Universe: A vital space of inner joy

Hope is an amusing child too. She knows that humour and a smile are the leaven of existence and a means of facing difficulties, even major worries, with fortitude. The writer Romain Gary’s perceptive definition of humour fits well: “It is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man’s superiority to all that befalls him.”

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For all of us children, importance was given to education in the meaning of joy, healthy irony, or a joke.

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My family life experienced no shortage of difficulties, suffering, tears, but even in our hardest moments, we discovered how a smile, a laugh, could give us that added strength to get back on track. Papa, in particular, taught us so much. It wasn’t a question of removing problems, of pretending nothing was wrong, of making light of them — comedy, after all, is tragedy seen from the other side — but rather of preserving a vital space of inner joy to face them and to overcome them.

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To emphasise this happy marriage, this link between hope and joy, I chose to invite to the Vatican a group of over a hundred artists from the world of comedy, of various nationalities and disciplines in the months leading up to the opening of the Holy Door of the new Jubilee. Someone pointed out that it was a fine leap forward from the time when it was the fate of actors and jesters to be buried in unconsecrated ground, though for anyone who chooses to take the name of Francis, “God’s Jester,” it’s probably the minimum that I could expect. A little later, one of them quipped that it’s good trying to make God laugh,,, except that, being omniscient, He will know all the jokes in advance… and will ruin your punch line. This is the kind of humour that warms the heart.

Life inevitably has its sadnesses, which are part of every path of hope and of every path toward conversion. But it is important to avoid wallowing in melancholy at all costs, not to let it embitter the heart.

— Excerpted from ‘Hope’ by Pope Francis, with permission from Penguin Random House