How to Discover Joy in Sadness?
It is true that the inner gift of the community is joy, but joy for man, like everything on Earth, can be both a gift and a temptation.
It can be an escape and it can be a shelter, it can be a way of being and it can be a way of escaping from being, from existence. Joy can be escapism, it can be life's escape from sadness, from unresolved conflicts, from suffering, from sin.
This is the kind of joy that the Lord does not want from us, that we artificially appreciate ourselves with joy all the time. He wants joy to be free from fear for us, so that joy is not a state of fear before sadness comes. A Christian is not afraid of sadness because he finds joy in sadness.
[media=https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o7Idnxs30JY]
Book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 7: "The heart of a wise man is in the house of mourning, and the heart of a fool is in the house of joy." Consider this – does this mean that God wants sadness? NO. He wants man to find wisdom and joy in sadness, that a Christian finds the joy of the Holy Spirit in every situation, not only in some situations.
A non-believer must create an atmosphere - a restaurant, an orchestra, a band - he must drink something, he must have fun to find joy. A Christian does not have to look for anything - he finds joy everywhere. Therefore, the word that the Lord addresses to you is precisely this: it is difficult, difficult, so that you may discover joy in everything.
God is not a tormentor of your life, but He is simply a wise God, and He wants to have wise children, not stupid ones, because children testify about their father. If children are smart, it means that their father raises them well.
Our Lord is full of surprises for all of us - we can never reach a point in our lives when we put God in a box and label him as: God is such and such.
When God revealed Himself to Moses, Abraham, the patriarchs, He was still a surprise to all of them, constantly surprising them, even though He presented Himself, revealed Himself, He was still someone else.
Consider that God appeared to Israel as the only one and told them that they cannot have other gods because "I am the only one." After these words, about 1,400 or 1,200 years passed and God revealed that He was a Trinity. And now what?
Our older Jewish brothers live in scandal, they are scandalized that such a thing could happen - they think that we invented it. And God revealed himself, God introduced himself this way - he surprised everyone. The Church says that there will be no further revelations - the revelation is finished, you just have to dig deeper and deeper into this mine of revelation, but in your personal, individual experience, God will also surprise you.
We tend to put a label on God, put a label on it and say: God is like this. NO. He will surprise you, He will surprise you with His presence in your life, He will constantly exceed your imagination.
Consider this, that in the same Bible it is written, "Honor your father and mother," and in the same Bible it is written, "Whoever does not hate father and mother is not worthy of Me." How to reconcile this? It is written that God gave life to Esau.
In Hebrew, Esau means "to form someone well," ideally, and this was Isaac's firstborn son, his beloved. And at the same time in the Book of Malachi in the first chapter it is written: "Did I not hate Esau and love Jacob?"
How so? God loves everyone, but it is written that he hated Esau, but he was the firstborn and he shaped him better than Jacob!
Isn't it written in the same Bible that God gives the sun first to the evil and then to the good, and that His rain falls first on the unjust and then on the righteous?
When man comes closer and closer to God, he sees that the human brain is tiny and that patterns have to break away, or we risk being scandalized by God. Revelation had been preparing the chosen people for many hundreds of years - it was simply that this nation was prepared for the revelation of God, and yet they were not yet able to receive it.
We do not always realize that holiness is an ideal that is unattainable - most often not because it cannot be achieved, but because we run away from it. Because this ideal is in us. In each of us there is the truth about ourselves, there is the truth about our weakness.
We run away from seeing ourselves in weakness, we run away from revealing even to ourselves the truth that we fall flat on our faces. And it doesn't take much for us to be overwhelmed by desperate doubt - we are weak.
Holiness is not an unattainable model, it is rather an unwanted ideal because it does not make us heroic, but it does not allow us to avoid the truth that we are very fragile, ordinary, small, last.
No one really wanted to help Jesus on the path of glory, which in the eyes of people was a path of shame - the way of the cross. It was not because they did not want to help Him because the cross was too heavy, but because anyone who would grab it would not be considered strong and serious.
Everyone would be ridiculous and miserable. It's too true. On a planet where everyone walks backwards, someone walking straight ahead would be met with laughter and outrage.
So, what is your weakness? You also need to think about this so that your joy is true before God. What is your weakness? How are you true, true, as a weak person? Don't you know?
Let's start from the other side: what would be funny in the eyes of others? What would make you laugh if you exposed your weakness? What would others laugh at if they knew your weakness? You can already see this cross, which is slightly outlined.
What would be condemned and ridiculed about you? What would make you small, even in the eyes of your loved ones? What weighs you down and makes you feel depressed?
If you don't go through it, you won't discover joy. What cannot you bear, what cannot you bear within yourself, so that your prayer does not become an escape from this truth? Because then you will not authentically say: "Yes, I praise You, Lord, I adore You", but it will be a very inauthentic quote.
God wants real prayer. Jesus could not bear the cross, he fell under it, the cross crushed Him, it made Him ridiculous, this cross made Him worthy of condemnation in the eyes of the onlookers gathered on His path.
He loves God even for this - for your weakness, for what you are afraid to discover in yourself, for what you are ashamed of. Even then say, "Praise You, Lord."
Because we love the cross on the wall, but we are ashamed of ourselves and run away. Is that fair? If I hate my cross, do I have the right to pray with adoration to the cross in the temple? Is this authentic?
And if I don't even know what my cross is, do I know what that man on that cross is? Weakness.
I would like to quote Jean Vanier here, who offered his life to disabled, handicapped and therefore weak people. A person usually devotes his life to what is most important, most beloved, fascinating and attractive.
Can the handicapped be the most important? This is the big question for the world and for us. Why did this man devote himself to the underprivileged? Or: can a disabled person be the most beloved? Yes.
You can devote yourself to learning, you can devote yourself to a beautiful wife, husband, sports fame, passion, music, art... but to the disabled?
Mother Teresa also devoted herself to people who were thrown out - pariahs, dying, unnecessary people, inhuman people, it would seem. Because if they are wronged, they are also capable of harming. What did she have to offer them?
Wasn't she lying when she said God loved them? Is the handicapped from the Vanier community or the pariah from the streets of Calcutta someone worse than me, since I also experience the handicap of sin, self-rejection?
Or do I experience that I am so miserable that I am actually useless for anything? If it's true that God loved those people, then what does he feel towards me?
Let's listen to this Jean Vanier. In one of the conversations, the editors ask him: "What have you learned about the God of love after living for nearly 40 years with mentally disabled people?" Jean Vanier replies: "I learned that the most important thing is presence, and through presence - discovering to people that they are important.
Love is about discovering the beauty of God in another person and awakening their trust in oneself. Loving someone means revealing to them that they are beautiful, capable of miraculous deeds, welcome him inside and gradually help him grow and gain self-confidence.
The Mystery of the Incarnation brought the revelation that we are capable of love, even when we are handicapped."
I don't mean mental retardation, but life retardation - when a person feels non-standard, when he cannot classify himself into a certain category, when he is declassified in life and told: "Go away, get out, we don't love you." Either nothing was said at all, no love was offered to the child, young person or adult, or they were constantly criticized and destroyed with words.
I know that it is a huge obstacle to accepting love when a person feels handicapped in life.
It can be an escape and it can be a shelter, it can be a way of being and it can be a way of escaping from being, from existence. Joy can be escapism, it can be life's escape from sadness, from unresolved conflicts, from suffering, from sin.
This is the kind of joy that the Lord does not want from us, that we artificially appreciate ourselves with joy all the time. He wants joy to be free from fear for us, so that joy is not a state of fear before sadness comes. A Christian is not afraid of sadness because he finds joy in sadness.
[media=https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o7Idnxs30JY]
Book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 7: "The heart of a wise man is in the house of mourning, and the heart of a fool is in the house of joy." Consider this – does this mean that God wants sadness? NO. He wants man to find wisdom and joy in sadness, that a Christian finds the joy of the Holy Spirit in every situation, not only in some situations.
A non-believer must create an atmosphere - a restaurant, an orchestra, a band - he must drink something, he must have fun to find joy. A Christian does not have to look for anything - he finds joy everywhere. Therefore, the word that the Lord addresses to you is precisely this: it is difficult, difficult, so that you may discover joy in everything.
God is not a tormentor of your life, but He is simply a wise God, and He wants to have wise children, not stupid ones, because children testify about their father. If children are smart, it means that their father raises them well.
Our Lord is full of surprises for all of us - we can never reach a point in our lives when we put God in a box and label him as: God is such and such.
When God revealed Himself to Moses, Abraham, the patriarchs, He was still a surprise to all of them, constantly surprising them, even though He presented Himself, revealed Himself, He was still someone else.
Consider that God appeared to Israel as the only one and told them that they cannot have other gods because "I am the only one." After these words, about 1,400 or 1,200 years passed and God revealed that He was a Trinity. And now what?
Our older Jewish brothers live in scandal, they are scandalized that such a thing could happen - they think that we invented it. And God revealed himself, God introduced himself this way - he surprised everyone. The Church says that there will be no further revelations - the revelation is finished, you just have to dig deeper and deeper into this mine of revelation, but in your personal, individual experience, God will also surprise you.
We tend to put a label on God, put a label on it and say: God is like this. NO. He will surprise you, He will surprise you with His presence in your life, He will constantly exceed your imagination.
Consider this, that in the same Bible it is written, "Honor your father and mother," and in the same Bible it is written, "Whoever does not hate father and mother is not worthy of Me." How to reconcile this? It is written that God gave life to Esau.
In Hebrew, Esau means "to form someone well," ideally, and this was Isaac's firstborn son, his beloved. And at the same time in the Book of Malachi in the first chapter it is written: "Did I not hate Esau and love Jacob?"
How so? God loves everyone, but it is written that he hated Esau, but he was the firstborn and he shaped him better than Jacob!
Isn't it written in the same Bible that God gives the sun first to the evil and then to the good, and that His rain falls first on the unjust and then on the righteous?
When man comes closer and closer to God, he sees that the human brain is tiny and that patterns have to break away, or we risk being scandalized by God. Revelation had been preparing the chosen people for many hundreds of years - it was simply that this nation was prepared for the revelation of God, and yet they were not yet able to receive it.
We do not always realize that holiness is an ideal that is unattainable - most often not because it cannot be achieved, but because we run away from it. Because this ideal is in us. In each of us there is the truth about ourselves, there is the truth about our weakness.
We run away from seeing ourselves in weakness, we run away from revealing even to ourselves the truth that we fall flat on our faces. And it doesn't take much for us to be overwhelmed by desperate doubt - we are weak.
Holiness is not an unattainable model, it is rather an unwanted ideal because it does not make us heroic, but it does not allow us to avoid the truth that we are very fragile, ordinary, small, last.
No one really wanted to help Jesus on the path of glory, which in the eyes of people was a path of shame - the way of the cross. It was not because they did not want to help Him because the cross was too heavy, but because anyone who would grab it would not be considered strong and serious.
Everyone would be ridiculous and miserable. It's too true. On a planet where everyone walks backwards, someone walking straight ahead would be met with laughter and outrage.
So, what is your weakness? You also need to think about this so that your joy is true before God. What is your weakness? How are you true, true, as a weak person? Don't you know?
Let's start from the other side: what would be funny in the eyes of others? What would make you laugh if you exposed your weakness? What would others laugh at if they knew your weakness? You can already see this cross, which is slightly outlined.
What would be condemned and ridiculed about you? What would make you small, even in the eyes of your loved ones? What weighs you down and makes you feel depressed?
If you don't go through it, you won't discover joy. What cannot you bear, what cannot you bear within yourself, so that your prayer does not become an escape from this truth? Because then you will not authentically say: "Yes, I praise You, Lord, I adore You", but it will be a very inauthentic quote.
God wants real prayer. Jesus could not bear the cross, he fell under it, the cross crushed Him, it made Him ridiculous, this cross made Him worthy of condemnation in the eyes of the onlookers gathered on His path.
He loves God even for this - for your weakness, for what you are afraid to discover in yourself, for what you are ashamed of. Even then say, "Praise You, Lord."
Because we love the cross on the wall, but we are ashamed of ourselves and run away. Is that fair? If I hate my cross, do I have the right to pray with adoration to the cross in the temple? Is this authentic?
And if I don't even know what my cross is, do I know what that man on that cross is? Weakness.
I would like to quote Jean Vanier here, who offered his life to disabled, handicapped and therefore weak people. A person usually devotes his life to what is most important, most beloved, fascinating and attractive.
Can the handicapped be the most important? This is the big question for the world and for us. Why did this man devote himself to the underprivileged? Or: can a disabled person be the most beloved? Yes.
You can devote yourself to learning, you can devote yourself to a beautiful wife, husband, sports fame, passion, music, art... but to the disabled?
Mother Teresa also devoted herself to people who were thrown out - pariahs, dying, unnecessary people, inhuman people, it would seem. Because if they are wronged, they are also capable of harming. What did she have to offer them?
Wasn't she lying when she said God loved them? Is the handicapped from the Vanier community or the pariah from the streets of Calcutta someone worse than me, since I also experience the handicap of sin, self-rejection?
Or do I experience that I am so miserable that I am actually useless for anything? If it's true that God loved those people, then what does he feel towards me?
Let's listen to this Jean Vanier. In one of the conversations, the editors ask him: "What have you learned about the God of love after living for nearly 40 years with mentally disabled people?" Jean Vanier replies: "I learned that the most important thing is presence, and through presence - discovering to people that they are important.
Love is about discovering the beauty of God in another person and awakening their trust in oneself. Loving someone means revealing to them that they are beautiful, capable of miraculous deeds, welcome him inside and gradually help him grow and gain self-confidence.
The Mystery of the Incarnation brought the revelation that we are capable of love, even when we are handicapped."
I don't mean mental retardation, but life retardation - when a person feels non-standard, when he cannot classify himself into a certain category, when he is declassified in life and told: "Go away, get out, we don't love you." Either nothing was said at all, no love was offered to the child, young person or adult, or they were constantly criticized and destroyed with words.
I know that it is a huge obstacle to accepting love when a person feels handicapped in life.
51-55, F