Happy Fourth Sunday of Advent! Last week I wrote to us about how Christian joy is not a suggestion but the moral command of a loving God.

Joy is both a gift freely offered, and a gift freely received. In other words, God intentionally offers us joy, but we have to intentionally receive it. Therefore, true joy in someone’s life is never by accident but always on purpose. Joy is chosen.

Joy exists in the knowledge that God is light, and there is no shadow of change in Him, that at each moment God is holding my being in existence and working all things for my good. Therefore, we say in the Christian faith that true knowledge is, at root, experiential. The knowledge you and I yearn for is found beyond the simple cognition of facts (I know that gravity makes things fall, I know that this text is black, etc.). We need life-giving knowledge.

It’s the simple reason why mankind searches the heavens and the earth for what will truly satisfy his longing. We are amazed by our understanding and mastery of the wonders of creation. But we search on and on until knowledge gives us something more than facts. Knowledge doesn’t satisfy us until it literally gives us life. This type of knowledge, life-giving knowledge, is the kind defined by a free and loving exchange of self between two people.

And so, these are self-evident examples of life-giving knowledge. The personal experience that God has given my life its purpose. The personal experience that my spouse truly loves me for my own sake. The personal experience that, when I give my life out of love for another, they become more alive and so do I. The personal experience that God descends from the heavens to dwell within me, speak within me, and call me by my name.

Joy is the unmistakable, not-fakeable, visible evidence that one is filled by life-giving knowledge. And since life-giving knowledge = life-giving relationships, the pursuit of joy in your life—exactly to the T, nothing more nothing less—is the pursuit of life-giving relationships. Freely offered, freely received, unconditional and mutual gifts of self. Life gives itself away to vivify another life.

And all that, my friends. That’s the joy of Christmas. The revelation of life-giving knowledge from a God who so badly wanted to make us alive, that he made Himself one of us to freely, fully, faithfully, and unconditionally exchange his life and give it away to us.

Fr. Brian