Week 05 (April 19-25)
Easter is the season of joy. Listening to the joyful voices of Upper School Chorus of Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart and reflecting on Mother Stuart’s insights about joy, we explore our experience of joy and how it might influence who we are when we emerge from these days.
Then, we invite you to read quietly some of Mother Stuart’s insights into joy.
What speaks to your heart?
We invite you to end your prayer time with a prayer of thanksgiving and another listening to the students singing.
Joy is the song or psalm of the spirit under the pressure of happiness, and to give God the fullest and best service possible, we must train our spirit to sing that psalm continually.
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Joy and sorrows are meant to exist in the same soul. They are meant to follow each other in regular succession. We should never attain sanctity if we had nothing but joy.
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Joy follows sorrow...as the flower breaks from the thorny branch not the branch from the flower.
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The quality of our joy depends on the spring from which it is drawn. Where do we seek our joy? How does it come and go? Watch its flight as of birds...Does it soar or flutter? Is it steadfast or changeable? Does it go by days, by moods, by self-love, by the adventure of circumstances?
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With joy without and within, all is well. I can conceive no higher way. Joy is the most heavenly atmosphere found on earth - we ought to cultivate it as a duty always.
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With regard to the causes of joy and sorrow, let us for our own guidance bear in mind that the sources of joy are deeper than the sources of sorrow. The sources of sadness are temporal, are in ourselves, the sources of joy are eternal and are in God.
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To be a joy-bearer and a joy-giver says everything; it means that one is faithfully living for God and that nothing else counts, and if one gives joy to others, we are doing God's work.
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Joy comes of utter contentedness with God's will for us now.
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… May peace be your gift to all who come near or depend on you. May God’s presence be ever your living joy and the central fact in your life, from which will flow patience, calmness and an unquenchable joy, with that in your soul you can meet anything and each trial will be a small treasure to offer God …
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