"God Is Synonymous with Joy"

“The Holy Spirit is the author of Christian joy, and to proclaim the Gospel it is necessary to have in one’s heart the joy that the Spirit of God gives.” Pope Francis said this once again during the Mass celebrated on Friday morning at the Domus Sanctae Marthae.

Concelebrating the Mass with him were, among others, Cardinal Jozef Tomko; the Archbishop of Faridabad-Delhi, Kuriakose Bharanikulangara; and the Archbishop of Belo Horizonte, Walmor Oliveira de Azevedo. Among those taking part in the Mass were a group of staff from the Vatican’s economic services, with their director, Sabatino Napolitano, and members of the Swiss Guard.

Mary, source and model of joy

“With faces like a funeral you cannot proclaim Jesus.” Pope Francis drew a line of demarcation with respect to a certain way of understanding the Christian life, marked by sadness. The two readings of the Mass suggested this reflection to him. The first, from the prophet Zephaniah, reports the exclamation: “Rejoice! Shout for joy, the Lord is in your midst!” The second, taken from the Gospel, recounts the story of Elizabeth and of her child who leaps for joy in his mother’s womb on hearing the words of Mary — whose haste in coming to the aid of her cousin the Pope, as on the previous Sunday, once again emphasized. Thus, Francis observed, everything is joy, the joy that is a celebration. And yet, he went on, “we Christians are not very accustomed to speaking of joy, of happiness; I think we often prefer to complain. The Holy Spirit, on the contrary, brings us Joy”:
The model of this joy is once again the Mother of Jesus. “The Church,” the Pope noted, “calls her the ‘cause of our joy.’” Why? Because she gave us the greatest joy, who is Jesus. We need to pray to Our Lady, because, bearing Jesus, she gives us the grace of joy, the freedom of joy. To pray to Our Lady is to say to her, as the Church professes: Our Lady, you who are so great, come and visit us and give us joy!”

Source: News.va