The woman at Customer Service tells us to look in the Pop aisle; foot dragging, I follow Paul. Tired, eyes drooping, our eyes find - nothing.
A cheerful voice sounds behind us. We whirl around and there stands the Roofing Company's nicest young employee, holding up a bottle of Pina Colada mix. "I overheard you say you were looking for this," he says. "I was walking by and saw it." Something is shining in this stranger's dark eyes, a hard-to-describe Something Else beyond what we were looking for. Incarnate in a muddy young man, Christmas Joy shines and sparkles and sings: "I'm here, if you'll only believe in me!" Yes, Christmas angels can come in muddy boots, bearing Pina Colada drink mix.
How often do we miss the advent of joy? It's not that joy doesn't exist in us; of course it does - it's a gift promised to us by Jesus, who told us "I have said these things to you so my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete." (John 15:11.) But we miss it. We get depressed by the worries of the day. We start to think that nothing can ever untangle the current mess.
But Joy is a greater, truer reality than the temporary stresses and messes in our lives. What greater joy is there than knowing about the visitation of God to us in Jesus? Mary had a baby, Oh Lord! Oh my sweet Lord! and she called him Jesus! Joy is a gift of the Holy Spirit, undergirding boundless peace, a passion to overcome arguments with unity with one another, enthusiasm for tackling life's challenges, and creativity. Let there be Peace on earth, and let it begin with me!
Pope Francis describes this season's joy well: "Christmas is joy, religious joy, an inner joy of light and peace." It's a joy we need to be consciously faithful to, because the sins and tragedies of our lives can trample our spirits into despair.
If we're not faithful to joy, we become blind and deaf to it, no longer recognizing the peace, hope, love and laughter that are its signs. We neither see nor hear the angels hovering around us because often enough they don't look or sound like our preconceived concepts of angels.
Sometimes, we even reject the consolation of joy, which comes to us in the unity of a family gathered around a Christmas tree. We look around the room and get lost in the human sorrows instead: the loss of a loved one, this one's divorce, that one's disability, a lost job, a mental illness, instead of spiritually embracing the goodness and love that's pulsating right now in the room in everyone's hearts as they eat, drink, laugh, and even sing together. It's a joy that, if we embrace it, will bubble out of our hearts like a fountain, and spread even further.
The spirit, the joy, of Christmas is a gift we choose to accept or reject. If we reject joy and happiness, our hearts become cold, bitter, sad. Our souls become fatigued and lack interest in the people and situations around us. Pope Francis says "The most serious problem with the spirit of sadness is that it bears within itself the sin against hope. Bernanos says it well in his 'Diary of A Country Priest': 'The sin against hope is the most mortal of all, and yet it is the one most welcomed and honored.'"
Sometimes it seems as if, in this world, it's almost fashionable to despair about the condition of our country, the condition of our world, as if it's naive to have hope, trust, and joy. Yet if we believe in our Triune God Who lives within every human heart, and God's Spirit given to people world-wide to urge us on to unity, to commitment, to creative problem-solving, we've gotten in touch with God's Holy Spirit of hope and love and joy.
Pope Francis says "God never gives someone a gift they are not capable of receiving. If He gives us the gift of Christmas, it is because we all have the ability to understand and receive it." Choose to receive the gift of Christmas, - peace, love, hope, and joy wrapped up in an Infant lying in a manger. Then your humble human joys, humble as the ones enjoyed by Jesus who lived in the tiny village of Nazareth, will be transfigured into the lasting joy of He Who rose from the dead to abolish all of our sadness, tragedies, despair, and even our own deaths. Joy to the world, the Lord has come - and continues to come to each of us daily, bearing the gift of Joy!