The Funny Side

Serve the Lord with Laughter

Gaudete!

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Painting: Benozzo Gozzoli, Os Anjos em Adoração, detail

Keep the Faith!

Painting: Henri Lebasque

Let Your Heart Delight

Joy in the Morning

Our Hearts Rejoice!

Especially Your Family

Painting on graphic: Winslow Homer, Pumpkin Patch, 1878

When Our Souls are Full of Spiritual Joy

'There is this difference, dearly beloved brethren, between spiritual and earthly pleasures. So long as we do not yet enjoy them, earthly pleasures are greatly desired; but when they are partaken to the full, our liking for them soon begins to pall. 

'Spiritual joys, on the other hand, are a matter of indifference to us when we do not possess them, but once we begin to experience them, we desire them.... When our souls are full of spiritual joy we long for more, since by tasting it we learn to desire it more eagerly. We cannot love what we do not possess, because we do not know its savor.'

St. Gregory the Great 

Painting: De Keyser, St. Margaretha

A Heart Set on Fire

'As a flame increases when it is constantly fed, so prayer, made often, with the mind dwelling ever more deeply in God, arouses divine love in the heart.  And the heart, set on fire, will warm all the inner man, will enlighten and teach him, revealing to him wisdom, and making him like a flaming seraph always standing before God in his spirit, always looking at Him within his mind, and drawing from this vision the sweetness of spiritual joy.'

St. Dmitri of Rostov




Painting: Georges de la Tour

To Nourish This Love

                          'Everything leads us to the love of our Lord.
                          All things nourish and feed this love...
                          It lives on our sorrows and consoles them; 
                          It lives on our sufferings and rewards them;
                          It lives on our sacrifices and makes them precious;
                          It lives on our pleasures and adds to them;
                          It lives on our hopes and fulfills them;
                          And in a word it will create our happiness,
                          Now and for ever.'


                                          from 'Listening to the Indwelling Presence" by a Religious, Pellegrini, , 1940, p. 5





                                 Painting: Henri Fantin-Latour, Still Life with a Carafe, Flowers and Fruit
                   

From Somewhere Else

'The false optimism, the modern happiness, tires us because it tells us we fit into this world. The true happiness is that we don't fit. We come from somewhere else.'

G.K. Chesterton












Painting: Edward Austin Abbey, In the Choir

In all Our Delights

'In God alone 
is there 
primordial 
and true
delight, 
and in all our delights 
it is this delight 
that we are 
seeking.'

St. Bonaventure













Painting: Henry Sandham, Tobogganing, in US public domain due to age

This Delight

'In God alone 

is there primordial and true delight, 

and in all our delights it is this delight that we are seeking.'

St. Bonaventure







Painting: 'Portrait of the Artist's Son'

But Not the Folly (or: how to face the world)

‘Faith, joy, optimism.  

 But not the folly of closing your eyes to reality.’

St. Josemaria Escriva

Painting:  Frederick Childe Hassam, Summer Evening 1886; in US public domain due to age

Do Not Forget Him in Prosperity

 'When you receive some pleasant news, do not act as certain unfaithful and ungrateful persons are wont to do.  They pray to God in adversity but forget and abandon Him in prosperity...

'Go at once to God and tell Him of your joy, praise and thank Him for it, and thus acknowledge that it is entirely a gift from His bounty.  And rejoice in this happiness, because it has been bestowed on you by His good pleasure.'

St. Alphonsus de Liguori

Painting: Charles Courtney Curran, Peonies, in US public domain due to age

Joy Shadowed Forth

"A child is a pledge of immortality, for he bears upon him in figure those high and eternal excellences in which the joy of heaven consists, and which would not thus be shadowed forth by the all-gracious Creator, were they not one day to be realized."     John Henry Cardinal Newman  

Painting: Karl Witkowski, Happy Days, 1909 

The Joy of Lent

It is nearly Lent, and I'm ready to dance and run and turn a few backflips.  This year (for once), I know what I hope to do:  take extra time in prayer with Scripture.  I'm asking to be shown areas of my own sinfulness, parts of my life that need changing. 

Think of it.  Conviction!  Correction!  Mortification!  Recognition of faults and failings!  Oh, surely it must be time for the Dance of Joy!

No, I'm not being sarcastic.  Not in the slightest.  Nor have I lost my senses.  I suspect it's much more likely that I've found them.

I have enough sense to know that joy is not what 'the world' equates with pleasure, entertainment, success.  I have enough sense to know that repentance and acceptance of God's forgiveness brings a joy like no other.  I have enough sense to know that Our Lord saved me by His death and resurrection.  That realization alone should send me dancing. 

By the sheer grace of God, this year I have the good sense to run toward the genuine joy of Lent. 

'Be merry, really merry.  The life of a true Christian should be a perpetual jubilee, a prelude to the festivals of eternity.'   Theophane Venard

'Count it pure joy when you are involved in every sort of trial.  Realize that when your faith is tested, this makes for endurance.  Let endurance come to its perfection so that you may be fully mature and lacking in nothing.'  James 1:2-4 

'In God alone is the primordial and true delight, and in all our delights it is this delight that we are seeking.'  St. Bonaventure

'Confession heals, confession justifies, confession grants pardon of sin.  All hope consists in confession.  In confession there is a chance for mercy.  Believe it firmly.  Do not doubt, do not hesitate, never despair of the mercy of God.'  St. Isidore

Laurel and Hardy Dancing illustration in public domain.  

This post is linked to Catholic Bloggers Network Linkup blitz

Always Time for Joy

One word we hear at this time of year is "joy."  It sings to us from carols, calls to us from cards, marches across banners in the mall. 

Someone once said that JOY is found by putting your focus and priorities in the proper order:

J   esus
O  thers
Y  ourself  

Is this "priority of focus" how St. Paul could write, in the face of persecutions, "I am filled with consolation, and despite my many afflictions my joy knows no bounds." (2 Corinthians 7:4)..?

Is this "priority of focus" what enabled some of the Church's greatest saints to endure adversities with joy? 

May we all burst forth with "the joy of right priorities" at this holy time of year. 

“Rejoice in the Lord always!  I say it again: rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4)
 

This is re-posted from a December 2011 entry on this blog  

A Serenity of Temper

Spiritual joy

 is a serenity of temper in the changes of life,

 such as a mountain has when a storm breaks over it.

To a man who has never rooted

 the soul in the Divine,

 every trouble exaggerates itself.

                                                                                           - Archbishop Fulton Sheen