“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.” – John 15:11

Joy is at the heart of the Gospel. It might even be said that joy is the Gospel, the Good News itself. All our longing & searching seeks some end; our restless hearts seek rest. This “end” or “rest” has been described & imaged variously: happiness, the Beatific Vision, eudaimonia, bliss, and so on. But Jesus, in St. John’s Gospel, calls it joy, and specifically the joy of Jesus; it is in the joy that is shared amongst the Persons of the Triune God that we, too, will share, if only we would abide.

Canongate, too, recognizes that joy, at one and the same time, is the result of an encounter with truth and the cause for a further journey into the truth.

It is only by being grafted on by the Vinedresser (the Father) as a branch to the True Vine (the Son, Jesus) and abiding there faithfully our whole life long that we might have the rest of joy – joy made complete. Here below, in this vale of tears, we experience joy only episodically; there above, we will experience it as our daily bread, our “meal at every wink” (Hopkins), our only & consummate sense of the way things are. We will experience ecstatic joy as wholly and invariably as the Son receives the love of the Father, as wholly and invariably as we also will receive the love of the Father.

Feast days, dancing, folk music, games & play are the (sometimes-planned, sometimes-spontaneous) ways that the joy of an encounter with truth – or, more concretely, with Christ – are manifested at Canongate.

As a school that sees discipleship to Christ as essential to the journey of education, Canongate considers experiencing the joy promised to all those who abide in Him as every bit as essential, however episodic and proleptic such joy might be here below. Canongate, too, recognizes that joy, at one and the same time, is the result of an encounter with truth and the cause for a further journey into the truth. Thus, we believe that without fostering & giving room for the joy attendant to discovery, learning becomes an empty chore. Feast days, dancing, folk music, games & play are the (sometimes-planned, sometimes-spontaneous) ways that the joy of an encounter with truth – or, more concretely, with Christ – are manifested at Canongate.