Joy is prayer - Joy is strength -
Joy is love - Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. God loves a
cheerful giver. She gives most who gives with joy. The best way to show our
gratitude to God and the people is to accept everything with joy. A joyful
heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love. Never let anything
so fill you with sorrow as to make you forget the joy of the Christ risen. - Mother Teresa
Gospel text (Jn 17,11b-19):
Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus
prayed, saying:
"Holy Father, keep them in your
name
that you have given me,
so that they may be one just as we are
one.
When I was with them I protected them
in your name that you gave me,
and I guarded them, and none of them
was lost
except the son of destruction,
in order that the Scripture might be
fulfilled.
But now I am coming to you.
I speak this in the world
so that they may share my joy
completely.
I gave them your word, and the world
hated them,
because they do not belong to the
world
any more than I belong to the world.
I do not ask that you take them out of
the world
but that you keep them from the Evil
One.
They do not belong to the world
any more than I belong to the world.
Consecrate them in the truth.
Your word is truth.
As you sent me into the world,
so I sent them into the world.
And I consecrate myself for them,
so that they also may be consecrated
in truth."
Today in our society people seek the
happiness of Jesus in all the wrong places and in the wrong ways. Seeking
happiness without God only leads to deeper unhappiness. But don’t take my word
for it, just look at the TV or read the paper each and every day, there is
always somebody in trouble. The people in the news, time and time again, show us
the misery of a godless life.
Notice the words in today’s gospel
text, Jesus wants his joy to be complete in us. «I leave these my words in the
world that my joy may be complete in them» (Jn 17,13).
Christ does not want us to be joyful
sometimes, He wants us to be full of His joy all the time! We all were created
for this joy in the here and now. This however does not mean that we will not
have crosses in our lives, for «the world has hated them because they are not
of the world» (Jn 17,14), but Jesus expects us to live with His joy no matter
what the world thinks of us or does to us. The joy of Jesus is to permeate us to our very
core while the superficial rumblings of a godless world should not be able to penetrate
us.
Today then let us live with the joy of
Jesus. How can we acquire more and more of this joy? Obviously from Jesus
himself. Jesus is the only one who gives us the true joy that the world is lacking
as we see in the daily news. Jesus said, «If you remain in me and my words in
you, you may ask whatever you want and it will be given to you» (Jn 15,7). Then
let us spend time each day in prayer, let us receive the sacraments frequently
(Eucharist and Reconciliation), let us eat and consume the words of Jesus in
the Scriptures, let them be our food, so that we may be satiated with the joy
of God. Pope Benedict XVI put it very well when he stated«Being Christian is
not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an
event, a person, which gives life a new horizon»
And aren’t we all looking for a new
horizon in life? - Be honest………..
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