Let's be joyful and at peace

Gaudium cum pace. Joy with peace. An ideal we have to reach every day, especially at the end of the day. It is what is proper to us. Without it, we would be miserable creatures, regardless of the riches, power and fame we may have.

As Sacred Scripture would have it, "A merry heart is the true life of man, is an unfailing store of holiness. Length of years is measured by rejoicing." (Sir 30,23) And St. Thomas Aquinas has this to say apropos: "Happiness is a good proper to human beings. Animals can only be called happy by a misuse of language."

There are many benefits of joy and peace. The Book of Proverbs says, "A cheerful heart makes a quick recovery. It is crushed spirits that waste a man's frame." (17,22) Joy facilitates thinking and reasoning. It helps us understand people and situations. It fosters simplicity, creates a good atmosphere around, builds up unity.

We have to make sure that we are happy and peaceful. Obviously, we have to understand that to be in that state is first of all a result of grace which we should always ask and pray for. But it is also a product of our own correspondence to God's grace, and of our effort to follow more closely Christ's teaching and example.

The joy and peace rooted on Christ transcend the physical and earthly dimensions. They can be lived even in what may be considered humanly speaking as difficult moments of pain, suffering and privation.

Thus, St. Paul once said: "In all things we suffer tribulation, but we are not distressed. We are sore pressed, but we are not destitute. We endure persecution, but we are not forsaken. We are cast down, but we do not perish. We are always bearing about in our body the dying of Jesus so that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our bodily frame." (2 Cor 4,8-10)

We need to go theological to attain this state of joy and peace. We cannot rely solely on the physical, medical and other worldly elements that go into the making of joy and peace. We need faith. We need to be vitally united with Christ.

We have to see to it that every day, and in fact, in every activity we do during the day, we should always end with a sense of joy, satisfaction and fulfillment, no matter how things went. They can go badly, humanly speaking, but if our sense of joy and peace is theological, we will always find meaning, beauty and purpose in them.

This is crucial because it is joy that keeps us going, that keeps us alive. We may get physically tired, but our spirit would still be vibrant. We can still manage to smile, to be hopeful and positive about things, to be encouraging in our words and deeds.

And all this not because we are inventing things. We are convinced of the solid foundation of our faith that secures and guarantees our conviction about our sense of joy and peace. It's this conviction that would make us consistently happy in good times and bad times, whether alone or with others.

It's a pity to see many wilted faces around precisely because many people do not know where to find their joy and peace. They look for them in some pills, or in merely physical and emotional well-being, and in many instances, in some forms of escapism like drugs, sex and the now-proliferating inane forms of entertainment and games.

They end up more depressed and more cheated than before. Their joy and peace is a thin chimera that cannot take the test of time and the many trials and challenges in life.

We have to help one another develop the proper sense of joy and peace.  We need to show the joy contained in the gospel, in the sacraments, in the exercises of prayer and penance.

All too often, these spiritual things are pictured as dour and gloomy or a killjoy. We have to expose and explode that myth. The contrary is in fact the truth. But we need to go through some theological thinking to see this reality.

We need to do some massive and urgent rescue operation, not unlike what should have been done to give immediate relief and comfort to our Yolanda victims. Many of us are deceived by a kind of sweet poison that prevents us from appreciating the objective character of joy and peace, as well as their true source and the proper means to have them.

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