+JMJ+
Happy Advent everyone!
Recently my life here in Rome has been filled with Christmas celebrations as the first half of the school year is winding down. This past Wednesday we had a Communications faculty Christmas party (an hour longer than the rest of the school) and this evening I was blessed to have a Christmas dinner with my class after the 15 priests celebrate Mass for us six lay students. These past few days have caused me to reflect on my short time here as I prepare to take a break and gear up for Christmas and the new year!
During the break in my moral theology class today one of the Italian girls in my program, Giovanna, came up to me and said that she loved the picture I had posted from the Christmas party the day before. It was a simple group picture of my class all wearing Santa hats (this can be seen on facebook!), but despite being a normal group picture I realized it is more than a simple picture, there was something special about it.
Joy.
The picture is just of 15ish people standing in the hallway of a school posing for a picture, but there was one thing that you could not have 'posed' in that picture.
Joy.
Giovanna said it so beautifully, "I showed the picture to my dad and I said, 'This is christian joy!'"
And she is right, the picture captures something that I think was taking place in all of our hearts; a deeper realization of the Lord's blessings in our lives. In this picture we are all realizing that this experience in Rome can only truly be understood by those we are surrounded by. No one else will understand how silly you feel when trying to speak a new language while in graduate school. No one else will quite understand how exhausting it is adjusting to a new culture, and no one else will know what it means to abandon yourself to the Lord in this particular way...but my classmates do.
This particular picture is special to me because it marks a point where my class became more of a family and it is tangibly expressed through our joy.
This evening at the Mass with my class Fr. Brian spoke about this notion of being a community here in the Eternal City. He stated so eloquently that our class truly is a family and one that finds its foundations in Christ.
When we celebrate, we celebrate with the joy of Christ.
We celebrate Christ.
This is the Christian joy.
