If someone had asked me a year ago what joy was, I would probably have merely considered it a synonym for happiness -- one which rises approximately 400% in usage at Christmas time. The actual delineation between the two, however, is far subtler (and cooler). In fact, joy itself is far subtler (and cooler) than happiness.
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| Radical Joy |
Why?
1) The Roman Catholic Church (esp. the CCC [Catechism of the Catholic Church])
If you take a look at the fruits of the Holy Spirit in CCC 1832, joy is listed. Happiness is not. I would say happiness has been owned but that sounds pessimistic. So, why the word choice? Why joy and not happiness? Allow me to explain further.
2) The Dictionary 1
joy |joi|
noun
a feeling of great pleasure and happiness : tears of joy | the joy of being alive.
• a thing that causes joy : the joys of Manhattan.
verb [ intrans. ] poetic/literary
rejoice : I felt shame that I had ever joyed in his discomfiture or pain.
ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French joie, based on Latin gaudium, from gaudere ‘rejoice.’
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happy |ˈhapē|
adjective ( -pier , -piest )
1 feeling or showing pleasure or contentment : Melissa came in looking happy and excited |
• [ predic. ] ( happy about) having a sense of confidence in or satisfaction with (a person, arrangement, or situation) : I was never very happy about the explanation | I can't say they looked too happy about it, but a deal's a deal.
• [ predic. ] ( happy with) satisfied with the quality or standard of : I'm happy with his performance.
• [ attrib. ] fortunate and convenient : he had the happy knack of making people like him.
ORIGIN Middle English (in the sense [lucky] ): from the noun hap + -y 1 .
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There's a general observable trend in the two of these definitions; but, it is most observable in the origins. Now, to truly make an educated dissection of the distinction here I'd have to know some Latin, but I unfortunately do not. 2 I am incapable of giving an eloquent treatise on the significance of the word "gaudere." What I do know is that the word happiness places an emphasis on fortune, luck, and happenstance. So, really, when we say "Are you happy?" we are really asking "Have you been lucky lately?" or when we say "Sam went about his chores happily" we are literally saying "He went about his chores unaffected by any blight of misfortune."
A call to live with joy, however, is a call to rise beyond the ups and downs of fortune in our lives. There is a famous mosaic in Pompeii which shows Fortune's Wheel. On the left are a rich garments, and on the right the cloak of a beggar. Although Fortune's Wheel will give some riches and some poverty, ultimately death is the equalizing force.
Images like this were meant to serve as "memento mori," reminders of death. While it seems morbid to be fixated on death, I would venture to say there is a large amount of crossover between "memento mori" and joy. To live with true joy is to live as unshackled from Fortune's Wheel as death will ever make you. When you have joy you do not need happenstances to give you happiness because your joy wells forth from a source within -- or above -- yourself. Joy is inherently tied to peace: they flow from each other.
He who is happy cannot keep themselves happy forever, because happiness is something inherently out of our hands; but joy cannot be taken from you because it is a decision. If it becomes a decision to make yourself joyful, it will fail. It must be a decision to allow yourself to be used as an instrument of joy today. To be open to being radically, self-sacrificingly joyful regardless of whether you feel happy. In fact, true joy is beyond our ordinary human abilities to achieve -- it requires God. This, then, is the significance of joy being one of the fruits of the spirit.
I'm going to end my philosophizing about joy here because the worst sort of ignorance is to not know when you've gone out of your depth. I simply want to close with three conclusions from this view of joy.
1) Christ on the cross is the ultimate example of joy.
2) Resigning your will to God may mean the loss of some happiness, but it is the surest route to enduring joy.
3) To live your faith well is to live it with radical joy.
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1 Although I am not an English major, one of my two majors is a language, which gives me the right to be obsessed with words and their meanings, usages, and origins.
2 I do know a small amount of Latin (mainly from an ecclesial context), but my major is Spanish, not Latin. Spanish is a language with lower practicality when doing obscure etymology on blog posts or desiring to feel intellectually astute, but far higher practicality in real life. That being said if I had endless credit hours, intelligence, and time, I would learn Latin as well.
1) Christ on the cross is the ultimate example of joy.
2) Resigning your will to God may mean the loss of some happiness, but it is the surest route to enduring joy.
3) To live your faith well is to live it with radical joy.
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| Fra Angelico. St. Dominic Adoring the Crucifixion. San Marco Monastery, Florence, Italy. Fresco. |
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1 Although I am not an English major, one of my two majors is a language, which gives me the right to be obsessed with words and their meanings, usages, and origins.
2 I do know a small amount of Latin (mainly from an ecclesial context), but my major is Spanish, not Latin. Spanish is a language with lower practicality when doing obscure etymology on blog posts or desiring to feel intellectually astute, but far higher practicality in real life. That being said if I had endless credit hours, intelligence, and time, I would learn Latin as well.
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