begin on March 25, which it did throughout Europe for a very long time. It was England’s official New Year’s Day until 1752, though by that time January 1 had been celebrated by most English people for hundreds of years.23
Interesting. I had never realized that March 25 was such an important date. I do remember reading John Donne’s poem, “Upon the Annunciation and the Passion Falling Upon One Day (March 25, 1608)”. There he wrote:
All this, and all between, this day hath shown,
Th’abridgement of Christ’s story, which makes one
(As in plaine maps, the furthest west is east)
Of the angel’s Ave, and Consummatum est.24
Which suggests that this is the day that comprehends all days—fall and redemption, annunciation and passion, our beginning and our end. I know that we no longer celebrate March 25th as New Year’s Day, and in truth, I am not advocating that we return to that calendar, but I am struck at how people of old saw in the narrative of Christ’s life the meaning of their own days and lives, and how our more recent calendars, geared to so many more pressing dates—academic, commercial, national, etc.—lack both the richness and joy of this way of numbering our days. Jacobs notes at the end of this extended footnote a curious reference to March 25th in more recent literature. He writes: “J.R.R. Tolkien, knowing this history very well, made a point of placing the destruction of the Ring and the overthrow of Sauron on March 25.”25 That Good Friday and Christmas and New Year could be so deeply connected fills me with strange delight, a sense that even if our calendars have become much more up-to-date, the story that comprehends our story knows a deeper way of counting and a more joyful way of hoping.
21. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 138.
22. Theresa of Avila, Meditations on the Song of Songs, 246.
23. Jacobs, Original Sin, 43.
24. Donne, The Complete Poems, 328.
25. Jacobs, Original Sin, 43.
Chapter 4: Ministry and Joy
October 2, 2002
In the class I am teaching this fall we are reading The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann (St. Vladimir’s, 2000), and I have been struck once again with his references to “joy” as a theological term. He does not think “joy” is to be interpreted as “happiness” or “feeling good” or “simple euphoria.” Rather, he thinks the word contains some deeper meaning, something that combines settled confidence with gratitude and hope. Since “joy” has not always characterized the way the gospel has been mediated to me, and since so much of the modern world seems to be engaged in “joyless” pursuits, I thought I might simply offer you some quotes from Schmemann’s book as a gift this week.
The source of false religion is the inability to rejoice, or, rather, the refusal of joy, whereas joy is absolutely essential because it is without doubt the fruit of God’s presence. One cannot know that God exists and not rejoice. Only in relation to joy are the fear of God and humility correct, genuine, fruitful. Outside of joy, they become demonic, the deepest distortion of any religious experience. A religion of fear. Religion of pseudo-humility. Religion of guilt: They are all temptations, traps,—very strong indeed, not only in the world, but inside the church. Somehow “religious” people often look on joy with suspicion.”26
I think God will forgive everything except lack of joy; when we forget that God created the world and saved it. Joy is not one of the “components” of Christianity, it’s the tonality of Christianity that penetrates everything—faith and vision. Where there is no joy, Christianity becomes fear and therefore torture. We know about the fallen state of the world only because we know about its glorious creation and its salvation by Christ. The knowledge of the fallen world does not kill joy, which emanates from the world, always constantly, as a bright sorrow . . . . This world is having fun; nevertheless it is joyless because joy (different from what is called “fun”) can only be from God, only from on high—not only joy of salvation, but salvation as joy. To think—every Sunday we have a banquet with Christ, at His table, in His Kingdom; then we sink into our problems, into fear and suffering. God saved the world through joy: “ . . . you will have pain but your pain will turn into joy . . . .” (John 16:21 “When a woman is in travail, she has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a child is born into the world.”27)
. . . for if a man would see what I call joy, or if a man would simply love Christ—just a little, would come to Him, nothing else would be needed. If not, nothing will help. All begins with a miracle, not with conversations. I feel tired of the noise and petty intrigues that surround the church, of the absence of breathing space, of silence, of rhythm, of all that is present in the Gospel. Maybe that is why I love an empty church, where the Church speaks through silence. I love it before the service and after the service. I love everything that usually seems to be ‘in between’ (to walk on a sunny morning to work, to look at a sunset, to quietly sit a while), that which may not be important, but which alone, it seems to me, is that chink through which a mysterious ray of light shines. Only in those instances do I feel alive, turned to God; only in them is there the beating of a completely ‘other’ life.”28
April 16, 2003
A month or so ago, we read Karl Barth’s Dogmatics in Outline (Harper Torchbooks, 1959), an exposition of the Apostles’ Creed. In commenting on “The third day, he rose again from the dead,” Barth writes:
If you have heard the Easter message, you can no longer run around with a tragic face and lead the humorless existence of a man who has no hope. One thing still holds, and only this one thing is really serious, that Jesus is the Victor. A seriousness that would look back past this, like Lot’s wife, is not Christian seriousness. It may be burning behind—and truly it is burning—but we have to look not at it, but at the other fact, that we are invited and summoned to take seriously the victory of God’s glory in this man Jesus and to be joyful in him. Then we may live in thankfulness and not in fear.29
So rejoice in this Easter season, not in ignorance or denial of all the world’s miseries, but in the knowledge that as miserable as all of these no doubt are, they are not capable of doing what they want to do, that is, to separate us from the love of Christ. Jesus is Victor! That is the reason to be glad and rejoice in this day
November 6, 2003
Yesterday at staff meeting I read some words from Father Schmemann, which I would like to share with you. A leader in the Orthodox Church, Father Schmemann was often called upon to settle church squabbles and debates. This entry is dated Monday, April 10, 1978, and it expresses some of Father Schmemann’s weariness with turf battles in the church. He writes:
I feel no desire to fight, only a desire to leave (to get away) as far as possible. Not out of cowardice, but out of conviction
