“Dear friends in Jesus, a preacher was preaching his congregation that they should make their facial expressions harmonize with whatever they were speaking about. For example, he said, ‘When you speak of Heaven your faces must light up, your eyes must shine and those with you must find you joyful and rejoicing.’
‘Then what should our faces be like when we speak of hell?’ Asked the man from the back of the church.
‘Well,’ the preacher said, ‘When you speak of hell your normal face will do.’.
Dear friends in Jesus, how are our faces today? Do they look happy or gloomy? What is the impression people around us get when they look at us? Do they count us as people who are joyful, or do they take us to be people with long faces? According to the Word of God, a Christian who is gloomy is a contradiction. It is because faith in Jesus and gloom do not go together. A Christian should always be happy, no matter the circumstances. This is what St. Paul tells us in today’s second reading. ‘Rejoice, always and again, I say rejoice.’ Yes, dear friends, joy should be the bedrock of Christianity. It is not something that is just recommended to us Christians, but rather something that is demanded of us. It is one of the many obligations we have as Christians. St. Paul makes it very clear when he says, ‘rejoice, because this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.’ 1 Thessalonians 5:18 and needless to say, whatever is the will of God is also the command of God for us. And why should we Christians be happy and joyful? What is the basis of our joy? Prophet Zephaniah in today’s first reading gives us a clue when he says, ‘God is in our midst.’ Yes, dear friends, this is a reason for Christian joy: God’s unceasing presence in us, with us, and among us. He is not only with us, but also adopts himself to all our conditions. He suffers with us, when we suffer, weeps with us when we weep, laughs with us when we laugh. He becomes our food when hungry, our drink when thirsty, our medicine when we are sick and our lives when death takes us over. Yes, someone rightly said our God, he’s a chameleon God who changes colors according to our needs. An important question we got to ask ourselves today is this how come we Christians do not look joyful with such a loving and powerful God with us? It is because God is always with us, but we are not always with Him. Catherine of Siena once asked God, ‘God, how come you are so close to people in biblical times and so distant to us now?’ God smiled and said, ‘It is because those people felt a need for me, but the people of your time do not.’
Dear friends in Jesus, for us to feel God’s presence and His joy in our life we should feel the need for him always. There is no way we can feel His presence and joy when we think we can manage our affairs ourselves. The secret of joy is in the word itself. As someone said, joy is spelled. J. O. Y. J stands for Jesus and just as J is the first letter of joy so Jesus should always be first in our lives. O stands for others and just as O is the second letter of joy, others should come second in our lives. Y stands for you and just as Y is the last letter of joy we should always think of ourselves last. Therefore, to bring true joy into your life always think of Jesus first, others second and yourself last. And our prayer today is Lord, let us know that joy is your will for us. Amen.”