The cheerfulness you should have is not the kind we might call physiological good spirits—the happiness of a healthy animal. You must seek something more: the supernatural happiness that comes from the abandonment of everything and the abandonment of yourself into the loving arms of our Father-God.
It is based on divine filiation.
When the world first issued from the Creator’s hands, everything overflowed with goodness, which reached its culmination with the creation of man. But evil came into the world with sin, and rooted itself like a weed in human nature. True joy, which is always united to goodness, came to earth fully on the day that Our Lady gave her consent, and the Son of God took flesh in her womb. A profound joy already reigned within her, because she had been conceived without original sin, and her union with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit was complete. At her loving response to God’s plans, she became the cause of new happiness in the world. This is because Jesus Christ came to us through her. Christ is the full joy of the Father, of the angels and of men, in whom God is well pleased. Mary’s mission, then and now, is to give Jesus, her Son, to us. This is why we call Our Lady Cause of our Joy.
When Christ was born in Bethlehem, the angel announced to the shepherds, Be not afraid, for behold I bring you tidings of great joy which shall
be to all people. For this day in the city of David is born to you a Saviour who is Christ the Lord. True joy, the joy that lasts in spite of all adversity and pain, is the joy of those who encounter God in all sorts of different circumstances and then find it in themselves to follow him; it is the abundant joy of the old man, Simeon, as he holds the child Jesus in his arms. It is the immense joy of the Magi when they discover the new star that will lead them to Jesus, Mary and Joseph. It is the joy of all those people who, without expecting it, come face to face one day with Jesus. Why did you not bring him? The chief priest and the Pharisees asked the officers, who possibly were themselves arrested or lost their jobs for having disobeyed orders. No man ever spoke like this man, they said. It is the happiness of Peter on Mount Tabor, Master, it is well that we are here. It is the same spirit of joy that the downhearted disciples know again when they recognize Jesus… It is the tremendous joy the Apostles experience each time they see the risen Christ… In the midst of all this joy there is the joy of Mary: My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour. She possesses Jesus fully and her joy is the greatest any human heart can contain.
Joy is the immediate consequence of leading a full life, which consists in a life spent in the pursuit of holiness, a life dedicated to the knowledge and love of God and to the love and service of others for God. Through his infinite mercy, God has made us his children in Jesus Christ, and sharers in his nature, which is exactly that –fullness of life: great knowledge, immense love. We cannot reach any greater joy than that which is based on being children of God through grace, a joy capable of being retained, and of persisting in spite of illness and failure: Your hearts will rejoice, Our Lord promised at the Last Supper, and your joy no one will take from you.
When St. Peter asks Christ what reward is in store for those who leave all to follow him, Our Lord answers that they will receive a hundredfold in this life, and eternal happiness in the life to come. And precisely an important part of this hundredfold is a deep joy and happiness in this life.
The closer we are to God, the greater our share in his love and in his life. The more we grow in divine filiation, the greater and more appreciable will our joy be. The joy of one who knows himself to be a son of God the Father should be unshakable. For if God, my all powerful Father, loves me more than all the mothers in the world can love their children, and if He truly wants me to be happy in this life and to share eternal happiness with Him in heaven, then nothing should ever make me lose my joy. For just as nothing on earth can give us true joy, so nothing on earth can remove the true joy that comes from a life of love and service.
Is the way I usually behave a cheerful one? Is it positive and optimistic? Do I lose my cheerfulness when setbacks and disappointments occur? Do I often give in to gloomy and pessimistic thoughts?
The cross and cheerfulness. Causes of sadness. Remedies.
How different this true joy is from an ephemeral happiness dependent on material well-being, on health (how fragile it is!), on our moods (which change so easily!), on the enjoyment of some immediate pleasure, on temporarily not having any difficulties or not lacking the things we need. Indeed, experience tells us that these things can bring no lasting joy.
There are many who feel unhappy, just because they have too much of everything. Christians, if they really behave as God's children, will suffer discomfort, heat, tiredness, cold … But they will never lack joy, because that — all that — is ordained or permitted by Him who is the source of true happiness.
We are children of God and nothing should trouble us, nothing should make us lose our peace and our cheerfulness, not even death itself. For we know that for those who love God, all things work together unto the good. And so, if God our Father sends us some adversity, we will realize that it is somehow for our good even if we are unable to understand the reason for it.
Jesus suffers, to fulfil the Will of the Father… And I, who also wish to fulfil the most holy Will of God, following in the footsteps of the Master, can I complain if I too meet suffering as my traveling companion? It will be a sure sign of my sonship, because God is treating me as he treated his own Divine Son. And so we should rejoice when we are called to carry the Cross of Christ in the form of illness, hardship, failure, moral or physical suffering. It becomes one more opportunity to manifest our love for God our Father.
The Cross is not pain, or annoyance, or bitterness. It is the holy wood on which Jesus Christ triumphs|… and where we triumph too, when we receive what He sends us with cheerful and generous hearts.
Saint Paul reminded the first Christians at Philippi of the grounds they had for rejoicing: Rejoice in the Lord always, he said. Again I say, rejoice. And straight-away he gave them the reason: The Lord is at hand. In the midst of that difficult environment in which they were living, always harsh and often violently aggressive, the Apostle suggests to them the best remedy: Rejoice! This command is still more admirable when we consider that when he wrote this Letter he was shut up in prison. On another occasion, in extraordinarily difficult circumstances, he was to write, I am filled with consolation. With all our afflictions, I am overjoyed. If our joy is authentic, the circumstances that surround us should never have a negative effect on our joy, because it is founded on faithfulness to God in carrying out our duty, and in embracing the Cross.
How is it possible to be cheerful when we are bowed down by sickness, when we see the threat of injustice or suffer its cruelty, when we are faced with an uncertain and potentially disagreeable future that is out of our control? Won’t that cheerfulness be a deceptive illusion or an irresponsible means of escapism? No! It is Christ who gives us the answer –only Christ! Only in him do we find the true meaning of our own life and the key to human history. Only in him –in his doctrine, in his redeeming Cross whose salvific strength makes itself present in the sacrament of the Church –will you always find the vigour to make the world a better place, a happier place, a place more worthy of man who is made in God’s image.
Christ on the Cross: this is the only authentic key. On the Cross, He embraces suffering in order to make us happy; and He teaches us that, united to him, we too can give a salvific value to our suffering, which is then turned into joy. It is the profound joy of offering sacrifice for the good of others and the joy of doing penance for our personal sins and the sins of the world. In the light of Christ’s Cross, therefore, there is no room for a fear of pain, because we understand that love is shown through pain: the truth of love, of our love for God and for all men. As St. Paul tells us, I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my body I make up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body, which is the Church.
In the Old Testament, God had already spoken through Nehemiah: Do not be grieved, said the prophet, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. It is true. Joy is one of the most powerful allies we have to help us achieve victory. It is an excellent remedy for all evils. We can only lose this great good by separating ourselves from God by sin, by lukewarmness, by unwillingness to get to know God, by the selfishness of thinking about ourselves or when we refuse to do the will of God and to accept the Cross he sends us, which comes to us in so many different ways: as pain, sickness, failure, setbacks, compelled changes of plan, humiliations. You are unhappy?–Think: there must be an obstacle between myself and God. You will seldom be wrong.
Gloominess does great harm to us and to those around us. It is a harmful plant that we must uproot as soon as it appears. The Book of Sirach tells us: Delight your soul and comfort your heart; remove sorrow far from you, for sorrow has destroyed many, and there is no profit in it. And in the Book of Proverbs we read: As a moth consumes a garment, and a worm consumes the wood: so the sadness of a man consumes the heart.
Sadness is an ally of the devil: sorrow, sickness, setbacks, our own shortcomings bring about sadness in the soul when we think about ourselves and fail to cultivate a supernatural outlook. The devil takes advantage of this to tempt us: the imagination begins to forge fantasies, we look for compensations, we neglect our duties, etc.;
Sadness is usually caused by a disordered love of self, or selfishness. At the bottom of persistent sadness there usually lies pride which reacts negatively when we are corrected, contradicted or ridiculed; when we have to do something we dislike; when we rely on our own strength to grow in virtue and are faced with the inevitable failure that this approach entails; when we are attached to obtaining tangible results in our apostolate. We recall that episode from the Gospel about the rich young man. He went away sad, we are told, because he had great possessions and was not willing to give them up. Saying No to the will of God inevitably leads to sadness.
Sadness can also come about from taking ourselves too seriously, which is another form of pride. We should learn to laugh at ourselves, at our weaknesses and at our attempts to improve, keeping in mind that as long as we do struggle to improve, God our Father is happy with us.
At times pride can insinuate itself in a subtle way. We can be working hard, following our schedule, fulfilling a demanding plan of life and doing apostolate, but we are still seeking ourselves because we are relying on ourselves and are attached to our own sanctity.
The opposite of joy is not always sadness. It can be anxiety, worries, frustration, impatience, pessimism.
Whenever circumstances tend to be a cause of worry we can regain our joy if we know how to open our hearts: speak, give vent to what is oppressing the soul. Having recourse to prayer, or going with a contrite heart to Confession are the most effective ways of recovering our joy, especially if we have lost it through sin or through culpable carelessness in our relationship with God. The remedy lies in forgetting ourselves, and making sure we are not excessively concerned about our own affairs. In a word: humility. Humility is essential if we are to open ourselves to God as good children; this is what forms the basis of all true joy. If we pray trustingly, which means that we talk confidently to God, we will learn to accept a particular disappointment which is perhaps the cause of our sadness. We will decide to open our soul in spiritual direction –to say what worries us –or to be generous in giving God what he asks of us and perhaps (through lack of clear vision) what we are finding it difficult to give Him.
The apostolate of cheerfulness.
The apostolate God asks of us is that of transmitting to others the joy of being close to him, and we find that this itself consists in a superabundance of supernatural and human joy. When this happiness spills over into others, it gives birth to hope, to optimism, to impulses to be generous in our daily toil, and spreads its welcome contagion to the whole of society.
My children, said the Pope John Paul II, only if you have within you this divine grace, which is joy and peace, will you be able to construct something of value.
The family is a particularly important sphere in which we need to sow and spread great joy. The outstanding characteristic of our homes has to be the habitual smile (even though we may be tired or worried), together with optimistic warm-hearted behaviour which in its effect is like the ‘pebble dropped into the lake’, which produces a widening, expanding circle, and then another still wider: we end up creating a pleasant atmosphere in which it is easy and natural for people to live in harmony with others, and in which, in an habitual way, a fruitful apostolate can be carried out with our children, our parents, our brothers and sisters.
On the other hand, if our outlook on life is gloomy and pessimistic, our attitude cantankerous and intolerant, it separates us from others and from God. It constantly creates new tensions and inevitably leads to a lack of charity. Saint Josemaria Escriva has pointed out that the committed Christian should not be intolerant, abrasive or aggressive. His zeal should never be bitter. When he corrects he should never be wounding. His example should never be an arrogant moral slap in his neighbour's face. The effort to rise above our introspective silences, our fatigue and our personal worries and to show charity, warmth and affection to others will always be a sacrifice that is very pleasing to God.
Some Christians allow themselves to be carried away by a bitter zeal, as they see everything around them so seemingly far from God, and see the lifestyle adopted by many people who, they feel, should be giving better example. Such zealous Christians try to do good, but they are negative, continuously lamenting the obvious evil they see around them. God does not want us to be like that. He gave his life serenely and peacefully on the Cross for all men. It would be a great failure if Christians were to adopt a negative attitude towards the world they have to save. The optimism proper to a Christian is not naïve. We are well aware of all the evil in the world. But we also know that through his Cross Christ has conquered and that, as St. Paul tells us, nothing can separate us from the love of God. Peter’s bark can never sink and the gates of hell cannot prevail against the Church. God genuinely desires the salvation of all men and he wants to use Christians as his instruments to effect that purpose. So our optimism is not some pious pie-in-the-sky but is firmly based on the promise of God, our all powerful Father.
One simple resolution that we can make is never to lament or complain about anything, no matter how much we have had to suffer. St. Josemaria encouraged us never to consider ourselves “victims.” The only real victim is Jesus Christ on the Cross. After all, everyone goes through difficult situations and has different kinds of problems. The difference for the Christian is that he has learned to view these as so many occasions to identify himself with Christ, to be purified, to die to himself in order to rise again. So we rejoice and are cheerful even in suffering, since we see suffering as an instrument of our purification, as a divine caress.
Our joy should show itself continually in a cheerful smile, in good humor, optimism and a positive outlook on everything. It greatly helps the atmosphere in our family or work place or in our circle of friends when people know they can always count on being received by us with a cheerful smile, an encouraging and affectionate word and an optimistic outlook. This attitude will also be an effective instrument in winning other souls for Christ.
We have to spread this cheerful, optimistic, smiling outlook, founded on our divine filiation, to our work, to our friends and our neighbours. We should extend it to those we may only briefly come across in the whole course of our life. We must pass it on to the bank clerk we may never see again; to the librarian, to the passenger sitting beside us on the plane and to that fellow who stops us in the street to ask for directions. They will all take away from us –from their fleeting contact with us –a friendly smile and a prayer to their Guardian Angel. It is through the Christian’s cheerfulness that many will discover the path that leads to God, which perhaps they might never have found in any other way. The moment you have anyone at your side, whoever he may be, find a way, without doing anything strange, to pass on to him the joy you experience in being a son of God and living as such.
Let us imagine the joyful gaze of Jesus, the same ineffable look that would shine smiling from the eyes of his Mother, who is unable to contain her joy: ‘Magnificat anima mea dominum!’ Her soul glorifies the Lord, from the moment she first carried him within her, till now and forever.
O Mother, may ours, like yours, be the joy of being always with him and having him close to us. Today, beside her, we make a sincere resolution: to make the way lovable for others, and easy, since life brings enough bitterness without our adding to it.
Based on Francis Fernandez Carvajal, In Conversation with God, Scepter, 1990, Vol. 3, pp. 92-98
