Humbly submit your will to God (Thy Will be done) and consecrate yourself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through Mary and Joseph.
Jesus said to his disciples:
“As the Father loves me, so I also love you.
Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,
just as I have kept my Father’s commandments
and remain in his love.
“I have told you this so that
my joy might be in you and
your joy might be complete.” JN 15:9-11
St. Thomas Aquinas says, “Joy comes from hope and proceeds from love”. He further adds, “Joy is full, when there is nothing more to desire”. He continues in the Summa Theologica, “Hence desire will be at rest, not only our desire for God, but all our desires: so that the joy of the blessed is full to perfection–indeed over-full, since they will obtain more than they were capable of desiring: for “neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).”
Joy is an interesting thing. There is no opposite to joy. Everything I can think of in this world has an opposite, but not joy. Unless we think of spiritual garbage or hell as it’s opposite-Peter Kreeft
The only way joy can be taken away from you is if you stop believing or give up hope and do not love. I can be running on the coldest day in the middle of winter with no leaves and dead grass around me, but still have joy (I still believe Jesus Christ resurrected and saved me). I can be sick on the couch for a week, but still have joy. I can be fasting and still have joy. I can be going through depression and still have joy. Joy leaps forth from love and hope, a firm belief that we are saved. It can be snatched by the Devil only if you let Him by giving up hope and not loving. Our joy will be complete when we no longer desire God, we will be with Him forever in heaven and our joy will be over-filled because we had no idea how awesome the goodness of God is.
Today’s challenge: Follow the commandments, pray, believe, hope, love, and never let anyone or anything steal your joy!
Suffering brings joy! St. Francis and his brothers would look for suffering in the most radical ways and deny themselves every comfort in radical ways. They were full of joy!
Perfect Joy according to St. Francis of Assisi
http://www.missa.org/joie_parfaite_e.php
I can apply this to my life by Praying to God and by trying to always be joyful and let nothing change that
We choose whether we have joy or not. It can’t be taken away. Joy is a choice to wake up every morning and choose good, choose God.
In this passage we hear that joy is something nothing or no-one can take away from us unless we give up hope. Even on the darkest days we can all still have joy and we shouldn’t let anything take it away from us. It all comes back to believing Jesus Christ resurrected and saved us from sin.
This Gospel reveals to me that we should remain in God’s love because it is what is best for us. That is where we find our true happiness, within God. People may say that our faith is all rules, but these rules lead us to happiness. These rules lead us to do the right things.
If we are happy then God is happy, if we sin we will go to hell and that happiness will be gone forever.
We should all love each other just as God and Jesus loves us. If we betray God and Jesus and don’t love him or our neighbors God will forgive you.
I think that this scripture reflection is telling us flat out that you must follow the commandments to remain close to God. Jesus says to do this so his joy remains in us and so that our joy may be complete. Jesus’ joy is in us always, but sometimes we may feel far away from joy. However, if we follow the commandments, we can remain close to Jesus and his love.
This reading is speaking about the 10 commandments and to trust God in all that he is doing for you. I can put this reading in my life by remember the commandments and to have faith with God.
If we are happy God is happy, but if we sin we will go to hell and never experience that happiness again.
Jesus is our joy and our joy will always be there as long as we know that Jesus came and saved us. Joy won’t be fulfilled until we are with Jesus in Heaven and by his side.
Jesus loves you if you take time and respond loving him back you will be happy. God does not need to love us he chose to love us. God does not need us we need God. Jesus loves us so much he died on a cross to save us to give us a chance to give us something to love. Are we going to love God back? If we love God back we can receive eternal joy and happiness in heaven.
I can apply this to my life by trying to have the same joy that Jesus had when he was nailed to the cross. The last emotion you think of when thinking about Jesus being nailed to the cross is joy, but Jesus was the most joyful man on the planet at that moment because he was doing the Fathers will. Sometimes we have to take a step back and think about how joy isn’t brought from entertainment, but brought from doing the Fathers will.
When we suffer we usually turn to God. God will bring us joy and peace. Going back to God is always the right thing and will always give us the best outcome. Loving God gives us hope, peace, and joy.
In order to have joy, we must feel happiness in our hearts, and Jesus is that happiness. He is the only person to make us happy for the rest of our lives. And by following Him, we can have that happiness. Only then will we experience true joy.
Like it said in the scripture, joy comes from hope and proceeds from love. I just think that people need to look on the bright side and see that there is joy and life’s not just sad and depressing. We need to follow the commandments, pray, believe, hope, love, and never let anyone or anything steal your joy!
Joy is not a feeling. Having joy is a choice. We can choose to be joyful, even on the worst days. Jesus tells us that following his Commandments will make us joyful. We’re good people when we follow God’s commandments, because that’s what he wants us to be. This makes me joyful. Being a good person, and being kind and loving to others makes me really joyful, and we can choose to be that way, even on the worst days.
In this Gospel it shows how God just wants us to be happy and joyous. He says that all we have to do is keep his commandments and stay in his love. This can seem like a very easy task, but we a very little-minded humans and humans fail… a lot. Even though this task is very difficult, it is so worth it, because we will spend forever with him in heaven. God’s grace helps us through.
I can apply this to my life by, not giving up on hope so i can have joy.
All we really want is to be happy. Everything we do is to try to make us happy. Even those people who like feeling sad or mad do it to make them happy. But the only thing that can truly make us happy is God because God is love! We should live our lives everyday being happy because God loves us and He sent His Son to die for our sins.
One thing that I can take away from this scripture is to remember that all God wants is for us to be not only happy, but truly joyful. Many people spend lots of time and effort trying to find the way to true happiness, but are constantly dissapointed, because we cannot be truly fulfilled by the things of this world. Meanwhile, Jesus is showing us the way to true happiness: keeping the commandments and remaining in God’s eternal love. If we are under the care and love of the eternally loving, good, joyful, and powerful God… what more could we want?
Jesus says that if we keep the commandments, we stay in God’s love. If we do not, we fall out of God’s love. God will always love us each dearly. It is the soul we lose. We begin to embark on the wrong path- a path that looks clean. To the sinner, he sees a straight road. But along the road, it’s littered with junk and obstacles. This junk is sin.
Joy is the fundamental-err-what ever it is we seek. You could say it is a “feeling”, but it can be many things. Joy can be “family”. It could be “love” (God love). But I don’t think of it as either. I think I think of it as the “light” that shines off of God. God is not “light”, but the light of the world. God’s light is joy. This is how I see it. Sure, light is normally described as a positive thing. But do you realize that Peter healed men with his shadow (shadow=darkness)? So then, what is light and darkness? Light is a change in brightness. Darkness is light hitting off of an object. When you think of hell, what do you imagine? Darkness? Fire? Fire creates light, which is generally described as a positive thing…so then that means that light and darkness are not what God shines upon us. Joy is what comes from God’s love, and he loves us all equally. You don’t even need to be a mathematician to see how much Joy is coming upon us.
I can apply this to my life by listening to God through prayer and trusting in him.
Today’s gospel is pretty straightforward. Jesus came to give us happiness. All we have to do is accept it and follow him.
what I learned in this reading is that Jesus wants us to be happy and joyful. I can apply this in my life by being happy and Joyful knowing that thats what Jesus wants for me.
All god wants us to do is be happy. Joy comes from hope and proceeds from love.
I think this Gospel is pretty straightforward in telling us how to get to Heaven. If we follow the Commandments, we will remain in Jesus’s love. I can apply this to my life by keeping the Commandments in my mind and living by them.
I can do this by letting my self be filled with the joy from God and try to pass it on to others.
Jesus is saying that we need to keep his commandments. This kind of goes along with going to confession if you break a commandment. If you break one, it does not mean that God loves you less, it means that you are breaking away from His love. Confession is the way to bring yourself back into His love. This means going to confession at least once in a while to make sure you stay with Him.
Today Jesus is telling us that him and the holy trinity are the true and unlimited source of joy and peace. If we keep the commandments then we will be in a serene happiness in heaven forever. God’s grace and joy is just what we all need amidst this pandemic.
Joy comes from the heart and nothing can take that away. Happiness comes and goes but if you choose joy, it will stay forever. When we keep the commandments, our soul is guided towards joy and away from sin. Following the commandments will bring eternal joy in heaven.
Joy is what God has filled us with besides love and grace. He wanted us to have Joy so we could remember and believe that His son died for our sins and rose from the dead to save us. If we always believe in God and Jesus we will always have joy in our lives.
When I read this Gospel Passage the first thing that I thought of was, wow Jesus wont leave us because of a huge sin. He will always love us with his whole heart and soul. That is why we are living because no matter what we are going through in our life God still loves us because if God even for the slightest second forgot about us then we would just disappear.
joy is full when you have nothing to desire but God. Joy comes from hope, so we need to be hopeful so we can joyful.
Scripture can obviously be taken in many ways. From first glance, you could think that this piece of scripture is saying that Jesus will love you if you listen to Him. While that is what we should be doing, the reality is Jesus loves us anyway. We need to look into the deeper meaning of what His love actually means. His love is undying, powerful, strong, and never ending. If He can love us through our ups and our downs and everything in between, we can choose to listen and to love Him back.
Sin doesn’t make God love us more. Sin has an affect on how much of God’s love and joy we are willing to receive. The more we follow the commandments, the closer we are to Jesus and His love for us. Jesus will always love us the same, we have to see that He will always with us and love us.
In today’s Gospel Jesus makes it simple he says ” As the father loves me as I love you”. If we think about this deeply he is saying that he truly loves us and if we just follow his commandments like he says later in the Gospel we should have no problem in life. He is so powerful and we need to realize that. He can change us into be being the person he wants us to be. He loves us so much so we need to love him so much back.
I honestly don’t even know exactly what joy is. When I think of joy, I think of that feeling when you’re so happy that every problem or worry you’re feeling just fades away. It’s like it’s not there anymore, and that’s one of the best feelings in the world. That’s what God wants for us, he just wants us to follow him and talk to him.
Jesus is always gonna love you no matter what. Hes always gonna be there for you. In times of good and bad. In times of happiness and sadness. Even though your sad, you will always be joyful. That right there is Gods doing. No matter happy or sad, you will always be filled with Jesus. If that doesn’t make you joyful and beyond, I don’t what will. As long as you have Jesus, you have joy.
I can apply this scripture to my life by listening to God and trusting what he has to say to me. Jesus is trying to act upon us and we have to allow him to. We need to be joyful. We have to choose to have joy. It’s up to us whether or not we have joy in our life.
What I think this scripture reflection is trying to tell us is that we need to trust in God and we will always have Joy remaining in our lives through all the good and bad. Remain in Jesus and we will have his love, his trust, his joy. We will live our best life with him.
I can apply this to my life by understanding that being joyful is a choice. I should wake up every day and choose joy. I can also offer up my hardships up to God because in the end, suffering will bring me joy. When I suffer, I can go to God, and He will help me overcome my problems. After all the suffering, I become joyful because He helped me become a better version of myself.
Today’s scripture is telling us that Jesus will always love us and it makes him happy when we follow the commandments, do what we are called to do and to live a holy life. Jesus said the the disciples “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.
I can apply this to my life by realizing that all God wants is for us to be joyful and holy with him. We may find happiness from material things but compared to when we are in his presence, receiving him, praying to him, we feel this calmness and are filled with his love. God is our biggest supporter and wants the best for us.
What I learned from this scripture reflection is that if we are doing the fathers will we should be truly happy.
It doesn’t matter if we’re sad or angry, we’ll still have joy because Jesus gives us that joy. He died on the cross to save us from our sins and we should rejoice everyday because of that.
We need to know that since God loves us, we need to also love our neighbors, even if that neighbor is your enemy. We need to try to do everything that Christ would do for others and make sure we don’t stray away from the path that leads to heaven.
Jesus is God. This means he loves us as God would love us. No one will ever love us as he loved us. His being is love. Nothing can compare to the Power of Jesus.
What I can take away from this scripture passage is that if I am always happy then God is always right next to me because God is the one who inserts happiness into you.And as long as you love God or even if you don’t God will always love you and be right there for you anytime and anyplace.
I can apply this to my daily life by knowing God is all love and that no material thing or person on this earth will make me happy, only God. It’s weird how God works, because we really need joy in our lives during all this craziness, he’s telling me to trust in him, have faith and do my best.
In today’s scripture Jesus is telling us that if we do as he says and follow him we will live a happy and fulfilling life.
Jesus is telling us that He is Love. We will find joy in keeping his commandments. He wants us to be joyful and to find joy in him and in helping others.
Joy comes from hope and love, if we let the devil take away our hope and our love for one another, where is our joy? It’s gone, the devil took it and isn’t planning on giving it back anytime soon, so we need to take it back by loving one another, and having hope.
The Gospel today means that you have joy no matter what. No one can take that from you.
The scripture is telling us that in order to have joy, we need to follow the commandments that God has given us. When we follow these, we follow in his footsteps, leading us to joy.
God loves us no matter what, even in our worst. He gives us joy. and has faith is is. He takes the suffering away from us. Joy comes from within and no body can take that away. God wants happiness. He is truly the gate to happiness and if we follow him, it will lead to a perfect life of joy.
What I took away from the Gospel was that even in our hardest and darkest hours, our Lord can provide us with pure joy. All God wants for us is to be happy, and we can’t be fully and completely happy by ourselves. We need a savior. we need a redeemer. We need Jesus Christ.
In today’s Gospel Jesus says ” As the father loves me as I love you”. I can apply this to my daily life by treating everyone with respect. Everyone is a person and must be treated with the same respect as everyone else, no matter what.
In the passage it starts off by saying that “As the Father loves me, so I also love you.” He is saying that as long as God is around he will love us, and God is eternal. We need to remain in God’s love and follow the commandments so that we can be as happy as we can be and spread the Gospel whenever we can to spread awareness of God’s love so that others will love him back so that they can be with him forever in Heaven.
We can remain in God’s graces by obeying to his commandments, and in doing this we’ll gain true happiness.
God wants us to be happy, he is not someone who will banish you from the earth if you break a commandment. He is not that but he still wants us to follow the commandments. He says that we will be happy when we follow the commandments. We still have to strive to avoid sin. Sin keeps us from following the commandments. So are you going to fight sin and strive to avoid it or are you going to let it control you because if you are okay with the devil controlling you are going to live a very awful life.
I can apply this to my life by praying and staying joyful by letting nothing change that. I also need to be joyful when I do every thing.
I think that this reflection is telling us that Jot is the single greatest thing that one can have. To know that there is eternal happiness waiting for you after death. People care so much about the present that they forget about the future after death.
God loves us and desires for us to be happy and he is happy when we are happy.
God wants us to be joyful. God is always with us, sad and joyful moments. He never wants to see us suffer. God always wants us to be joyful. I can imply this to my life by always following God and keeping my relationship with him.
Love and joy go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other. You find joy in something if you love it, and you love something that brings you joy. But love isn’t just a thing to get, you’re meant to give them as well. Love your neighbors as you would a brother. Feed the homeless, care for the sick. Do anything to show that you love someone or something, then you can find true joy.
“As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and remain in his love.” I go through and think of how i can apply this to my life because it really stuck out to me and i am going to apply this to my life because i believe this will happen to me if i follow it.