The joy of the spirit is no cheap joy...

For the sake of the joy that lay before him he endured the cross, despising its shame, and has taken his seat at the right of the throne of God.  ~Hebrews 12:2

The joy of the spirit is no cheap joy. It has scars on it -- radiant scars! It is joy won out of the heart of pain. Those who know it have found one of life's deepest and most transforming secrets; the transmuting of pain into a paean. Sorrow becomes not something to escape; we can make it sing. We can set our tears to music, and no music is so exquisite, so compelling. The Christians learned immediately and at once the truth which the philosopher Royce puts in these words: "Such ills we remove only as we assimilate them, take them up into the plan of our lives, give them meaning, set them in their place in the whole." When their heartstrings were stretched upon some cross of pain and the winds of persecution blew through them, then from this human aeolian harp men heard the very music of God. They did not bear pain, they used it.  ~from Springs in the Valley by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman

For me you have changed my mourning into dancing, you removed my sackcloth and girded me with joy.  So my soul sings psalms to you unceasingly.  O Lord my God, I will thank you for ever.  ~Psalm 29:12-13

True Joy

Behold, dear friends, what true joy consists in: It is feeling that our personal and communal existence is visited and filled by a great mystery, the mystery of God's love. To be joyful we do not just have need of things, but love and truth: We need a God who is near, who warms our heart, and responds to our profound desires. This God is manifested in Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary. This is why that Baby, whom we place in the stable or the cave, is the center of everything, the heart of the world. Let us pray that every person, like the Virgin Mary, may welcome into the center of their lives the God who became a Child, font of true joy. ~Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Message of 12/13/09

Dear Mary, Virgin of Advent and cause of our joy, we rejoice with you that our God is near. Amen.

Today's Feast: St. Andrew

Today's gospel for the feast of St. Andrew recounts how Christ called him and his brothers, who were busy with their fisherman's nets. They left their nets to follow the Lord. Grace builds on nature, and so these fishermen took up new a new net, the one Mother Teresa named joy. "Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls," she said, adding that "A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love." Another woman by the name of Teresa comes to my mind, St. Teresa of the Andes. She wasn't even 20 years old when she died -- just 19 years, 9 months! -- but her life of radiant, vibrant joy has caught many souls for the Lord, whom she called her only joy, the joy of her life. "You are loved by the God who is infinite joy," she once told her brother -- and so we are, thanks be to God!

Dear Lord, please catch me and keep me forever in your net of joy, so that through me others may know the joy of your love. Amen.