from Annecy
“God is the God of joy”
“Sow joy in your brother’s field, it will bloom in yours” (St Francis de Sales.) I was touched by this morning’s liturgy with the Virgin Mary, where all the texts speak of joy (LDH page 1495 -1510) • We could say again that joy is the barometer of the soul: its degree indicates the degree of love. It is the measure of our faith.
To believe in God is to believe that he loves us, it’s love him and love his neighbour. To experience joy in faith, there are 3 criteria: sharing, gentleness with others, gratuitousness. We see that these 3 criteria take their source in love. Love pulls us out of ourselves, keeps us from thinking about our worries , turns our gaze to the next.
“Love,” said St. Therese, “that’s all to give and to give oneself” This is the source of joy. • Joy is not a possibility, it is a responsibility.
As much as we embarrass the neighbor by our sadness, as much as we open out, we rejoice when we radiate peace. We do not evangelize Jesus by sadness but by simplicity, closeness, by a smile, by life. We can say fine words, but what counts is life, influence, actions.
St Fr. de Sales says: “Be what you are, and be it well. “Joy makes us responsible for each other. When do we lose our joy? When we leave our relationship with God. Why? Because at that moment we come face to face with ourselves, with our temperament, our difficulties. We only think of ourselves. It is sadness! Françis de Sales says: “Make sure you overcome this sadness”. He would like that we cultivated our joy because joy, like any gift received from God, is cultivated. This is like a seed that must be watered by prayer, by working on our character, our temperament, our desires, our relationships. •
Joy is charity. To preserve the joy, we must not stop at what we hear and which hurts. that he must always rise above oneself and never believe that we are being wronged. It is not easy, it is even difficult. Joy is charity. It is a path on which we are progressing little by little. •
Joy and suffering The pandemic, attacks, cataclysms, violence of all kinds pose the question: how to keep and live in joy when there is so much suffering in the world ? Francis of Assisi said: “Where there is sadness, let me put joy. » you have to go against the current. It is by living fully with more attention and love that we will help those who are unhappy. Those who suffer need not be pitied but helped. But help comes through attention, sharing, love, prayer of praise. Praise takes us out of ourselves. A determining element of fidelity and perseverance is joy.
The quality of fraternal life is identified in the testimony of joy of the whole community. we must not forget that peace and the pleasure of being together remain one of the signs of the kingdom of God. The joy of living, even in the midst of difficulties, troubles newspapers is already part of the kingdom. This joy is the fruit of the Spirit. A brotherhood, a community without joy, is a brotherhood, a community that is dying out. Very quickly the members will be tempted to look elsewhere for what they cannot find at home. Our contemporaries want to see in consecrated persons the joy of being with the Lord, the joy of remaining faithful, the fruit of frequenting the Word of God. Communities rich in joy and in the Holy Spirit themselves become evangelizers because there is attention to one another, communication, fidelity between the members. They are places of hope, places where love is based on prayer, the source of communion.
Vita Consecrata n° 94 invites us to live our vocation fully and joyfully in order to be a sign of God’s tenderness for humanity and a witness to the mystery of the Church, Virgin Wife and Mother n°95. The magisterium of Pope Francis is particularly attentive to joy. His texts speak of the urgency of joy which is the joy of the Gospel, the joy of love. n invites us continually witnessing joy For Pope Francis, joy is not an ornament useless it is the requirement and the foundation of human life. It is the motor of hope. Joy arises from the gratuitousness of an encounter. And the joy of encountering God and of his call encourages us to open up. It leads us to the service of the Church. Saint Thomas said: “The good spreads!” Joy also spreads. Pope Francis says: “Do not be afraid to show your joy at having responded to the Lord’s call to his choice of love and to bear witness to his gospel in the service of the Church.” And the joy, the real one is contagious, it contaminates, it advances.