"Our Lord continues on His way..."

We must not lose our joy; it would be a pity and senseless.  We must desire to keep it, and not let ourselves slide into a "malaise" that we manufacture and increase by talking about it all the time.

In order to hold on to our joy, our confidence in the providential progress of events, no matter how extraordinary it may seem to us at the beginning, we have only to consider our Lord during His Passion.  After He had met His Mother, after Simon had permitted Him to take some rest, after the sweet, tender, and courageous gesture of Veronica, we see our Divine Model fall for the second time.  This is a great lesson for us:  life is harsh and we must expect there to be more suffering, even when we have known some surcease from it, some consolation, and some joy.  Our Lord continues on His way; just because He has just received some solace, He does not lose sight of the reason for His life, which He wants to fulfill according to the prophecies and the will of His Father to the very end.  He has just encountered the greatest help possible:  the strong and heroic tenderness of His Mother and, by the intercession of Mary, He also gets help from Simon and from Veronica who are there as witnesses for us; then He falls again, because basically nothing has changed.  It is always very hard.  Above all, then, we too have to learn to keep on going, not to let ourselves be overcome by a temporary success, by finding great affection, immense happiness, or understanding which is so sweet to us.  We must not permit ourselves to be deceived:  let us move forward sensibly, always in the same direction; let no failure depress us too much; let no success make us lose our mastery of ourselves.  Nothing will help us so much in this conduct of our lives as the sight of our Lord continuing on with all serenity to fulfill His mission:  our redemption.

~Mother Marie des Douleurs, Joy Out of Sorrow

Let our joy, then, be in him...

O peoples, bless our God;

let the voice of his praise resound,

of the God who gave life to our souls

and kept our feet from stumbling.

~Psalm 66:6, 8-9