Joy of Living

Joie de Vivre is French for the “joy of living.” As South Louisiana Catholics, this phrase captures well our cultural experience and history, even in the face of great suffering and trial. Despite the harsh realities which our ancestors experienced in exile, immigration, and slavery and which we experience today due to natural disasters, economic hardship, and moral and environmental degradation, we have continued to persevere, together, as a humble, hopeful, and joyful pilgrim Church in search of the face of God in both the Eucharist and one another.

This journal is a celebration of all that is good, true, and beautiful in our experience of life as Catholics in South Louisiana with a particular focus on the realms of art, culture, history, and letters. We hope that South Louisiana Catholics will simultaneously recover not only a deeper appreciation of the breadth and depth of our Catholic faith but also our unique identity and cultural heritage as South Louisianans, both of which go hand-in-hand. 

While many in our world today consider art, beauty, and religion to be supplemental add-ons to a normal human life, Joie de Vivre believes otherwise. There is nothing more fundamental about the human experience than the desire for God, the desire for truth, goodness, and beauty, and the attempt to creatively express and better live in accordance with it. Apart from these authentically human goods, human life withers, but wholly immersed in the great goods of natural experience and Christian revelation, well that’s la joie de vivre.