QUOTATION: The Right Attitude

Helping a person in need is good in itself. But the degree of goodness is hugely affected by the attitude with which it is done. If you show resentment because you are helping the person out of a reluctant sense of duty, then the person may recieve your help but may feel awkward and embarrassed. This is because he will feel beholden to you. If,on the other hand, you help the person in a spirit of joy, then the help will be received joyfully. The person will feel neither demeaned nor humiliated by your help, but rather will feel glad to have caused you pleasure by receiving your help. And joy is the appropriate attitude with which to help others because acts of generosity are a source of blessing to the giver as well as the receiver.

--St. John Chrysostom

QUOTATION: Orthodoxy Isn't Enough

It is not enough that our truth be orthodox and our pastoral action efficient.  Without the joy of beauty, the truth becomes cold, even heartless and arrogant, as we see in the speech of many embittered fundamentalists. It is as if they were chewing on ashes instead of savoring the glorious sweetness of Christ's truth, which illuminates all of reality with a gentle glow, accepting as it is each day.

Without the joy of beauty, any work for the good becomes a gloomy concern for efficiency, as it is for many overwhelmed activists.  They go about clothing reality with mournful statistics instead of anointing it with the oil of inner gladness that transforms hearts, one by one, from within.

--Pope Francis (Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio),  Homily at the Chrism Mass, 2011

QUOTATION: The Road to Joy

There is one and only one possible road to joy: selfless love.

--Peter Kreeft

QUOTATION: Joy

A joyless Catholic is the devil's best tool. A joyful Catholic is God's greatest instrument.

--Scott Hahn

QUOTATION: Joy and Mortification

Joy is to be thought of as the true source of that liberty of mind which alone is able to unite the apparently incompatible qualities of the spiritual life, giving a freer rein to natural expressions of love while remaining inseparably attached to mortification. In our joy we must be careful to keep our spirit mortified, and practise mortification in order to increase our joy.

I must therefore remain always and invariably happy, while never for one moment desisting from self-denial. It is self-love which stunts the growth of the spirit and saddens us; self-denial restores life, serenity and peace.

--Pope St. John XXIII, Journal of a Soul

QUOTATION: Joy in Suffering

There is another love of the cross which I have called rational love and which is in the higher part of man, the mind. This love is entirely spiritual; it springs from the knowledge of how happy we can be in suffering for God, and so it can be experienced by the soul, to which it gives interior joy and strength. But although this rational and perceptible joy is good, in fact, excellent, it is not always necessary in order to suffer joyfully for God's sake.

--St. Louis de Montfort, Letter to the Friends of the Cross

QUOTATION: Worldly Desires

As long as our hearts keep vacillating among the many wants of the world, we cannot move forward in life with inner peace and joy.

--Fr. Henri Nouwen

QUOTATION: Delight

No one can live without delight, and that is why a man deprived of spiritual joy goes over to carnal pleasure.

--St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 35, Art. 4, ad. 2.

QUOTATION: Real Poverty

The greatest poverty in the world is the inability to live our lives with joy.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Worldly vs. Spiritual Joy

Here is the difference between the joys of the world and the cross of Jesus Christ: after having tasted the first, one is disgusted with them; and on the contrary, the more one partakes of the cross, the greater the thirst for it.

--St. Ignatius Loyola

QUOTATION: Joy

Spiritual joy arises from purity of the heart and perseverance in prayer.

--St. Francis of Assisi