Importance of Laughter

This afternoon we had a chance to attend a lecture by Father James Martin titled Laughing with God. His is an interesting story. He was on the fast track working in corporate finance for General Electric and moving up the career ladder. However, he found that he was unhappy living and working in the corporate world. Surprisingly everybody including himself, he ended up joining the Jesuits and became a priest.

Father James has written several books and I think I will be adding a couple of titles to my Christmas list. In fact we didn't realize that we had bought one of his a year ago titled This Our Exile: A Spiritual Journey With the Refugees of East Africa about his two years spent in Kenya. I doubt there is much humor in that one, but it sounds like his sense of humor comes shining through in My Life With the Saints.

He emphasized that we all need joy, humor and laughter in our spiritual lives. We Christians tend to take ourselves entirely too seriously and don't laugh enough. God wants us to laugh and enjoy ourselves. We need to show our joy and love of life. He gave ten reasons why laughter is essential. I'm afraid I didn't take notes and can't relate them here, but do know that we laughed with him for over an hour. He told great stories as he illustrated his points.

Here is one of his jokes simplified to make it a little shorter: A Franciscan and St. Jesuit priest were killed in an automobile accident. They were killed upon impact and found themselves at the gates of heaven together. The gates were thrown open and they were surrounded by hundreds even thousands of angels. All of the sudden a red carpet was rolled out and ended up at the feet of the St. Jesuit priest. A parade of Jesuit saints came down the carpet to welcome him including Francis Xavier, Francis Jerome, and Anthony Daniel. The final saint was Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order. Once all the greetings and hugs were given a blue carpet landed at the Jesuit's feet. Who should come down the blue carpet to welcome him, but Mary the mother of Jesus. Now a third carpet came rolling down out of heaven. This one was white and it was Jesus himself coming to escort the priest into heaven.

The Franciscan priest was thrilled to see how his friend was being welcomed into heaven. The angels, saints, Mary, Jesus and Jesuit priest entered heaven and the gates closed behind them. That left the Franciscan priest alone outside the gates of heaven. While he was there he was imagining who would come out to welcome him. Would it be St. Francis de Sales, St. Bonaventure, Agnes of Prague and even St. Francis of Assisi, founder of his order? He started rehearsing speeches that he would give to each of them. Suddenly he realized that he had been outside the gates of heaven for over 15 minutes. He waited and waited. An hour went by. Then it was two and finally three.

At this point he was starting to get upset. Over at the side of the main gate a small door opened in the wall surrounding heaven. "Psst!" a minor saint hollered. "Over here."

"What?" the Franciscan priest said.

The minor saint said, "Come over here. Come on in."

"What? My friend got such a huge welcome. There were angels and saints, Mary and even Jesus to escort him into heaven. Where is my welcoming committee?"

"Oh that. We have Franciscans coming every day. We haven't had a Jesuit in over 50 years!"