We do not renounce things, then, except for love”¦ Joy is an expression of love. One who loves nothing and nobody cannot possibly rejoice, no matter how desperately he craves joy. Joy is the response of a lover receiving what he loves”¦
The inner structure of real festivity has been stated in the clearest and tersest possible fashion by Chrysostom; ubi caritas gaudet, ibi est festivitas, “where love rejoices, there is festivity”….
Man cannot have the experience of receiving what is loved, unless the world and existence as a whole represent something good and therefore beloved to him….
–Josef Pieper (1904-1997) as found in Josef Pieper: An Anthology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989; E.T. of the German original), pp. 153, 155
It was the Whitman poem that brought this Pieper quote to mind.