16

Holy Sorrow

AS HAS been pointed out on several occasions, supernatural life represents something radically new, apart from other new aspects it introduces, in that its fullness reveals certain vestiges of that coincidentia oppositorum—that union of apparently irreconcilable opposites—which is a privilege of divine life. Qualities which cannot subsist in a person simultaneously so long as he has not relinquished the standpoint of nature—such as patience combined with fervent zeal, or again, peacefulness and an eager readiness to fight for a good cause—appear to achieve an organic mutual penetration in the character of the saints.

The greater our participation in divine life, the more enhanced is the possibility for us to actualize, in one single attitude, a diversity of virtues which in the natural perspective cannot but exclude one another.

     Earthly man suffers the tension of becoming

This notwithstanding, a certain essential duality, an irremovable division as it were, remains inherent in our terrestrial situation as such. Of this duality the Christian consciousness must inevitably take account.

Again, that duality or breach manifests itself under two aspects. First, man in his earthly existence is a mixed act, as scholastic philosophy puts it; he is partly in act, partly in potency. In other words, we constitute actual, accomplished, fulfilled reality on the one hand; potentiality and becoming—unfulfilled beings—on the other.

Only God, who is absolute Being, is pure act—full and infinite Reality, to which no shadow of mutability attaches.

In eternity only shall we, too, be accomplished: not pure act, to be sure, for even there our being will be dependent on God; but sharers in the immutability of God insofar as we shall no longer contain any element of mere potentiality but have our whole being realized in one eternal moment. There (and there alone) we shall be past all becoming, having attained to a being free from all changeableness. All values in us will have matured to full actuality, with no room left for any potential ones. All that we are will be set out in its definitive shape.

It is not owing to original sin alone that in our earthly existence we are subject to the law of becoming. The state of man in the Garden of Eden, too, was no status finalis but a status viae. Man with his nature still unsoiled by sin was also meant to develop and was confronted with a task. He was meant to mature in knowledge and to supplement creation with a spiritual culture of his own devising; and again, to people the earth with his progeny. Yet, this was to take place in an undisturbed organic order—without any disharmony, labor or suffering.

But for original sin, there would have been no death. Instead of the painful and terrifying separation of soul and body, mankind would have known only an uncatastrophic passing on to a higher form of being—that status finalis in which “God is all in all.”

Nevertheless, immense as is the contrast between the state of the fallen world and a paradisiac mode of existence, the latter too would have borne the sign of that duality which lies in the mixture of act and potency, and which essentially sets apart the status viae from the status finalis.

     Earthly man suffers a tension between original sin and his redemption

Owing to original sin, however, earthly life is subject to the law of duality in yet another sense: a duality which even subsists after Christ’s redemption of the world. On the one hand, we still suffer from the effects of original sin; on the other hand, we are redeemed beings: “reconciled to God,” that is, through the most sacred Blood of Christ, By holy Baptism we are given participation in the life of Christ. So long as we remain in the state of grace, nothing can separate us from God: but yet we are still wanderers in a valley of tears.

As members of the Mystical Body of Christ, already on earth we are in an ineffable fashion united with God, participating in the divine life of the Holy Trinity: “seeing” and yet not seeing, “face to face” but “darkly as through a glass” (1 Cor. 13:12). We have not yet attained to an eternal and irrevocable communion with God. We are no longer at the epoch of Advent: for the eternal Word of God has become flesh, and wrought our redemption. Nevertheless, we are still in a phase of hope—a stage of expectation. As measured by the eternal glory which awaits us, our status viae still means an Advent.

Jesus said to us: “In the world you shall have distress: but have confidence, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33); but again He said: “Watch ye therefore, because you know not the day nor the hour” (Matt. 25:13). We still walk in the valley of tears, afflicted with crosses of all kinds. We still have to “fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church” (Col. 1:24); and yet we know “that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come” (Rom. 8:18). We are still burdened with tasks; we must still hurry on from one moment to another; we are still caught in the movement of time; we are still constrained to activity—and yet, already on earth, contemplation forms the deeper and more important part of our life.

Already we have found the pearl of the merchant of the Gospel; we are no longer unquiet seekers—for “already our hearts are at rest in God” (St. Augustine, Confessions). Already we may say with St. Paul, “Buried with him in baptism; in whom also you are risen again” (Col. 2:12)—and yet we are still dependent on hope and filled with longing, crying out with St. John, “Come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20).

Unless we always keep in mind this dual character of our situation, we cannot dwell in truth fully and adequately. We must never, under the spell of the relative reality of present life, lose sight of the proper and absolute reality of the life to come; but neither must we forget that we are as yet citizens of the earth. To think or behave, in a sense, as though we no longer were in statu viae, is as false as to take our earthly passage for ultimate reality.

     Man’s dual aspect can be known by natural reason

Even our natural understanding—an understanding not guided by the light of Revelation—may discern this dual aspect in the features of earthly existence. The truly great among the non-Christian thinkers, such as Plato, were well aware of it. Without knowing about original sin, they saw the breach that runs through the world and ourselves. They perceived that man, according to his essence as a spiritual person, is ordained to the Good and destined to rise towards greater heights; but no less clearly did they perceive the downward drift in man’s nature: his natural proclivity towards bad things. They beheld both the primacy of the spiritual and the rebellion of the flesh against the spirit; both man’s faculty of spiritual concentration and his proneness to abject dissipation. They understood that the Good is more proper to man, more adequate to his inmost meaning: yet at the same time, that evil comes easier to him—that as soon as he relaxes his vigilance and yields to self-indulgence he will infallibly gravitate towards the nether regions. The beautiful myth in Plato’s Phaedrus of the two horses pulling in opposite directions expresses this truth forcefully enough.

These great minds grasped both the truth that the genuine, perennial values herald the higher reality which we surmise to be our homeland proper, and the complementary truth that on this earth, inversely, evil prevails. The deeper and more awake a mind is, the mote it will penetrate, even by its own natural lights, the basic duality of our earthly situation.

     Materialists overlook the duality in man

Who, on the other hand, are farthest remote from the truth? Those who, without bothering about their metaphysical situation at all, are blind to objective values as such and entirely imprisoned in the world of their daily concerns; and again, those who are unaware of the scissure in our terrestrial being inasmuch as they only grasp its inferior aspect and content themselves with it.

The first of these two categories are the men without yearning, entirely fascinated by material goods and seeking no satisfaction except in these. By the second category, we mean the explicit materialists, who are convinced that man is nothing but a brute with a particularly well-developed brain. They deny all ordination of man to higher ends as well as all absolute values. They do not do so in a spirit of resignation or pessimism: rather, taking such a world deprived of all higher meaning and value for granted, they try to make it out as something cheerful and acceptable. In ignoring all higher values, they overlook the disharmony inherent in this world. To be sure, this implies an illusive effort to pass over or to explain away—or again, to represent as essentially curable—all ineluctable suffering of mankind as long and as far as it seems in any way possible.

     Superficial optimists think we can eliminate all disharmony by secular means

Another false attitude is that of optimistic illusionism proper. Those who profess this error do acknowledge objective values; they are not satisfied with a purely subjective well-being nor exclusively busied with the pursuit of their interests. They are enthusiastic about moral values and capable of zeal in the service of ideals.

But they live without any reference to an eternal destination of man; they talk and behave as though man stood in no need of redemption at all. They would make us believe that there is no such thing as a radical flaw in our terrestrial constitution; that the earth could, by purely natural means, be changed into a paradise. They are superficial optimists—typified by thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

These people, then, fail to recognize the character of earthly existence as a status viae. They are bent on interpreting terrestrial life as a self-sufficient and definitive reality, and to this end attempt to relativize all suffering and disharmony in the world to a level of mere accidentality. By sheer progress within the framework of this world, we must be able to get rid of all disharmony!—such is their contention.

And, clinging to the presupposition of this shallow confidence, they—like thoughtless children—pass by the abysses of human nature; the laws of suffering and death, constitutive for man’s earthly state; the primacy in man’s mundane life of evil and of brute force. To sum up, by comparison with the first discussed category of dull or complacent naturalists they may be said to have caught some glimpse of the truth; yet they, too, are a prey to illusion and fundamentally unaware of the character and meaning of terrestrial reality.

     Metaphysical pessimists see misery as our ultimate destiny

Others, again, see exclusively the suffering and disharmony abundant in the world. They feel overwhelmed with the immensity of injustice, oppressed with the shackles of the body. They can no longer grasp the promise of a higher reality in values, so they develop into complete pessimists. Though sufficiently alive to the fact of disharmony, they, too, fall short of understanding the cleavage in our terrestrial world. True, they know and appreciate the higher values; but the metaphysical relevancy of value—its being a mark of our ultimate ordination and destiny—escapes them. In despair or resignation, they believe value to be nothing but a fine illusion. Lower reality is reality proper; to its massive laws we are integrally and inexhaustibly subjected; briefly, misery is our real and ultimate destiny. These metaphysical pessimists are also a species of illusionists. Erecting the disharmony of earthly life into an absolute, they in their turn fail to recognize the character of earthly life as a status viae. We may say that though they are aware at least of our need of redemption, they disbelieve in its actual possibility.

     Some see the duality, but think human effort alone can overcome it

Of all minds unenlightened by revealed religion, those—as has been hinted above—come closest to the truth which have grasped the double aspect of human nature, the cleavage between its ordination to value and its tendency to break away therefrom. These are neither optimists nor pessimists; their outlook takes account of the ineliminable duality of earthly existence. They recognize both the primacy in man of the spiritual element and his oppressive dependence on the body and its urges.

Aware, in some way, of the proper destiny of man as well as of how unrealizable it is here on earth, they penetrate the character of earthly existence as a status viae—as something provisional, imperfect, and charged with a meaning which points to a reality outside its range. Thus, they neither ignore man’s need of redemption nor despair of its possibility; however, their vision stops short at the necessity for that redemption to be wrought from above. With Plato, they still believe in a Godward evolution immanent to man. They fail to fathom the depth of the abyss, unbridgeable by all human effort, which separates us from God. Man’s need of a Divine Messiah is what they have failed to comprehend.

     The Jews saw man’s need for a divine Redeemer

An entirely new position, by contrast to those discussed above, is the one represented by the Old Testament. The chosen people, to whom God has revealed the true situation of man, know that mankind, fallen through original sin, is marred by a mortal wound which only God can heal. Indeed, the chosen people, the depositary of the Old Testament, were in possession of the key to truth. They saw the split in man’s situation and knew about its cause. They were aware of man’s need of redemption by a Divine Messiah; on the strength of God’s promise given to Abraham, they awaited in wistful hope the coming of that Messiah.

He came: the “eternal Word has become flesh”; and with that, our situation has fundamentally changed. The gulf which separated mankind from God is bridged; the debt of Adam is paid; our reconciliation to God is achieved. Man is redeemed: he has been offered a new supernatural community with God. By virtue of a free gift of divine mercy—a gift surpassing all concepts and all expectations—he may, in Christ and through Christ, participate in the divine life of the Holy Trinity. The path is open for him to eternal, blissful perfection and sanctification.

     Even after the Redemption, the duality in earthly life remains

Even after the Redemption, however, earthly existence has remained a status viae. In many respects, the painful duality inherent in our earthly situation endures unchanged. Nay, while in one sense overcome, in another it has increased; for a new division has arisen: the duality of those redeemed, those already inexpressibly united with God—and those still in the state of hope, still on their pilgrimage towards perfection proper.

And on this higher plane, in the light of the full divine revelation, the danger of overlooking that irremovable duality of things terrestrial, and of confining one’s vision to either of the two aspects of man’s metaphysical situation, appears again. (We are speaking here, to be sure, of truly religious Christians only: not of Christians engrossed in earthly concerns to the point of growing all but forgetful of man’s eternal destiny.)

     Some Christians overlook the hope implicit in the Redemption

There are Catholics upon whose minds the tangible reality of terrestrial life, with all the disharmony implied in it, so much obtrudes itself as to make the reality of the Redemption—and of the supernatural community that unites all members of the Mystical Body of Christ with God—pale in significance.

Their gaze is fixed upon the ocean of human suffering, and the incertitude of our eternal fate. They are entirely filled with the thought of how “fearful a thing” it is “to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31). “With fear and trembling” (Tob. 13:6) do they walk along their lives’ path. Their sins and the specter of their failure continually haunt their vision.

Well as they know that Christ has redeemed us and pronounced the words, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25), their minds dwell almost exclusively on the remoteness of mankind from God, the power of evil, the multitude of daily insults to God; on the helplessness of man and his dependence on the brute forces of nature; on their own weakness, the impotence of the human will, the tragic character of all terrestrial life.

     Other Christians overlook the disharmony still remaining after the Redemption

Others, on the contrary, overlook the fact that we are still pilgrims in the valley of tears. They tend to behave as though Redemption meant that we are already in our heavenly home; as though we no longer had to fear anything; as though all disharmony were removed from the world; as though life no longer had any laborious tasks in store for us but was meant to be one everlasting feast of jubilation.

     “Blessed are they that mourn. . .” comforts the afflicted

Both these classes of Christians respond inadequately to the duality which, even after the Redemption, remains in our terrestrial situation, according to the words of Our Lord: “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted” (Matt. 5:5), which should be considered, here, side by side with these others, spoken by the Apostle of the Nations: “Rejoice in the Lord always: again, I say, rejoice” (Phil. 4:4).

In the beatitudes (Matt. 5:3-11), the way Our Lord refers each time to a heavenly reward is meant to indicate the eminent value of the quality praised. As regards the words “Blessed are the merciful,” “Blessed are the peacemakers,” or again “Blessed are the clean of heart,” this is evident enough. But the meaning of “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted” is less easy to understand. Why should they that mourn be called blessed! Can it be that a particular value is attached to sorrow as such?

To be sure in this case it is not only the value of the attitude in question which the blessing is meant to convey. This word is destined to comfort “all that labor and are burdened” (Matt. 11:28); it is a manifestation of divine mercy. To all those who have to suffer on earth—the oppressed and disinherited, the sick and the poor, the lonely, the downcast, the afflicted—this word reveals that the valley of tears is not reality ultimate and definitive, It implies that they are to come into their own in that final home where “God wipes away all tears.”

It is a ray of light piercing through earth’s darkness and brightening up the path of the weary and despondent, of those beset by despair. It is addressed, above all, to “them that” still “sit in darkness and in the shadow of death” (Luke 1:79): it eminently represents the Eu angelion, the joyful tidings of Christ. This word by itself modifies the terrestrial situation of man. It opens the gates of eternity. It reveals to mankind that earthly life is but a status viae.

     Mourning in this life is blessed insofar as it represents a yearning for union with God

In addition to that, however, this beatitude does refer—like all others—to the high value of one particular attitude. For one thing, it declares blessed the sorrow of those who still abide in the Advent: those not satisfied with earthly reality. Blessed are, indeed, those who yearn for redemption: who, roused from the slumber of self-contained earthliness, are aware of the disharmony of a fallen world and experience the vestiges of original sin as a heavy burden. Blessed are they whom no earthly happiness can deceive about the essential inadequacy of the present world; whose thirst cannot be quelled by terrestrial goods. They shall be comforted, because they long for what only eternal community with God can give them—whereas those who set their hearts on earthly treasures and seek for happiness in an unredeemed world are the truly and ultimately miserable ones.

Yet that word in the Sermon on the Mount is not addressed to them alone whose sorrow is the Advent sorrow. Even for souls fully responsive to the grace of Redemption, the present world remains a valley of tears. The inconceivable gift of the Incarnation of God and the redemption of man by His death on the cross have not wholly ended our separation, on earth, from God. Earthly life has remained, not only a status viae—even a paradisiac state, free from all disharmony, would be that—but a state of dolorous longing and unfulfillment.

Already, as members of the Mystical Body of Christ, we are in an inexpressible fashion united to God and may participate in the life of the Holy Trinity. We still, however, possess God according to the mode of belief only, not according to the mode of vision. If we really and truly love God, this “seeing through a glass in a dark manner” cannot but pain us. Whoever feels no sorrow at this relative separation from God and does not yearn to see God face to face, is not yet filled with that supreme love of God which speaks from St. Paul’s words; “Having a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ” (Phil. 1:23). “Blessed are they that mourn” for not having attained yet to the beatific vision.

Mourning; must be understood, here, as the feeling of privation that accompanies a hope for future contentment and fulfillment: the suffering, that is to say, of wistful love. For we are still imprisoned in time, compelled to hurry endlessly from one object to another. The hour has not yet struck which will allow us to abide undisturbed with Him who constitutes our beatitude. Though redeemed, we still live by hope. We are still pilgrims who cannot know whether we will persevere to the end; who are still beset by dangers of all kinds; in whose midst “the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

Our community with God is not yet a definitive one but still an object of hope. We are still, as it were, running for a prize. For those who love God, this implies suffering. “Blessed are they that mourn”: they, that is to say, who feel the gravity of our terrestrial situation, are aware of the abyss between our status finalis and our status viae, and consciously bear the cross which lies in the fact that our union with God cannot on earth be a definitive and indestructible one.

     Mourning has value as a sign of our love of God

This sorrow is precious in the eyes of God: for it proves, on the one hand, that our vision is adjusted to the perspective of truth and guided by supernatural light—that our faith is a living one; and reveals, on the other hand, a glowing love of God in our soul which prevents us from being satisfied by anything less than the sight of God and an eternal, indestructible community with Him. What, after all, should we think of a lover who endures without grief a separation from his beloved—no matter how sure he is of her love?

     Mourning is appropriate because of mankind’s failure to love God

For one more reason is sorrow a mark of the elect of God. Blessed are those who suffer from the multitude of insults to God: the fact that “Love is so little loved.” Whoever truly loves God and his neighbor cannot without suffering know that “the world knew him not” (John 1:10); that so many men “remain in the shadow of death” and, “not knowing what they do” (Luke 23:34), jeopardize their salvation. The more our hearts are filled with a holy joy about the magnalia Dei (“the splendid works of God”), the more we shall bemoan the ingratitude of the world and the folly of those who reach for stones while spurning the bread of eternal life.

But then, do we not deny Christ again and again; do we not fail seven and seventy times a day? Was Christ not crucified by our sins, too? When Christ’s word on the cross “I thirst” (John 19:28), penetrates into our heart; when we perceive the call of the God-Man who wills to be loved by us; when the inconceivable mercy of God impels us to fall on our knees in adoration—how should our hearts not bleed at the thought that we respond to that call so sluggishly and that it evokes so little response in the world; that there are so many who forfeit their salvation! All saints were filled with this sorrow; St. Francis walked, weeping, through the woods because “Love was so little loved”: “My love is crucified.”

The man who, knowing nothing but joy on this very earth, does not suffer from the terrible disharmony of the fallen world, loves neither God nor his neighbor truly. He “abides,” as it were, “in death.”

Sorrow in this sense is inseparably linked with hunger and thirst for justice. Those referred to in the words, “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill” must mourn in this world, where Christ is daily nailed to the cross anew.

     We should mourn because of the suffering Jesus endured

In the measure in which a Christian lives by his ties with the supernatural, he will sorrow, above all, over the sorrows of Christ. The words: “My heart hath expected reproach and misery: and I looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was none” (Ps. 68:20b), will pierce his heart. With the blessed Jacopone da Todi he will exclaim: “Mother, fount of love the purest, make me feel all the anguish thou endurest, to mourn with thee” (Stabat Mater).

However felicitous one may be in one’s personal life, this pain must never be allowed to die away. How could we forget—though the joys we experience be ever so genuine and ever so great—the suffering of the “Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world”: the suffering which has redeemed us and is the key of our eternal happiness? Far from it. He who is wounded by the love of Christ will pray: “Let me be wounded by his wounds, let me become inebriated with the cross and the blood of Thy Son.” It is, in the first place, “they that mourn” for this cause whom the Lord means when He says, “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”

     We should mourn because of the sufferings of mankind in this world

But His word also refers to those who cannot pass by with indifference the ocean of suffering that fills the world. A man so absorbed by his personal happiness as to remain completely untouched by the multifarious suffering that surrounds him is evidently shallow and heartless. From the life of a true Christian—regardless of his personal lot—this sharing of the world’s burden of suffering cannot be absent.

At every moment an infinity of heart-rending things happen in the world. The fact that this earth is a valley of tears never remains hidden even in anyone’s immediate environment, unless his eyes are blinded. To everyone who loves, and in the measure in which his love is a living one, the words of St. Paul apply: “Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is scandalized, and I am not on fire?” (2 Cor. 11:29).

Blessed are those who suffer from the disharmony of the world; who from charity help the rest carry their heavy burden; whom the accident of their good fortune does not prevent from being aware of the nature of a fallen world. These—the yearning, the waking, the loving ones—will be comforted in eternity, where “God shall wipe away all tears.”

     We are all called to take up our cross

But more—the Cross as such towers ineluctably over the life of every Christian. Through Christ, suffering has acquired an entirely new meaning. What was merely an inexorable consequence of original sin before Christ has now assumed the character of a fruitful penance and purification—a manifestation of love. Suffering love has redeemed the world. The cross stands forth as the symbol of redemptive and expiatory suffering freely accepted by merciful charity.

No one who is unwilling to take up his cross can truly follow Christ. In the life of every Christian, that cross is there. Not unless he embraces it with eager readiness—perceiving in it the call of God and accepting it as a means of his mortification—can he be transformed in Christ.

To evade the cross is to evade Christ. Whether we try to escape from it in fact, to hide it from our eyes, or to bury it under a layer of shallow pleasures and peripheral interests—it is Christ from whom we thus separate ourselves. “But it behooves us to glory in the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ: in whom is out salvation, life, and resurrection: by whom we are saved and delivered,” the Church sings in the Introit of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Again, in Passion Week: O Crux, ave spes unica, hoc Passionis tempore (“Hail Cross! thou only hope of man, Hail on this holy Passionday!”), Venantius Fortunatus, Vexilla Regis.

     Only he who “lives by Christ” can fully bear his cross

Our nature, to be sure, struggles against the cross: we seek to flee from it. Sometimes we achieve this purpose to a degree by keying down our life to a lower standard, and appeasing our desire for happiness with more trivial goods.

If, on the one hand, this success in eschewing the cross can never be but a partial and largely an illusory one, on the other hand it again requires a great deal to experience one’s cross to the full. He alone who “lives by Christ” is able to bear the whole weight of a heavy cross—to endure it integrally; to realize all the suffering it implies. He alone, above all, is able so to cling to it as to make the cross, as it were, carry him. He alone is able to carry it in full inward peace and unity: without recalcitrance or despair, without even the bitterness of emphatic resignation.

For to him, and him only, it means the gift of a participation in carrying the holy Cross of Our Lord. He endures crucifixion with Christ. He hails the cross as a possibility of expiation for his own and also for others’ sins, a means of the purification he is allowed to undergo by God’s mercy. To die to himself in order to be reborn in Christ is what he desires. He knows that all death is painful—that without the cross and suffering he cannot die to himself. For the Lord has said: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24).

     Properly bearing our cross unites us with Christ

Such a true Christian may not, as did certain saints, seek for suffering. This requires a special vocation. The cross that God sends him, however, he must in love be ready to welcome: O Crux, ave spes unica. He may pray that he be spared the cross, saying with Jesus, “My Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me” (Matt. 26:39), but not without adding as Jesus did, in a spirit of ultimate acquiescence in the will of God: “Nevertheless, not as I will but as Thou wilt.”

For it is out of love that God sends our cross to us; and it is destined to prepare the way for a deeper love for God. So long as God does not take the cross from us, we must feel it as a participation in the Cross of Christ, as a costly treasure, as a divine gift of mysterious fruitfulness. In bearing our cross, we are placed in contact with Christ suffering out of charity. We should bring ourselves to recognize in our cross the countenance of the suffering Savior; to experience the nearness to Christ implied in its acceptance. Blessed are all those who bear a cross, for they shall be comforted: as St. Paul says, “As you are partakers of the sufferings [of Christ], so shall you be also of the consolation” (2 Cor. 1:7).

“Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted,” These words illuminate the holy paradox of our terrestrial situation. Blessed are, not those unaware of the cross, not the spoiled children of fortune absorbed by a life that is all sunshine and enslaved to a gigantic illusion even to the moment of death—but those who recognize, and suffer from, the strife between God and the world; who embrace their cross and share in the Cross of Christ, the Conqueror of that strife.

     Yet, God’s existence should fill us with overwhelming joy

And yet it is holy joy which must fill us above all. We must bring to full fruition in us the words of St. Paul: “Rejoice in the Lord always: again, I say, rejoice.” Indeed, even in our torn state on earth we have more reason to rejoice than to grieve. For God, the Sum of all values and Paragon of all glory, is also Reality absolute, and the primal Cause of all being.

Our response to the world is a false one unless it is adequate to the true order and hierarchy of being. Many as are the things in the world which demand as an adequate answer the response of sorrow, the absolute and ultimate reality, preeminent above everything else, demands on our part the response of joy.

So infinitely high does the fact that God exists rank above all the rest, that our response to that fact, too, must infinitely surpass in weight all our other responses. As all finite being is a mere empty shadow of Being infinite and absolute, so also does all imperfection and disharmony of this valley of tears shrink almost to nothing if viewed in the perspective of the infinite glory and harmony of God. Thus is our cause for joy incomparably greater than for sorrow. Therefore, we understand that notwithstanding the cross and all sorrows inherent in earthly existence, the Apostle says, “Rejoice in the Lord always.”

     God’s redemption of mankind is a further reason for overwhelming joy

But this holy joy, overshadowing all sorrow, which prompts the Church to sing in the Gloria in excelsis, “We praise Thee; we bless Thee; we adore Thee; we glorify Thee; we give Thee thanks for Thy great glory”—this jubilant rejoicing could never blossom in our souls unless the gulf that separates us from God were bridged by God; unless the burden of guilt that weighs down man (whose nature is tainted by original sin) were removed by the mercy of God.

Our redemption by the God-Man Christ, who has burst our chains and restored us to communion with God, is what provides us with an actual warrant for our joy.

Nor must this holy joy over the incarnation of God and our redemption—this bliss which finds its highest expression in the Exsultet of Holy Saturday but pervades the entire Liturgy in innumerable variations—ever leave us. For the many things that evoke in us a justified sorrow, taken all together, are nothing if contrasted with this blissful reality. Our cause for this holy joy always retains its central and paramount position in relation with all things, nor can it ever become a matter of secondary interest. Therefore the Apostle says, Iterum dico vobis, gaudete (“Again, I say, rejoice”).

Though our redemption is a necessary condition of our delight in the glory of God, though only the redeemed can properly give thanks for it—Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam—the primary object to which our joy adequately refers is not our deliverance and elevation, but God Himself, His glory as such, His infinite goodness which reveals itself to us in Jesus’ face.

But in the second place, our redemption and our undeserved privilege of being called to an eternal communion with God justify, on our part, an indestructible holy joy—a supernatural joy which is to fill our eternity. “Thou hast redeemed us, O Lord, in Thy blood, out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and hast made us to our God a kingdom. The mercies of the Lord I will sing forever” (Introit of the Feast of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord).

     We should also rejoice about God’s gifts of grace to mankind, and for the Church

We have, further, an occasion for unending joy in every one who has been transformed by grace, who can say of himself with St. Paul, “The grace of God was not without effect in me”; who bears the seal of Christ on his forehead and in his whole life. Therefore does the Church sing in the Introit of All Saints and of all great feasts of the saints: “Let us all rejoice in the Lord, celebrating this feast.”

We must also rejoice in God’s gifts of grace, which change even our earthly habitation into a forecourt of heaven: notably, the Sacraments, and above all, the Holy Eucharist. “He fed them with the fat of wheat, alleluia; and filled them with honey out of the rock, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia” (Introit of the Feast of Corpus Christi).

Again, do we not find an enduring cause for joy in the existence of the Holy Church, the Bride of the Holy Spirit; in her infallible doctrinal authority; in the supernatural community of the Mystical Body of Christ? In these things, every Christian must take constant delight, however heavy his cross, however much his personal life may abound in suffering. All terrors and all the woes of the world are powerless to destroy these goods; the joy they inspire soars victoriously above all sorrow.

     Christian hope infuses even our sufferings with joy

Yet, evidently an objection might be raised. Is not our incertitude as to whether we shall persevere and partake in the fruits of Redemption, a drop of wormwood which might poison all this joy? Had we not better bear in mind the words of St. Augustine, “He who made thee without thee will not justify thee without thee”? True enough, the hour of eternal holy joy—joy pure and untroubled, joy unceasing and indestructible—has not yet struck for us. The Lord has not yet spoken to us the words: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: enter into the joy of thy Lord.” We still dwell in this life, and our situation is still fraught with the character of duality.

However, all our sufferings are transfigured by a ray of light; a light of vivifying solace is spread about everything that would, in itself, legitimately fill us with anguish and sorrow, That light is hope. It is our right, it is our duty to hope: for hope is one of the three theological virtues which are to inform a Christian’s life. Hope, illuminating everything like a shaft of light that pierces through darkness, rectifies and sweetens all sorrow in its innermost core.

So long as we are in statu viae we still live in hope. This means that the eternal morning has not yet dawned: that we have not attained the Goal but are as yet on our pilgrimage. But it means, also, that we already possess hope itself: that, in other words, joy has already virtually conquered all suffering. For we do not hope in the sense of a vague, obscure, halfhearted expectation. Ours is a radiant hope, a firm hope founded on the word of God and the fact of Redemption. And the possession of this Christian hope—a response to the goodness and the revealed truth of God—is in itself an incomparable treasure of happiness.

Therefore, although there is plenty of reason for sorrow, and although our sorrow is not only excused but exalted: “Blessed are they that mourn,” a Christian on his earthly pilgrimage must never live “as though he had no hope.” In the first place, since there is an infinitely greater reason for joy than there is for sorrow, joy must keep its primacy over sorrow. Secondly, the cross of earthly life—all pain and all sorrow, that is—should be illumined and transfigured by hope. “That you be not sorrowful even as others who have no hope,” says St. Paul (1 Thess. 4:13).

     We should rejoice even about the natural gifts of God

But neither must the suffering we have to undergo in this valley of tears prevent us from gratefully enjoying the numberless natural gifts of God, particular to us and common to all, with which our lives are blessed. Neither our own suffering nor that of others must be allowed to blind us to the splendor of sunlight, to the beauty of the sky and the stars; to the bliss of loving and being loved; to the greatness of the truths we may penetrate. It would be ungrateful of us, and an unfitting answer to the liberality of the “Father of all lights,” were we to abstain from delighting in all the grandeur and beauty in the world which tells us of God and is destined to elevate us to Him.

Let us admit, though, that God may burden us with a cross—such as the loss of one who is dearest to us—which withers up all joy about creaturely things in our heart, and transforms our life into a pure via crucis. Even then, however, our supernatural joy because of God and because of the glory that awaits us in eternity and is the object of our wistful hope must remain alive in us, and keep its primacy.

In the life of St. Francis of Assisi, we find this grateful joy at every gift of God wonderfully united to a deep sorrow over the disharmony of this valley of tears. His attitude expresses in an exemplary way the right response of man to the dual aspect of terrestrial life. The same one who shed so many tears over his sins and whose heart was pierced by pain because “Love is so little loved,” with his eyesight almost gone and his body all but completely broken, was to write the Canticle to the Sun, that superb paean of joy.

     Christians must interweave their lives with true sorrow, but with even greater joy

It would be a great error, then, to deny that a Christian should be glad of the creaturely goods, too, which he owes to God’s munificence: as though the precariousness of our situation on earth and the ocean of sufferings in the world forbade us to enjoy the blessings God has accorded to each of us. No, we should always display a full and adequate response to God and to everything He sends us.

Is it suffering; is it the cross? Let us readily acquiesce in His holy will, yet always sustained and consoled by hope, and aware “that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, that shall be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18).

Again, if joy is what falls to our lot, we should appreciate it gratefully, and take an unrestrained delight in the bounty of God, without however allowing our happiness to make us forgetful of the unchangeable gravity of our earthly situation.

In brief, a true Christian must not live in a way as though Christ had never spoken the words, “Blessed are they that mourn,” but even less in a way as though He had not also said to His disciples, “Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is great in heaven.” The Christian knows: “Pain and suffering are only there for the sake of joy.” (Father Heribert Holzapfel, O.F.M., “Freude”)

The tissue of a Christian’s life must be interwoven with threads of true joy and threads of true sorrow alike, because we have not yet arrived at the point “where God shall wipe away all tears.” But it is joy that must have the primacy: for, after the lumen Christi has brightened the world, even on earth there is incomparably more cause for bliss than for sorrow. Joy must be the deeper, the decisive element, the form of our life, as it were. For that which warrants our joy is the supreme reality, the ultimate word in the universe. The sufferings of this world are essentially transitory. Happiness, eternal and indestructible, awaits all those who follow Christ.

However dark the griefs and terrible the sufferings a Christian may know, over and above them soars the triumphant luster of joy. This is the spirit of the Liturgy. With all its mournfulness, Passion Week leads up to the definitive and ultimate reality of Easter: the soaring beatitude transcending all time; and from the latter is derived the keynote of the Liturgy of the whole year. The seasons of alleluia far outweigh those in which alleluia is not sung. Even during the time of Advent and of Lent, a ray of hope, and with it of joy, is never absent.

To the Church, which sees everything in the light of eternity, joy is the superior and consummate reality. “So also you now indeed have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart shall rejoice; and your joy no man shall take from you” (John 16:22).