When the time is right for joy

A Reflection for Friday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

Find today’s readings here.

Last weekend I was lucky enough to win the ticket lottery and see Shakespeare in the Park’s production of “Twelfth Night” in Central Park’s newly renovated Delacorte Theater. My fiancé and I smushed into the Public Theater’s lobby with a few hundred other hopefuls when they did the daily drawing for free tickets, and when they called my number we shrieked. I made my way through the crowd to claim my prize and strangers cheered for me and patted me on the back as if I had just won the big game, as if I had done anything to merit my victory.

When I arrived for the performance that evening, the sun hadn’t yet set; it was a practically perfect late summer night. Beyond the stage and the set, I could see Belvedere Castle and some city skyline. When the play began, the pre-show chatter turned into collective laughter, and my bright city view turned into understated moonlit grandeur. It was the kind of night when many simple beauties come together. Almost without thinking, I looked out at the moon and said to myself, “Thank you, God.”

While I know the adage and certainly try to “see God in all things,” I admit I don’t have moments like that one in the park very often. It’s rare that a desire to thank God comes to me effortlessly. Usually, that kind of gratitude takes prayer and work—and the blurry intersection of the two. 

Where do simple joys fit into the Christian life? How much should prayer be about gratitude, and how much should it be about suffering? Where’s the balance, for a person of faith, between enjoyment and sacrifice?

Today’s readings, and the Psalm and Gospel in particular, thread together the theme of joy—and where it belongs. In laying out his new way, Jesus makes a clarification in the Gospel reading from Luke. When his interlocutors ask why the disciples of John the Baptist and the Pharisees follow fasting practices while Jesus’ disciples are free to eat and drink, Jesus delineates a time, an occasion, for each: “Can you make the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come, and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days” (Lk 5:34-35).

According to Jesus, there is a time and place for fasting, just as there is a time and a place for feasting. For now, he is with his friends. Their life together isn’t always easy, but there’s still reason to celebrate, to be present to the world around them. When things change, the time will no longer be right for this same kind of behavior; a new time will call for different practices altogether.

In our own lives, we know this well. There are times for laughter and times for tears. (This reading is hardly the only instance in which Scripture reminds us of this truth.) But what about when the times get murky? When suffering in the world is rampant, when someone is always in need of a prayer or a sacrifice, where does joy belong?

“God is good” is true, but does a God who pours out blessings on me (especially when those blessings are all the things on my wish list) tell the whole story of our relationship, of God’s relationship with humankind? Even after my beautiful evening in the park inspired me to thank God, I felt a certain pang of guilt; what does my happiness, my comfort and my enjoyment mean when the mess of the world for so many means so much? Does God want it? In the midst of all the other cries, can he even hear it?

The Christian life is one of nuance and timing. The moment for joy might be just that: a moment. That’s all the time it takes to seize the opportunity to say three simple words: Thank you, God.

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