Something many struggle with—I certainly include myself—is how to find joy when one is not ‘feeling’ joyful. This is a complex question that calls for careful and nuanced consideration.

Part of thinking clearly about it is recognizing that real sorrow has a significant place in life. Being joyful, then, does not imply that we deny our sorrow or pretend we don’t have it. There is legitimate sorrow, for instance, about ways we have failed to act well, or about how we have been failed by others. Reckoning with the former sorrow is a key element in Lenten penitence, and reckoning with the latter is important both in offering forgiveness and in achieving our own healing and wholeness.

But at the same time, cultivating joy, and indeed choosing to be joyful, is a key feature of true human happiness. According to Thomas Aquinas we have joy or delight when we possess the good that we love. For instance, we have joy in being in the presence of our loved ones. Similarly, we have joy in achieving something we have been working on, such as completing a project or reaching a goal.

Now sometimes the presence of what we love is obvious, such as the physical presence of a loved one. But sometimes the ‘presence’ of goods is not so obvious. Often we struggle to recognize what would cause us joy if we but had the interior disposition to realize its presence. With Aquinas’s assistance let us consider three key ways we can lean into and discover joys that we could and should have.

First and most obvious is that we can do better in turning our attention to the goods we have. It can be frustrating to hear this, but it is true. A resolution to focus our imagination and thoughts on these things can go a long way. Consider the salvation God has wrought and constantly offers us; consider the amazing people around us, and especially those who love us and would do anything for us; consider all the good we have done and are doing for others; consider the beauty of nature; and the list goes on, if we are willing to think about it. One way of ‘thinking’ about it is making a point of holding these people and things in the forefront of our imagination.

The next two amazing points turn on a deeper understanding of different ways we can ‘possess’ something. Aquinas points out that while we have joy in a more perfect sense when we ‘actually’ possess what we love, we can also have joy when we possess something ‘in intention.’ I find this marvelously encouraging. For instance, we will have great joy when we finally achieve a virtue for which we strive, but we can also have joy now simply by intending to grow in that virtue! The point is: that which we intend is in a real sense present to us now through our very intending.

Is this just a trick of the mind, or psychological sleight of hand? I think not. Such presence, and so such joy, is real–if we really enter into it. Aquinas quotes Augustine: “to enjoy is to adhere lovingly to something for its own sake.” We can adhere lovingly to something through intention, says Aquinas, and so enjoy it(!), even if it is not yet present in reality. This is closely connected to the next remarkable assertion of Aquinas.

Something can be present to us by hope. Here Aquinas has in mind especially the theological virtue of hope. He cites Romans 12:12, “Rejoice in your hope.” (What a line!) He makes the astounding assertion that in a real sense we possess heaven itself even now, through our hope. This is part of his explanation of John 6:47 (“he who believes in me has eternal life”). We have eternal life now in hope, and someday in reality. (He also notes we have it now in its ’cause.’)

It strikes me that this dovetails very nicely with the point that we possess something already by intending it. To intend is to set our will upon something so as to reach or achieve it. The more we can have confidence that this intention will be fulfilled, the more, it seems to me, the object intended is ‘had’ even now.

There is much here to reflect on. This seems clear: real hope means not just that we look forward to some joy to come later. It means that the joy to come is in a real way already here now: if we but set our hearts, and open ourselves to receive the gift. Starting now. ~ ~ ~

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John Cuddeback

Husband, father, and professor of Philosophy. LifeCraft springs from one conviction: there is an ancient wisdom about how to live the good life in our homes, with our families; and it is worth our time to hearken to it. Let’s rediscover it together. Learn more.