Joy!

I was listening this noon to Relevant Radio and heard someone mention that Blessed Pope John XXIII was the one who asked that the word "and joys" be added to the offering of our daily sorrows to God in the Daily Offering Prayer.

How typical of his joyful spirit of faith.

How needed. We can offer each sorrow AND JOY to God because He cares for us.

And now I just read this from Thomas de Celano (around 1190-1260). He wrote a biography of St. Francis and St. Clare / Vita Secunda of St. Francis, §125 and 127 (translated from the French - Debonnets et Vorreux, Documents, p.430) .

Some of you know that I am not a huge fan of things Franciscan, more from temperment than anything else. So, it's a relatively big deal for me to cite the great Gentle Man from Assisi. But this is worth it.

By the way, I didn't know they had basements in the Middle Ages.

“I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you” Saint Francis maintained: “My best defense against all the plots and tricks of the enemy is still the spirit of joy. The devil is never so happy as when he has succeeded in robbing one of God’s servants of the joy in his or her soul. The devil always has some dust on hold that he blows into someone’s conscience through a small basement window so as to make opaque what is pure. But in a heart that is filled with joy, he tries in vain to introduce his deadly poison.

The demons can do nothing against a servant of Christ whom they find filled with holy gladness; whereas a dejected, morose and depressed soul easily lets itself be submerged in sorrow or captured by false pleasures.” That is why he himself always tried to keep his heart joyful, to preserve that oil of gladness with which his soul had been anointed (Ps 45:7).

He took great care to avoid sorrow, the worst of illnesses, and when he felt that it was beginning to infiltrate his soul, he immediately had recourse to prayer. He said: “At the first sign of trouble, the servant of God must get up, begin to pray, and remain before the Father until the latter has caused him or her to retrieve the joy of the person who is saved.” (Ps 51:12)… I sometimes saw Francis with my own eyes picking up a piece of wood from the ground, placing it on his left arm, and scraping it with a straight stick as if he were moving a bow on a violin. In this way, he mimed an accompaniment to the praises he was singing to the Lord in French."

Lord, open my lips....

and my mouth will declare your praise....

Millions of loyal Christians open their day with this prayer, afixed as it is to the beginning of the Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours. One can see how readily this single phrase from the Psalms (51:17) can be adapted for that purpose.

Here are some encouraging words on that very topic from the Journal of a Soul, the diary of Blessed John XXIII:

"When we think that these words are repeated at all Matins, in the name of the Church, who prays for herself and for the whole world, and repeated by innumerable lips opened by the touch of the grace they have invoked, the vision broadens, comes alive and is fulfilled. Here the Church is seen not as a historic monument of the past but as a living institution.

Holy Church is not like a place that is built in a year. It is a vast city which must one day cover the whole universe: “With the joy of the whole earth is Mount Sion founded; in the far north the city of the great king” (Ps 47,3). The building was begun twenty centuries ago, but it spreads and stretches through all lands until the name of Christ is everywhere adored. As the Church increases so new nations, hearing the good news, rejoice: “And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad” (Acts 13,48). The pious and daring commentator concludes with a thought that is very fine and uplifting for every priest as he reads his Breviary: everyone must take part in this building of Holy Church.

He whose work is preaching this grand enterprise must, as a messenger of His Gospel, say to the Lord: “Lord, thou wilt open my lips and my mouth shall declare thy praise”. A priest who is not engaged in missionary work should long to co-operate in the great task of the apostolate, and when he reads the Psalms privately in his cell he also should say: “Lord, thou wilt open my lips”, because even there, through the communion of love, he must consider as his own voice any voice that is at that moment announcing the Gospel, the supreme praise of God which has given us the theme for this verse more charged with hidden mysteries than with words."