That Your Joy May Be Complete
- FATHER MAURICE ZUNDEL
Each day, we must build up our stock of joy, in the form which constitutes the highest and the purest joy, in the form of wonder.
You are familiar with these words from Einstein: "The man who has lost the faculty of being in wonder and struck with reverence is dead, as it were." That is true. Wonder is what links us with God, makes the living waters spring from within us. It is wonder that opens up new horizons to us each day. It is wonder that immediately disengages us from ourselves and attaches us to the Other in whom our admiration rests.
It is useless to keep on harping about the obligation of being humble. Christian humility is not at all an abasement neither before God nor before men. How could God, who is all love, take pleasure in our degradation? The opposite is what he wants, this "kneeling up straight" of which Peguy speaks, this joy, this very pride of the human dignity, this pride of belonging to a sacred world and of being able to reveal and communicate an infinite worth. Christian humility is simply this loving gaze turned in the direction of the other.
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Acknowledgement
Father Maurice Zundel. "That Your Joy May Be Complete." excerpt from Wonder and Poverty (Mediaspaul, 1993).
Reprinted with permission of the publisher.
The Author
Father Maurice Zundel (1897-1975) was a Swiss mystic, poet, philosopher, liturgist and author. He is the author of The Gospel Within, The Splendor of the Liturgy, The Inner Person: Finding God Within, and Wonder and Poverty.
