God Squad: The feeling of absolute joy

Q. In 2007, I was at church during Divine Mercy Sunday and preparing for my confession. I was sitting by myself in the chapel, but there were several other people around talking quietly or meditating. All of a sudden, this "feeling" came over me. It was so incredible I had a hard time understanding what was happening.

Then, I realized I was crying and couldn't seem to get hold of my emotions. I sat there for an unknown amount of time, caught up in what was happening. It was such an incredible feeling both inside and outside that the only way I can describe it is as being touched by God. Even though I was crying, I was crying for joy. I felt completely euphoric.

I can't remember if I ever made my confession, nor do I remember leaving the church. I couldn't talk about what happened for months because just thinking about it made me cry. Any thoughts?

-- D., via email

A. Your moving description of your experience in church touched my heart. I have no doubt that what you felt was, indeed, God's touch.

Whether your emotional overload occurred because you felt the presence of God can't be answered with any degree of certainty. The important questions about this experience are those that lead you to ask what the experience means to you, or how it will change you.

The essential element I'd take from your amazing moment is that you experienced supervening joy in a broken and often joyless world. To know that absolute joy is always possible will take you through the darkest night.

Your experience validates my feeling that we're not alone in an unfeeling, bleak cosmos, and that despite all despairing evidence, life is not only good, but also supremely good.

I also hope that your private moment will lead you to find ways to serve others who haven't yet seen the light of joy.

Surely, many people could use your radiant smile as you serve them lunch at a soup kitchen -- piercing the loneliness of their daily lives. Perhaps talking about your tears of joy could fill others with a joy that has eluded them.

I believe God fills us with private joy in order to give us strength to fill the world with public good.

Many great writers and poets have tried to express this ineffable joy at feeling close to God. One of my favorite passages comes from psychologist and philosopher William James, who wrote of an experience similar to yours in "The Varieties of Religious Experience" (1902). He quotes a communication from a clergyman. I believe you'll understand every word:

"I remember the night, and almost the very spot on the hilltop, where my soul opened out, as it were, into the Infinite, and there was a rushing together of the two worlds, the inner and the outer. It was deep calling unto deep -- the deep that my own struggle had opened up within being answered by the unfathomable deep without, reaching beyond the stars.

"I stood alone with Him who had made me, and all the beauty of the world, and love, and sorrow, and even temptation. I did not seek Him, but felt the perfect unison of my spirit with His. The ordinary sense of things around me faded. For the moment, nothing but an ineffable joy and exultation remained.

"It's impossible fully to describe the experience; it was like the effect of some great orchestra when all the separate notes have melted into one swelling harmony that leaves the listener conscious of nothing save that his soul is being wafted upward, and almost bursting with its own emotion.

"The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have doubted that He was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself be, if possible, the less real of the two."

NOTE: Recently, I asked readers to send me signs from God they had received. Here's a good one:

"Over this past summer, as I was putting my 9-year-old daughter to bed, she said she needed a motto or positive affirmation for herself, and could I ask God to send her one? I told her I'd work on this, and that she should, too. Then, we said good night. During the night, she came to my bedside and told me God had sent her a motto, and that it was: 'glim.'

"At the breakfast table that morning, she asked if she could Google Image the word 'glim.' The very first image that popped up was a picture of a lion, and the letters in all caps: GLIM. Underneath the letters, it said, 'God Lives In Me.' Needless to say, I still get chills and tears in my eyes each time I tell this story.''

-- D., Raleigh, N.C., via email