So they may have true life and joy!
“If we are in relation with him who does not die, who is Life itself and Love itself, then we are in life. Then we “live”.”
~ Pope Benedict XVI (Spe Salvi)
w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html
“… there is one great Friend, who is the author of the joy of all and who fills our hearts with a joy that surpasses all other joys and lasts a lifetime: he is Jesus.”
~ Pope Benedict XVI
w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2012/december/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20121220_acr.html
]“Dear friends, today too the Risen One enters our homes and our hearts, even when, at times, the doors are closed. He enters giving joy and peace, life and hope, gifts we need for our human and spiritual rebirth. Only he can roll away those stones from the tombs in which all too often people seal themselves off from their own feelings, their own relationships, their own behaviour; stones that sanction death: division, enmity, resentment, envy, diffidence, indifference. Only he, the Living One, can give meaning to existence and enable those who are weary and sad, downhearted and drained of hope, to continue on their journey. This was the experience of the two disciples who were on their way from Jerusalem to Emmaus on Easter Day (cf. Lk 24:13-35). They were talking about Jesus but their sad looks (cf. v. 17), expressed their disappointed hopes, uncertainty and melancholy. They had left their homeland to follow Jesus with his friends and had discovered a new reality in which forgiveness and love were no longer only words but had a tangible effect on life. Jesus of Nazareth had made all things new, he had transformed their life. But now he was dead and it all seemed to be over.”
~ Pope Benedict XVI
“In Jerusalem they hear the news of Jesus’ Resurrection and, in turn, they recount their own experience, on fire with love for the Risen One who has opened their hearts to an uncontainable joy. As St Peter says, they were “born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (cf. 1 Pet 1:3). Indeed, the enthusiasm of faith, love for the community, the need to communicate the Good News was reborn within them. The Teacher is risen and with him all life is reborn; witnessing to this event becomes an irrepressible need for them.”
~ Pope Benedict XVI
w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2012/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20120411.html
(such is not per se a matter of the emotions…tis deeper that such …though it can can does effect the emotions too at times…Christian joy though can exist even in great suffering…)
Come into a fuller understanding of what it is to be a child of God, and how you can draw down grace upon the world. A world desperate for grace. When you get plugged in, power is released upon people, situations, events. The grace I wish for you! There’s more than what you’ve experienced so far.
It’s a form of pride to think you can’t be virtuous. Deny that pride–which is truly a spiritual problem that says God can’t make of me what he can make of others. He can, you know. You and I are no better and no worse than anyone else. It is God who makes us saints, with our cooperation, by his grace, not by our trying hard and judging ourselves unable. Jesus said that without him we can do nothing. So, rely on Jesus to be humble not on yourself. On our own we will fail because it takes supernatural grace to become saints.