Happy Gaudete Sunday, everyone. Today, we rejoice because the Lord is near.
Joy is certainly one of the virtues we most associate with Christmas. I can hardly wait to hear the choir burst into “Joy to the World” at Christmas Mass.
In it, Lewis reflects on how the virtue of joy, which we all desire and crave, seems so elusive. We are all searching for it, yet few find enduring joy because, as Lewis explains, most people make the mistake of looking for joy “out there” in material things, as if it can be purchased, accumulated, or obtained from the correct alignment of earthly circumstances. Rather, true joy, he insists, is not found in externals. Rather, joy is found in God who is near to us.
And Lewis wrote from experience, for “Surprised by Joy” is, in part, a spiritual autobiography that chronicles key periods of his childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. Rather than a straightforward life story, it focuses on the inner intellectual and emotional currents that led him first away from his childhood faith into atheism, and then—much later—back to Christianity.
Lewis identifies several factors that contributed to his youthful rejection of faith. First, the death of his beloved mother shook his trust in God. He had prayed desperately for her recovery, but she died despite his pleas, leaving him feeling abandoned by the God he was taught to trust. Like many Christians who fall away, grief and personal tragedy often play a role in the loss of faith.
As Lewis grew older, he encountered philosophical and literary works that challenged the existence of God and the truth of religious beliefs. Exposure to rationalist and materialist thought—through peers, teachers, and the books he read—cultivated a mindset that prized logic, scientific explanation, and empirical evidence over openness to infinite mystery.
Moreover, the Christianity of his childhood seemed sentimental and shallow to him—little more than comforting stories and moral lessons. Without deep theological grounding, he began to see this early faith as naïve and unexamined. Disillusioned, he turned to what he perceived as a more mature, intellectually honest worldview: atheism. But, though atheism appeared more rational, it did not address the persistent ache he would later recognize as a clue pointing beyond himself.
In time, however, a series of influences and experiences led Lewis to reconsider his atheism and open himself to authentic Christian faith. As the title of his book suggests, joy played a central role in this transformation.
Lewis confesses that he had long been haunted by “Joy”. Though he experienced glimpses of joy in his childhood, and reading, traveling to beautiful vistas, and time with family. Initially, he tried to satisfy this longing through art, philosophy, and pleasures of various kinds, but nothing gave him lasting fulfillment. Over time, he began to suspect that this longing pointed to something real and transcendent—something beyond the merely material world.
He started reading Christian authors like G.K. Chesterton, who presented a version of Christianity that was robust, imaginative, and intellectually stimulating, far different from the simplistic faith of his childhood. Christian friends at Oxford—such as J.R.R. Tolkien—helped guide him toward a Christianity that addressed both heart and mind. In the end, the surprise was that “Joy” itself served as a clue leading him to God. All his earlier attempts to find joy in art, nature, stories, and entertainment revealed themselves as signposts, not the source. The true source of joy was something far greater and more real than he had ever imagined—God Himself.
I mention Lewis’s journey because each of us is searching for joy. We are not imagining this longing. We crave more than ordinary pleasures because even the best things in this world leave us wanting something deeper.
This is why Lewis’s insight is an important lesson for Advent. We should seek the joy our hearts truly desire—the joy that can only be found in Jesus Christ who is near. “Rejoice, the Lord is near,” St. Paul tells us this weekend. It answers Lewis’s question: Where can joy be found? Joy is found in the Lord, who draws near to us.
So, how do we draw close to the Lord that we may come to experience Christian joy more deeply? What can we learn from Lewis? His conversion did not come through blind emotion or unthinking acceptance. Instead, he engaged reason, logic, and remained open to mystery. He wrestled with hard questions, examined his doubts honestly, and allowed Truth to guide him. He opened himself to beauty, music, and art. He read Christian thinkers and spent time with intellectually honest Christian friends. He engaged his whole person to seek a mature faith. Honest inquiry, deep longing, humble listening, appreciation of beauty, engagement of his whole self, and supportive community all led him, despite life’s tragedies, to discover that God was nearer than he ever thought possible.
On this Gaudete Sunday, let’s refuse to settle for cheap imitations of joy. While we may be tempted to seek to satisfy our longing for joy in the materialism of this season, our hearts are made for something—and Someone—far greater. In these final days before Christmas, seek the One who meets us in the stillness and poverty of Bethlehem. His is birth in straw poverty remains us that HE is the only thing necessary. HE is the source of joy. So, we must seek Him in heartfelt prayer, in the beauty of sacred music and quiet reflection, in friendships that nurture our faith, in works of charity, in the Word that lights our way.
Prayerfully and intentionally open your heart to the Christ Child, the only one who can satisfy our insatiable longing for true and lasting joy. This Advent, our longing for the joyful encounter with Christ can be a bright star in the darkness leading us to the stable where Joy Himself—the Lord who is near—awaits, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
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