More on Joy

Another day and another picture of the ocean; the ocean for me is a symbol of God's love and I really want to be able to contemplate it, but never seem to manage to go look at the ocean that is only about a half hour away from me. Instead, I fill my imagination with scenes of the ocean seen from the retreat house in Santa Cruz where I try to go each summer for a few days. I used to stay longer, but it is now more expensive but I will have three nights there in August and look forward to being in a place that is sacred space for me!

Today I want to share something from Mother Stuart that I copied from another Religious of the Sacred Heart last summer and think I have not put it into my blog. It is called "Our Lady, Our Joy":

"Our Lady's joy should be ours because she gives us joy itself--God, her Divine Son. But she is our joy, too, in herself; the thought of Our Lady simply resting in our minds gives steadiness to our joy. We need not even think about her, just think of her!
      Joy is a power in our spiritual life. If we "keep the words" which the Church gives us to sing as Our Lady did "pondering them in our hearts" we shall get into the spirit of them, we shall have the secret joy and hope, within us that nothing can take away, and we must bear in mind that joy in the spiritual life is strength.
     Joy is virtue, it is the index of our faith and the measure of our endurance, and the means by which things impossible to us by nature become possible by grace."

That gives us much to reflect upon as we go about giving joy to others.