…”
But it is not joyful for those who are exposed to the saying of Scripture: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb 10:31). Those who are exposed to judgment at His Coming, and He says to them, “I never knew you.” Those who fear the day when the books are opened and intentions and thoughts are revealed—these do not rejoice in the Lord. Rather, those rejoice in Him who began the life of repentance here, and tasted the joy of His salvation, and He granted them confidence to be with Him where He is (Jn 14:2).
These do not fear death, but rather rejoice in it greatly. And they do not see it as death, but as departure. As Simeon the Elder said, “Now, Lord, You are letting Your servant depart” (Lk 2). And as the Apostle Paul said, “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.”
Those who rejoice in the Lord do not see the gate leading to the Kingdom as a narrow gate, nor the way to it as difficult.
Rather, the one who sees it so is the one in whom the flesh desires against the Spirit (Gal 5:17). He sees the gate as narrow—he who has not tasted and seen that the Lord is good, and who still struggles against desire and the flesh and the world… He is the one who must resist to blood, striving against sin (Heb 12:4).
But those who love the Lord and rejoice in Him—all His ways before them are straight and sweet. They sing and say, “The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; His testimonies rejoice the heart, making wise the simple” (Ps 19). Rather, each of them says to the Lord, “I have rejoiced in Your word as one who finds great spoil” (Ps 119), “I found Your word as honeycomb and I ate it,” and it is “sweeter than honey and the honeycomb in my mouth”…
So rejoice in the Lord here, that you may rejoice in Him there.
Rejoice in Him and in His commandments and His ways. Rejoice in His Kingdom and His angels. Rejoice in His promises. Rejoice in His power working in you, in His grace working with you, and in His Holy Spirit who shares with you in every good work. “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice” (Phil 4:4)…
Everything that surrounds the Lord is unspeakable joy.
His birth was joy… And in the annunciation of His birth the angel said: “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people” (Lk 2:10). And His Resurrection was joy, for the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord (Jn 20:20). And His sitting at the right hand of the Father was joy, for He put His enemies under His footstool (Ps 110:1). And His miracles also were joy… May I dare even more and say: His crucifixion and His death were also joy, in His saying, “It is finished” (Jn 19:30). For He completed the work of salvation and the forgiveness of sins for the world. And His death was “a burnt offering, an offering made by fire, a sweet aroma to the Lord” (Lev 1:9, 13, 17). A joy for the world which received salvation, and a joy for the Father who “was pleased to crush Him with grief” (Is 53:10). It is joy in the fulfillment of the divine justice for the salvation of humanity…
God, just as we rejoice in Him, He rejoices in us and saves us. For Scripture says that heaven rejoices over one sinner who repents (Lk 15:10). The sinner rejoices at reaching repentance, and God rejoices at the repentance of the sinner. Just as when the lost sheep was found, He carried it on His shoulders rejoicing (Lk 15:5).
So rejoice in the Lord, and express to Him your joy in Him.
Say to Him: O Lord, I live in joy because I feel that Your hand holds me and guides me, and that Your grace strengthens me and directs me, and Your Holy Spirit teaches me everything and grants me gifts to walk in Your ways. Rejoice in every time you rise from your fall. And say to the Lord: “Grant me the joy of Your salvation” (Ps 50). And concerning the joy of repentance, perhaps someone may ask and say:
How does a person rejoice in repentance, and repentance is fitting with tears?
How does a person rejoice, when in repentance there is humiliation and contrition, and in it he wets his bed with his tears? (Ps 6), and he sits in sackcloth on the dust like the people of Nineveh…
I say to you: The repentant feels joy even while drowning in his tears. His tears do not cause him sadness but consolation, and in consolation he finds joy. And the measures of spiritual things are not the measures of the people of the world, for repentance has its sweetness in its contrition, and its happiness in its tears. Rather, if there are no tears, the repentant grieves and is not consoled.
Tears and joy—in the spiritual dictionary—go together. In tears the person is reconciled with God, and by reconciliation he rejoices. And all the works of repentance—fasting, prostrations, sackcloth, and tears—are in the heart springs of joy. And the more a person toils for the Lord, to that measure his joy increases within…
And not only tears are a cause of joy, but even death also…
He who rejoices in the Lord rejoices in death so that he may meet with God.
And many of the saints met the hour of death with great joy… and their faces shone with light. And thus also were our fathers the martyrs: as happened with St. Abba Fam the Soldier, who said about the day of his martyrdom, “It is the day of my wedding.” And we also rejoice in the day of the saint’s martyrdom and consider it a feast.
So rejoice in the Lord who cares for you here and prepares a place for you with Him there. And He considers you as a special son to Him and deals with you in love.
Rejoice that you have a good God, who has no likeness among the gods.
¹ An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, published in Watani Newspaper on 11-5-1997.
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