Practicing Joy

I am not only enduring terrible pain in my body from this scourging, but also suffering it with joy in my soul because of my devotion to him. // 2 Maccabees 6:30b

It had been a day. There was more on my list than was possible to accomplish, between errands and kids’ activities and possibly-unwise commitments. Why do I always do this to myself? I thought. I have still not learned the art of asking for enough help, nor the maybe-more-important skill of saying no. And even when I do, I sometimes bear the small but real frustration of receiving imperfect help from imperfect people. 

So at the end of the day, after Costco pizza and a movie, I piled the kids in the car and drove to the beach. The sun was setting in a rosy glow, and I sank steadily under the quicksilver surface of the water. I gave myself over to the therapeutic sensory feast: my eyes delighted in the color and texture of sky and water, my body felt buoyed and weightless and vibrant, and my ears heard the soft lapping of the waves on the shore and the happy laughter of my children. My body calmed, and my soul was still.

Life this side of Heaven is a struggle. It’s filled with large and small suffering, things that chafe and ache and annoy, things that threaten to quench our hope. So we practice joy. We practice gratitude. We have to practice because we have not yet achieved perfect holiness. 

In today’s First Reading Eleazar responded in joy when faced with his martyrdom (see 2 Maccabees 6:18-31), but I doubt that was his first try. I’d be willing to bet that most of his long life was spent practicing joy and gratitude, so that in the final test, that was exactly what he brought—a skill honed over decades of trying and failing and trying again to choose holiness.

If you feel a complaint rise in your spirit when a large or small challenge comes your way today, take heart: you’re not finished practicing yet, and this is not a failure. It’s an opportunity.