Passing All Understanding
Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message
30 June 2021
“Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.”
--Pierre Tiellard de Chardin, SJ
“And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and mind in the knowledge and love of God, and of his Son, Jesus Christ” –Post-communion Blessing, BCP p. 339 .
We open our worship, whether Daily Prayer or Holy Eucharist, usually with some kind of Song of Praise. In Holy Eucharist, we usually sing the Gloria “Glory to God in the Highest and Peace to God’s people on earth”. In Morning Prayer we sing either the Venite (“Come let us sing to the Lord, let us shout for joy to the rock of our salvation”) or the Jubilate (“Be joyful in the Lord all you lands. Serve the Lord with gladness and come before his presence with a song”). There is a call to joy in all these opening rites. Even in Penitential Seasons, we sing an opening canticle, the Kyrie Pantocrator, that praises the mercy and loving-kindness of God.
All this emphasis on joy and peace was summed up well in Psalm 100, known to many of us in the metrical form of the early reformation:
All people that on earth do dwell,
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice:
Serve him with mirth, his praise forth-tell,
Come now before him and rejoice!
Know this: the Lord is God indeed,
We are his own, he did us make;
We are his folk, he doth us feed,
And for his flock he doth us take.
So enter then his gates with praise,
And in his courts his love proclaim;
Give thanks and bless him all your days:
Let every tongue confess his name.
For God, the Holy One, is good,
His mercy is for ever sure;
His truth has always firmly stood,
and shall from age to age endure.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow
Praise Him all creatures here below,
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Why all the joy? On bad days when I am getting off to a slow and little depressed start of the day, sometimes I can feel pretty cynical about it. And when we are suffering, it seems not to fit at all. But the striking thing is this: singing a joyful invitation to prayer each day does in fact change how I feel, and I regularly find myself recharged and peaceful, if not outright happy, by the end of the prayers. Peace, which passes all understanding, is a quiet kind of joy.
Joy in the face of the pains we regularly run into in life is the calling of the Christian. “We are the Easter people and Hallelujah is our song!” said John Paul II. Working from the foundational assurance that God is love, God is good, and God is here, we see beneath and beyond pain and trial when they occur. Grief, mourning, and yearning after loss are all healthy and normal response to hard things.
As Rumi said,
“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”
Sometimes, we need to roll up our sleeves and just reach out and grasp the joy already here at the heart of God’s creation: “God’s Reign is at hand—be happy and change your way of thinking!” says Jesus (Mark 1:14). As Fra Giovanni Giocondo wrote on Christmas Eve in 1513 to his friend,
“There is nothing I can give you which you do not already have. But there is much, very much, that while I cannot give it, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instance. Take peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. Take joy! Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty . . . that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.. for you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.”
Our smile may come from our joy much of the time, but sometimes, it is our smile that can of itself help bring joy.
Living here in the beauty of Southern Oregon, even with wild fire smoke in the air that triggers memories of trauma from the Almeda fire last year, we must daily remember that God placed every blade of grass and every flower out there to be a source of joy for us.
“Open my lips, O Lord,
And my mouth shall proclaim your praise.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
And renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence
And take not your Holy Spirit from me.
Give me the joy of your saving help again
And sustain me with your bountiful Spirit.”
--BCP p. 137, opening psalmody for “Daily
Devotions for Individuals and Families”
(BCP, p. 137), an adaptation of Psalm 51
As we live as resurrection people, we must live in joy, or at least in the deep and content peace of God. It does pass all understanding. Reminding ourselves each day in prayer of the peace and joy that come from our faith in and experience of God is a key practice in maintaining joy as the default position of the Christian heart.
Grace and peace.
--Fr. Tony+
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