Jul 23 2006
Have you forgotten to be happy?
You know, sometimes God has other plans for you. I was all set to quote a particular passage from Pope Benedict’s book, Principles of Catholic Theology, when I continued reading and came across one that struck me in a completely different way. Perhaps some day I’ll come back to the original quote. This quote struck somewhat close to home, as I often feel I haven’t enjoyed the glory of my faith in the right way.
That the word evangelium means “glad tidings” is one of those bits of information that remains in nearly everyone’s memory from religious instruction or from a sermon. All to ofte, however we compre this attractive designation – with melancholy, if not with bitterness – with our own daily experience of Christianity and the impressino made on us by Christians, with the joylessness, the cramped scrupulosity, the narrowness of spirit that seems to us to be the most telling refutation of what Christianity claims to be. This feeling that Christianity is opposed to joy, this impression of punctiliousness and unhappiness is surely a more likely explanation of why people leave the Church than are any of the theoretical problems the faith may pose today.
Ouch. That’s a hard way of saying, “try to live each day with a smile, for nothing can be that bad if we indeed have Christ on our side”.
