The Joy of Advent

Christians throughout the world are celebrating the Third Sunday of Advent. The mood and tone of the celebration is one of joy. It's designated as ‘Gaudete’ Sunday (i.e. Let us Rejoice). Certainly, the mood matches that of the message emanating from the commercial centres, promoting a message of joyful expectation as we count down the days to Christmas.

However, the Christian message of joy has much deeper spiritual roots than the more seductive hype from the overt commercialisation of the Christmas season. I am reminded of the words of the late Pope Paul VI: “The world has increased opportunities for pleasure, but it struggles to generate joy.” 

The late Pope Francis called on Christians to experience the joy of the gospel. Joy, he said, comes from faith. The joy of the gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. This gives life a new horizon and direction. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from inner emptiness and loneliness. This kind of joy does not ignore the challenges and the suffering in life but enables us to engage with a different kind of hope-filled energy.

There was something of that Christian joy captured in the Late Late Toy Show last Friday week. It showcased children who are so naturally attuned to wonder and joy, and with such rich imaginations. Fr Ned Hassett in his Christmas message wrote that “this was typified by best friends Dylan and Keelan, who shared even a tear-saturated tissue before being stunned to meet their hero, Roy Keane, evoking what is most natural and spontaneous in all of us.” 

It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening of entertainment, evoking a wonderful spirit of joy and goodwill throughout the country, as evidenced by the amazing €4 million plus donated to the children’s hospital and other charities. The source of joy… I think it was a realisation of the great good that can happen when we put children and the vulnerable first. It did not explicitly identify the source of wonder and joy as Jesus’ and his kingdom's vision of peace and love. But it did implicitly suggest such a spiritual depth, and it certainly filled the hearts of many with great joy.

The source of such joy was much more explicitly identified when the heart of a teacher was transformed by responding to a vulnerable pupil. (I came across this story recently in a book by William Bausch). Ms Thompson was an ambitious teacher; her goal - to become principal some day and maybe even to be promoted to the inspectorate. She proclaimed that she loved all in her class the same, but in reality, this was not true. There was one poor pupil in her class whom she did not like. His name was Teddy. She undermined his confidence by emphasising his mistakes in exam papers and putting Fs at the top of the paper with flair.

She would have known from the school records that Teddy’s home situation was not good. His mother was very ill. (She died during Teddy’s last year in school). Teddy’s father showed no interest in him. His previous teachers thought that Teddy was slow.

At Christmas time, as was customary then, the children brought in presents for Ms Thompson. They placed all the presents on her desk and crowded round to watch her open them. There was one present from Teddy. She was surprised that he brought her a gift. It was wrapped in brown paper.

Teddy had brought his teacher a gaudy Rhine-stone bracelet with half the stones missing and a bottle of cheap perfume. The other pupils laughed at Teddy’s present, but Ms Thompson immediately put on the bracelet and sprayed the perfume on her wrists. This silenced the other pupils. Before he went home that day, Teddy sheepishly approached Ms Thompson and said, “You smell like my mother, and her necklace looks pretty on you too. I'm glad you like my presents.” 

When Teddy left, Ms Thompson got down on her knees and asked God to forgive her.

When the children came to school the following day, they had a new teacher. Ms Thompson had become a different person…. not just a teacher but one committed to loving the children and doing things for them that would live on after her. She made a special effort to help the slow ones and especially Teddy. By the end of the school year, Teddy had improved dramatically.

She didn’t hear from him for a long time, but one day she received a note from him informing her that Teddy was about to graduate from Medical School and that he would be getting married soon. He wanted her to come to the wedding and “sit where my mother would sit if she were alive”. Ms Thompson went to the wedding and sat where Teddy’s mother would have sat. She thought to herself that this was better than the blind ambition she harboured that clouded her vision of what God would have wanted for her most needy students. She experienced a sense of joy that had eluded her for many years. She identified the source of that joy as an encounter with Jesus and his vision mediated through her pupil Teddy for whom she had disdain initially.

Advent affords us the opportunity to identify the authentic source of joy in our lives. It is a much deeper emotion than mere pleasure.