“The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them” (NRSV, Luke 2:20)

For the shepherds, the memory of the events that started that night in the fields outside Bethlehem must have stayed with them for the rest of their lives.  They were unconcernedly keeping an eye on their sheep when all of a sudden an angel appeared in their midst and announced that the Saviour of the human race had just been born in the nearby town of Bethlehem, and was even now lying in, of all places, a manger.

It seemed well nigh incredible, yet they showed their faith by setting off without hesitation into Bethlehem and revealed the wholeheartedness of that faith by the haste with which they went.  And when they found the child lying in a manger, their belief was confirmed that he was indeed what the angel had said he was and so they returned with joy, glorifying and praising God.

For that joy had its source, not in what they saw – a poor child nestling in the hay – but in what they believed that child to be: the Saviour who was to change the face of the world.  It was not their reason which led them to such a conclusion – how could it?  Rather it was a revelation from God in which they trusted with an absolute conviction.  So their joy was both the measure of their faith and also its fruit.

And so it is today.  There can be no joy in the Christian religion without faith.  When Paul and Silas were clamped in the stocks in the prison dungeon at Philippi, they sang praises to God.  They did not burst into song like that because they were comfortable in their cell – cold, wet, inky black and verminous.  Their joy issued from their unconquered and unconquerable faith in Jesus Christ and in his Presence with them.

It was exactly the same with the early Christian martyrs as they went to their death in the arena with hymns of praise and radiant faces.  Their predicament as such gave no cause for joy: that rose from their sublime faith in Christ and in that eternal life with him which awaited them.

For the Christian religion is a supernatural religion, something which has been given and revealed to us by God himself.  And the joy it affords issues from a convinced faith in that revelation.  Do not think that because something is made known to us, not from human reasoning but by a divine revelation, that it is therefore contrary to human reason: it is not, it completes human reason.

So, although reason may lead us part of the way in our search for the truth about God, we still have to leap beyond the point to which reason can take us and make the further and infinitely important step of trusting implicitly what God has actually revealed to us about himself in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  We have to imitate the trustfulness of little children and having done that we find, as little children do, that faith has become certainty, a sure and immediate recognition of the truth.

Without such convinced faith we shall merely hold ‘views’ about the Christian religion and views will have no effect on either the direction or the meaning of our life.  Everyone has opinions, few have convictions.  And if people have only opinions about Our Lord, they are on the fringe of the Christian religion.  Only when they have a convinced faith in Our Lord, does religion become part of their lives and part of themselves because only then does it touch their hearts and wills.

Rightly is the Christian religion called the Christian Faith.  Once it comes home to us that without Jesus Christ as our Saviour there can be no future for us worth the name; and once we see that he, and only he, can cleanse our souls and put us right with God and bring us to Heaven – then there wells up in us a deep and abiding gratitude to him.

If someone saved you from death in a burning house, you would not think of him in a detached way.  A new relationship would have been formed between you, and you would say to your rescuer, “How can I ever repay you?”  How much more so is this true of oneself and Jesus when once one has taken to heart the fact that he saves our souls from eternal death, from that state of eternal separation from God which is the ultimate and logical consequence of human sin.

So faith in Jesus as our Saviour must come first before thankfulness and joy in him as a Person can follow.  It is the same with one’s joy in the Eucharist.  When we realise – and are convinced – that in the Eucharist we offer Our Saviour to God and that Our Saviour himself presents us to his Father in the innermost sanctuary of Heaven, then we enter into the joy which Christians in every century have found.

And this close association between faith and joy is true also of our Communions.  Without a robust faith in the Real Presence of Our Ascended Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, making one’s Communion is an impersonal, formal, even cold occasion: but warmed by that faith, it is the most precious moment in life.

Of course, there are times when our faith is feeble and our joy non-existent.  But it is then that our relationship with God is put to the test.  And God allows us to be tested, partly that we may learn to seek him for himself alone – just because he is God – and not with the selfish motive of expecting comfort or joy in return; and partly in order to strengthen our faith by having it put to the trial.  For when one’s faith has reached breaking point but has not broken, then one’s attachment to God is immeasurably stronger than it would otherwise have been.

At such a testing time, we must anchor ourselves securely to God by making frequent use of the prayer, “Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).  And if we persevere doggedly and tenaciously, our faith will be given back to us firmer and stronger than ever and with it comfort and joy in the Lord will come flooding in again.  And we shall experience for ourselves this truth: that though heaviness may endure for a night, and though that night be long, yet joy cometh in the morning (Psalm 30:5).