Skip to main content

Joy










This Sunday is Gaudete Sunday, that is "rejoice" Sunday. We are halfway to Christmas and your excitement is building. Or is it? What if instead of excitement and joy you are experiencing sadness and emptiness? Joy and sorrow can co-exist, they can meet and embrace just as mercy and truth meet in Psalm 85.

True and lasting joy comes from freedom, interior freedom. Christ has come to set us free so we have claim to this freedom. This doesn't mean we will never suffer or grieve, but that He has redeemed even our sadness. He became small and weak, an infant, so that we would dare to approach Him, unashamed of our own weakness.

So if you do not feel like rejoicing, offer Him your heart now (in all truth), right where you are at. He knows your weakness, he has experienced your poverty and wishes now to fill you.

"Everyone offering himself to God must offer the glory of life in himself, whether it be through giving it up or rejoicing in it; through a renunciation or an embrace...Everything can be put into the fire that Christ came to kindle; and whether it be the bitter wood of sorrow or the substance of joy, it will burn upwards with the same splendour of light." (Reed of God by Caryll Houselander, p.66)

Offer Him all and He will give you joy (perhaps alongside your sorrow), the joy of being His, the joy of freedom.

- Sister M. Annuntiata, FSGM

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to our Family, Postulants!!!

Today, on the Feast of the Birth of Mary, our new postulants entered the postulancy of our American Province of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Martyr St. George! We thank God for the gift of these vocations. Pictured above - on their very first full day in the convent - are (from left) Ashley Vola, Samantha Goodson, Miranda Edgar, Jennifer Clark and Erin Leis. Welcome, Postulants! We Sisters are grateful that you have accepted Christ's invitation to belong totally to Him in our Franciscan community, and we support you wholeheartedly with our prayers and help! If you would like to send a word of welcome and encouragement to these new postulants, we will pass the greetings along to them. Just leave them as a "comment"!

Looking Back with Gratitude

“Christ is calling you; the Church needs you; the Pope believes in you and he expects great things of you!” My life would never be the same as the words of John Paul II coursed through my mind and beat with fervor in my heart. Me? Could he possibly mean me? Like many others, I felt Pope John Paul II was speaking directly to me as I sat behind him in the nose-bleed section of the stadium in Saint Louis. Throughout my high school years after this encounter, the idea of having a possible vocation to the religious life shocked and bewildered me, but at the same time brought me such peace. As each year came and went, my relationship with Jesus Christ and His Church grew with greater depth, understanding, and love. Through daily mass, Eucharistic Adoration, the Rosary, Scripture and God’s divine intervention through his priests and religious, I soon realized that, yes, the Pope did mean me. Christ was calling me and how could I say no? After one year of college, I soon came to the realizatio

Journey with Mary: Sacrificial Love of Spiritual Motherhood

                Recently, I found a reflection I had written during my first retreat as a postulant. The last conference that had been given was on Spiritual Motherhood. As I approached the 4 th Station where Jesus meets His Sorrowful Mother, this is what struck my heart:                 What is the sacrificial love of a mother? It is the self-sacrifice made to love her children. Mary’s self-sacrifice to be there with Christ, her Son, in His passion was the selfless love that united her with Him. Her heart was pierced with 7 swords in the agony of watching her beloved Son endure a cross that He did not deserve, but which He embraced for the love of the Father and mankind. Could she not have said to Jesus, “You don’t have to do this, there are other ways. Do you know how much pain You are causing me and those who love you?” She knew He could have chosen any other way to save us, but this was the Father’s will, and so in silent love Mary trusted. If the world is suffering, why do y