ROME — Pope Francis urged Christians to wear the joy of the resurrected Christ on their faces, bearing witness to the hope the gospel brings.
“The invitation to joy is characteristic of the season of Advent: the expectation of Jesus’ birth that we experience is joyful, somewhat like when we await the visit of a person we love a great deal,” the pontiff said Sunday following the weekly Angelus prayer.
“The closer the Lord is to us, the more joy we feel; the farther away he is, the more sadness we feel,” Francis said. “This is a rule for Christians.”
The pope’s emphasis on joy highlighted the commemoration of the third Sunday of Advent as “Gaudete Sunday,” when the Sunday liturgy opens with Saint Paul’s exhortation: “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Phil 4:4, 5).
Francis alluded to an unnamed philosopher who said that many people have trouble believing because Christians themselves lack joy. “I do not understand how one can believe today, because those who say they believe have a face from a funeral wake,” this philosopher reportedly said. “They do not bear witness of the joy of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
Pope Francis has called on Christians to break down walls and embrace a love without borders in a new encyclical letter released on Sunday. https://t.co/6THB1aGBPb
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) October 4, 2020
“Many Christians have that face, yes, a face from a funeral wake, a face of sadness,” the pope continued. “But Christ is risen! Christ loves you! And you have no joy?”
“Let us think a bit about this and let us ask: ‘Do I have joy because the Lord is close to me, because the Lord loves me, because the Lord has redeemed me?’” he said.
For a Christian, joy consists especially in bringing others to Jesus, the pope said.
“And joy must be the characteristic of our faith. And in dark moments, that inner joy, of knowing that the Lord is with me, that the Lord is with us, that the Lord is Risen,” he said. “The Lord! The Lord! The Lord! This is the centre of our life, and this is the centre of our joy.”
Francis also invited his hearers who came to Saint Peter’s Square in the Vatican to examine their own consciences to see whether this Christian joy marks their lives.
“Think well today: how do I behave? Am I a joyful person who knows how to transmit the joy of being Christian, or am I always like those sad people, as I said before, who seem to be at a funeral wake?” he asked. “If I do not have the joy of my faith, I cannot bear witness and others will say: ‘But if faith is so sad, it is better not to have it.’”
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