Church of the Holy City

True Love and True Joy

True Love and True Joy
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
October 25, 2009

Isaiah 51:1-11 John 3:27-35

Only through spirituality will we find true joy. There are many things that make us happy, and there are many things that give us pleasure. But true joy comes from the loves and affections of spirituality. Ultimately, from love to God and love for our neighbor, we find what is truly blessed in life.
Our joys derive from what we love. When we are able to do what we love we find joy. And the quality of our joy is according to the quality of our love.
Every one may know very well that there is never any life without some love, and that there is never any joy but what proceeds from love; and the quality of the life and of the joy is as the quality of the love. . . . True love therefore is love to the Lord, and true life is the life of love from Him, and true joy is the joy of that life. There can be but one true love, and therefore one true life, whence flow true joys and true blessings, such as those of the angels in the heavens (AC 33).
Loving God brings us the most profound experience of joy that we will ever know. Love for God and the neighbor is shown in the way a person relates to others. Those who love God and the neighbor wish to share their joy with others, while those who love only themselves and the world want to take all the happiness and pleasure to themselves. The love of giving, is a reflection of God’s very nature. God wishes to give all He has to make the whole human race as happy as we can be.
Love to the Lord and love to the neighbor wish to communicate all their own to others, for this is their enjoyment; (HH 400).

Love to the Lord is such, is because His love is the love of communication of all that He has with all, for He wills the happiness of all. Similar love is in every one of those who love the Lord, because He is in them; hence there is a mutual communication of the enjoyments of angels with one another (HH 399).
Loving God does not mean that we need to spend all our time in prayer, or contemplation of God’s attributes. We show our love for God in the way we live. If we are honest, sincere, caring, and giving, then our lives are a continual prayer. Then we are continually loving God.
We also show our love for God by being useful to society and to others. Lending a hand when others are in need, or just sharing a joke to lift someone’s spirits are ways of loving God also. We love God best when we are doing good things in the world we inhabit.
Without an active life there can be no happiness of life, and that rest from activity is only for the sake of recreation, that one may return more eager to the activity of his life. . . . angelic life consists in performing the good works of charity, which are uses, and that all the happiness of angels is in use, from use, and according to use (HH 403).
The happiness of angels derives from their activities. Angels, like people on this earth, all have functions and occupations they perform. We find ourselves most happy when we are actively pursuing something we love to do. For some lucky people, their occupation is work that they love to do. In this way they are serving society while they are doing something they love. This is the closest image we have to heavenly life and joy. Frost expresses such a happy conjunction of work and play in his poem “Two Tramps in Mud Time.” In this poem work, which is activity done out of need, becomes one with avocation, which is play:
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future’s sakes.
This poem contains one of Frosts rare references to heaven as a reality in life. When love and usefulness combine, the deed is done for heaven’s sake. Frost attended Swedenborgian Sunday school, and his mother was a Swedenborgian, so this poem might be one of those places in which Frost’s Swedenborgian roots shine through.
So Swedenborg claims that joy is truly found in some useful activity that flows from love. He contrasts this view with the notion some have that heavenly joy consists in eternal rest. Some think that heavenly joy will be eternal rest and somehow breathing in joy—possibly from the air. This notion arises when people think that heaven is somehow dramatically different than life here, and that the laws of life we find here are somehow broken in the next life. Instead of finding joy, those who live in idleness get bored and lose their alertness of mind.
Some spirits from an opinions conceived in the world, believed heavenly happiness to consist in an idle life, in which they would be served by others; but they were told that no happiness ever consists in abstaining from work and depending on this for happiness . . . Such a life would not be active but idle, in which the faculties would become torpid . . Those who had the idea that heavenly joy consists in living a life of indolence, and of breathing eternal joy in idleness, were allowed to perceive . . . what such a life is; and it was perceived that it was very sad, and that all joy thus perishing, after a short time they would loathe and nauseate it (HH 403).
Admittedly, sometimes we come home from work just exhausted, and crashing on the couch is all we can do. That is something we do to rest and recharge our batteries. But if you’re like me, after some time, you’ll want to get up and do something. Crashing on the couch only means something when we are working at something else. The joy of activity can be seen in any of the seniors I know. They have retired, and could lie on the couch all day. But most of them tell me that they are busier in retirement than they were when they were working.
Swedenborg tells us that we only feel heavenly joy dimly here. What waits for us, he tells us is beyond words. Swedenborg tells a short story about heavenly joy that delivers a powerful message about how great heavenly joy is.
There were certain spirits who desired to know what heavenly joy is, and it was granted them to have perception of the inmost of their own joy, to such a degree that they could bear no more; and yet it was not angelic joy—scarcely equal to the least angelic joy . . . So slight was it as to be almost cold; and yet being their inmost joy, they called it most heavenly. . . . when one receives his own inmost joy he is in heavenly joy, and cannot bear that which is more interior, but it becomes pain to him (AC 543).
When I hear this passage I have mixed feelings. First, I like the phrase that the spirits were in so much joy that they couldn’t bear any more. Wow. But then, a disturbing voice comes into my mind from my American Capitalist roots. We are told that their joy was not even angelic joy, and so slight as to be almost cold. Well I want the most joy. I don’t want to be fooled by feeling a low degree of joy and thinking it is the greatest joy I can have. Thinking this way, is, of course, silly. Joy is so subjective, what we feel as joy is joy for us. There is also a cautionary note that we find in Swedenborg. He tells us,
He who aspires to the least joy in the other life, receives from the Lord the greatest, and he who aspires to the greatest has the least, also that in heavenly joy there is nothing at all of preeminence above another, and that in proportion to the desire for preeminence, there is hell; also that in heavenly glory there is nothing whatever of worldly glory (AC 1936).
The last shall be first and the first shall be last. Our society teaches us to be the best, the greatest, and to shoot for the top. However when it comes to spiritual matters, these values do us no good. It is the meek that shall inherit the earth. It strikes me as amazing that a man such as Swedenborg would say what he does about the desire for preeminence. With his ponderous intellect, his genius, his noble birth, and relations with the Queen of Sweden, he must have been tempted sorely to feel preeminent over others—because he was! Yet this great genius tells us that looking down on others with contempt or feeling preeminent are sins to be avoided. In spiritual matters, we need to develop an attitude of humility, not ambition. Ambition for spiritual things can be a dangerous paradox. We need rest with the confidence that when it comes to our eternal happiness, God is preparing a place for us. And in that place we will be as happy as we can bear.
Let us not wait for the next life to find heavenly joy. We can find a reflection of it here by being useful to those around us. That includes in our work life. Whenever we can share our joys with others, whenever we can make someone else’s life a little happier, whenever we can bring heaven to earth, then we will find heavenly happiness. And as we bring heaven to earth, we can hope for good things to come in the next life.