Evangelizing With Joy

“Preach the Gospel, and when necessary use words.”

We live in a time when many people spend most of their lives in stressful and often-dull routines. Most people’s lives are also racked with troubles from familial tensions to personal depression. Just take a walk down the street and count how many people smile or even bother to look at you. A couple of my friends and I were talking recently, and we all agreed that there is a lack of joy in our society. “If you go to the supermarket,” one of my friends observed, “people look so miserable. And it’s like their miserable faces are their normal ones.”

Sadly, many people in our secular world have lost the joy of knowing God. We all often try to cover internal emptiness with superficialities that don’t work and never will. But as Catholics, we have the duty to be channels of Christ’s love and true happiness to the world. Showing the happiness which results from love of God is a means to attract more people to the true joy of loving Him.

The saints are those people who evangelized with the glow of the joy which everyone wants. For example, St. Philip Neri is known as the saint of laughter-  he played with children in the streets of Rome and gave repentants ludicrous penances in the confessional. Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati liked to laugh at his own practical jokes. St. Rose of Lima wrote songs and could often be heard singing in her garden. The teenager Bl. Chiara Badano was known for her cheerfulness even as she lay dying with disease. St. Pio of Pietrelcina advised us to “serve the Lord with laughter.” In fact, if you look at a photo of any saintly person, chances are that he or she is smiling. This joy of Christ is what makes holy people so compelling and wonderful to be around.

Smiling is one way to show this joy. I know that “keep smiling” may sound cliché or even insignificant. But often people smile only with their mouths and not their eyes, and when sincerity is gone the worth of the smile is gone, too. A truly sincere smile can open hearts like few other actions can. (Besides, it’s more practical—a smile uses fewer facial muscles than a frown.)

Another often-overlooked, yet quite natural, way to express joy is music. I sometimes feel a bit wistful when I watch old movies or read old books and see what good times people had singing and dancing in the evenings. Now, singing and dancing in public is rarely seen, or it’s labeled as “weird”. However, music is something that practically everyone can understand and it is a way of praising God and expressing joy with our voices and bodies. (Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to leave the music to only the ultra-talented musicians. I don’t.)

I haven’t lost hope that we can express our joy and spread it in the world, as I see examples of others doing this so well. I see joy in the way my friend can harmonize beautifully to music without even realizing she’s doing it. I see joy in the way another of my friends often starts swing dancing spontaneously. I see joy in the way even a stranger can laugh happily and lift the spirits of those around. I see joy in the many random smiles I’ve received and remembered over the years.

“Let anyone who comes to you go away feeling better and happier. Everyone should see goodness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile. Joy shows from the eyes. It appears when we speak and walk. It cannot be kept closed inside us. It reacts outside. Joy is very infectious.” – Mother Teresa

If someone truly has love for God, it will shine through him and refract in various outward ways—whether smiling, laughing, singing, or dancing—without him even trying. Nearly all people are delighted with kindness and cheer, and react quite favorably to it. Accordingly, we don’t always have to do something spectacular to evangelize. Sometimes we just have to smile, and often that is enough to pass on Christ’s joy.