Matthew Kelly - A Call to Joy: Living in the Presence of God

A CALL TO JOY: Living in the Presence of God.

Copyright 1997 by Matthew Kelly. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address The Matthew Kelly Foundation, 2330 Kemper Lane, Cincinnati, OH 45206.

A previous hardback edition of A CALL TO JOY was published in 1997 by HarperSanFrancisco, a division of HarperCollins Publishers.

Cover Design: Jim Warner / Photography: Stan Musilek

First Beacon Publishing Edition published 1999.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in Publication Data

Kelly, Matthew

A call to joy : living in the presence of God / Matthew Kelly. - second edition

ISBN 1-929266-00-6 (pbk.)

1.Christian life. 2. Spirituality - Religion. 3. Joy - Christianity. 4. Kelly, Matthew.

I. Title.

03 04 05 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5

I would like to dedicate this book to my mother and father, who taught me how to love and how to be loved. If I can live what they have taught me, there is nothing more I need to know.

Love Is Everything

I n the midst of all the hustle and bustle of the world, there is a whisper in the marketplace. The whisper is the voice of God. He is calling to you. He is beckoning to you. He is gently inviting you to a quiet place, and His call is a call to joy.

If you listen, you can hear His voice saying, Come to Me. He is calling you into His presence so that your life may become a dance for joy.

J OY is not simply a feeling of happiness. Joy is the all-intoxicating feeling of becoming. It is the greatest of emotional and spiritual sensations. We experience joy when we grow, and we grow when we live in the presence of God and listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. I have spent twenty-three years on this earth, and just four years ago I heard the call to joy.

As I was preparing for bed on the evening of April 7, 1993, I realized that I was at a crossroads in my life.

In some ways the day had been no different from any other. Early that morning, as my younger brothers rushed around preparing for school, I had gotten out of bed, wandered downstairs in my pajamas, taken a large glass from the cupboard, and filled it with orange juice. Then Id sat down at our piano and had played and sung for some time. After my brothers had left for school and thus vacated the bathroom, I showered and went off to the university for the day.

Getting into bed that night, I reached for my Walkman from the bedside table so that I could listen to some music before I went to sleep. As I did, I sensed a strong external presence that was urging me not to pick up the Walkman. I ignored the sensation. When I put on the headphones, I had a similar feeling, only this time it was twice as powerful. Again I ignored it.

I turned my Walkman on, and after a few seconds of listening to the music, I felt the same urge for a third time. This time, however, it was almost overpowering. I knew it was something I had never experienced before. I took my Walkman off, got out of bed, and fell to my knees. As I knelt there in the darkness and silence, I asked myself why I was kneeling in the middle of my room at this hour. But before I could answer this question, I heard a voice speak to mea voice as clear as any voice I have ever heard.

Keep doing what you are doing. Believe in yourself and believe in Me, the voice said.

I looked around. There was no one else in the room. My brother was asleep and snoring in the room next to mine. I looked around again, but somehow I knew I wouldnt find anyone.

Thirteen words, yet because of them, my life would never be the same.

Three days later I heard the voice for a second time. It was then that this mysterious person identified Himself as God the Father. From that moment on, these encounters with the Divine became a regular part of my day, and although they are now welcomed and appreciated, they have never lost their initial quality of being intriguingly unexpected. As those first days went by, God visited me three, four, five times a daysometimes when I least anticipated it; sometimes for long periods and other times ever so briefly. He spoke to me as a friend, encouraging, guiding, counseling, and advising. He told me simple things and little by little began to open my eyes and ears to the spiritual realm. He constantly encouraged me to better myself, to strive heroically for holiness. He tried to inspire me to live every day with courage and fortitude. I continually failed Him, but He never stopped picking me up and giving me a fresh start, a new zeal. He taught me to spend time every day doing things that inspired me, from reading the Scriptures to watching young children at play.

To live an inspiring life, you must be inspired.

Since that first night, which remains engraved on my memory, I have had close to fifteen hundred similar visitations. Who is this Person who can be heard but not seen? I believe that the voice I hear is the voice of God. Throughout the ages, many have claimed to hear the voice of the Divine. Others have stood in judgment of those who have made such claims. Some people will accept no proof, while others judge by the fruits.

In those early days I too searched for some proof, other than the actual experience, that God was speaking to me. I didnt have to search far, for the fruit of the experience was a deep inner peace. As an initial proof, this was enough. Then as I began to apply what I heard to my daily life, this inner serenity grew stronger and deeper and my belief more and more firm. Recently in my travels, as I have witnessed people opening themselves to the message and applying it to their lives, I have seen that each of them has been touched in a different way. So it is finally in the hearts of these men and women from all walks of life and from many countries around the world that I have found the fruits of these messagesand thus the proof that they come from the Divine.

God speaks not only to me. He speaks to me so that I can hear, receive, understand, and share the message, but He also opens His mouth and whispers deep within the heart of every person who will humbly and sincerely listen.

If the message is true, then those who apply it to their lives will experience true freedom. The by-products of this freedom are peace, joy, and happiness. And these are the very things that we all desire.

In these pages I hope to unfold the message for you. I will try to reveal not only the person I am and the person I am not but also the person I wish to become. It is my hope that these pages will help you too to see the person you are, the person you are not, and the person you desire to be.

In this book I have tried to synthesize the wisdom that the voice of the Divine has shared with me over the past four years. It is practical wisdom for the journeying soul.

The journey of the soul is a difficult one. The same difficulties arise for all of us. For example, surely each of us in our own way has struggled with pride. Perhaps we have tried to stand up to this enemy and fight it on our own, but experience inevitably teaches us that pride will always win under such circumstances. Over time we come to see that victory over pride comes only with our humble surrender. The challenge is to develop ways of responding to such difficulties without surrendering our peace and joy.