This year I've heard more people than usual expressing the difficulty of finding joy as we approach Christmas. We tend to expect the “magic of Christmas” to automatically dispel our sadness, but worries seem to be sticking around for many this year. The cumulative effects of a pandemic, financial uncertainties, and the ordinary stresses of daily life are leaving some anxious and worried instead of merry and bright. This burden of anxiety is in stark contrast to the command given by St. Paul in the second reading for yesterday, Gaudete Sunday:

Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice! Your kindness should be known to all. The Lord is near. Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:4-7)

At one point when I was in high school, I found myself stressed out about something - I don't recall exactly what - and my Mom wrote those very words of Scripture in a note to encourage me. I appreciated my Mom's thoughtfulness, but I also remember thinking that joy doesn't seem quite that easy. We can't simply replace our anxiety with joy the way we might replace our Halloween decorations with Christmas ones each year, can we? Joy isn't just an interior switch that we can turn off and on at will, is it?

We are not in complete and immediate control of whether we feel joyful or sorrowful, but we are also not helplessly at the mercy of our emotions. We can take steps to resist interior desolation and to pursue the true joy of the Christian life. Christian joy is not something that a select few of us stumble upon by chance, like a winning lottery ticket, but is something that every one of us can fight for, with the help of God's grace. In his Apostolic Exhortation on joy, Evangelii Gaudium Pope Francis said, "No one should think that this invitation is not meant for him or her, since “no one is excluded from the joy brought by the Lord”" (EG 3).

How can we open ourselves up to the true joy that Christmas promises? St. Thomas Aquinas, who was a philosopher with deep insights into the human soul, said that both our joy and our sorrow come from what we love. When we possess what we love, we feel joy, and when we don't possess what we love, we feel sorrow (Summa Theologica II:28:1). The more attached we are to the things of this world - like our money, our social status, our reputation, or even the trappings of Christmas - the more our emotions are dependant upon those things being just right. Because the world around us is constantly changing, and we cannot control it, love of the things of this world leads to emotional instability. True Christian joy increases as we learn to detach ourselves from the passing things of creation and grow in the love of God, whose infinite goodness never changes and who has given himself to us in Jesus Christ.

In short, if our hearts are firmly set on the things of this world, we'll find that we can only be happy when things go just the way we want. If our hearts are detached from passing things and filled instead with the love of God, however, we can be joyful regardless of our circumstances.

St. John of the Cross, whose feast we celebrate every year during Advent on December 14, put it this way:

The entire matter of reaching union with God consists in purging the will of its appetites and emotions so that from a human and lowly will it may be changed into the divine will, made identical with the will of God. The less strongly the will is fixed on God and the more dependant it is on creatures, the more these four passions [joy, hope, sorrow, and fear] combat the soul and reign in it. A person then very easily rejoices in what deserves no rejoicing, hopes for what brings no profit, sorrows over what should perhaps cause rejoicing, and fears where there is no reason for fear. When these emotions go unbridled they are the sources of all vices and imperfections, but when they are put in order and calmed they give rise to all the virtues (The Ascent of Mount Carmel III:16:4-5).

I want to be careful not to be dismissive of those who may be experiencing clinical anxiety or depression. If you are in need of the professional help of a counselor, therapist, or psychologist, don't hesitate to get the support you need! Even for those with such struggles, however, there can be no true joy without the love of God.

As any Hallmark Christmas movie can tell you, Christmas joy is not found in the presents under the tree. What the Gospel alone reveals is that the true joy of Christmas comes from loving the God who came down from heaven to unite himself with us, now and in eternity. We find the true joy of Christmas not by grasping for some vague “Christmas magic” in the midst of our holiday festivities, but by turning our hearts with laser-like precision to the God who became flesh at Christmas. This pursuit of true Christian joy is not quite as easy as plugging in our Christmas lights, but we can be confident that the path to joy - even though it is sometimes challenging - involves focusing more intentionally on our relationship with the Lord who loves us.