Editor's Note
How Joy Feels
For a few years now, I've kept a journal. I don't manage to write daily, sometimes there are gaps of a week or so, but over time the journal has still been a good emotional and spiritual "weather log": By tracking the ups and downs in my life, I learn a little about myself and some of things I need to work on to be the person God intended me to be.
The other day I came across an old entry from a "low" patch. I'd written simply, "Where is joy? What does it feel like?" As I tried to remember the times I knew I'd been joyful, the feeling was easy to identify. It wasn't happiness (as Bishop Burbidge points out in his column this month), it wasn't some kind of ecstasy, like you see on the faces of winning game show contestants. The feeling I remembered from those times was a rush of gratitude – a spontaneous need to thank God, right then, for my life, for His gifts to me.
Benedictine Brother David Steindl-Rast has written wonderfully about gratitude and joy, and he points out why the two are connected: "That remarkable ‘plus' … is added to my joy as soon as I perceive that it is given to me by another, and necessarily another person." In other words, our souls somehow know that joy is not something we can give ourselves. It is given to us by others, and by God.
This month, as Easter arrives, you'll read about a special kind of joy experienced by four men and women who, like more than 600 others in our diocese, are completing spiritual journeys which have led them to the Catholic Church. You'll also learn (on page 6) what the Church tells us about the joyful completion of all our journeys, "the life of the world to come." I've wasted my share of time wondering, as many of you may have, What is heaven like? I have no idea. One thing I'm sure of, though: When I arrive, the first words out of my soul will be "Thank You."
Thank you, readers, for your letters and input. You can write me at 715 Nazareth Street, Raleigh, NC or reece@raldioc.org.
- Rich Reece
Richard Reece is the editor of NC Catholics.