Let’s talk about the things that give us joy. For me, the list is longer than I sometimes think. 

Family gives me joy—in spite of the fact that it is also a source of stress. 

Trees and grass and sunsets give me joy—when I remember to look. 

Books and music, art and drama are frequently occasions for joy. 

Friends (fellow travelers) are quiet, steady sources of joy. 

Prayerful meditation done well—listening to the still small voice of Love—is a rare treasure that soothes and strengthens a joyful heart. 

Any of life’s simple pleasures can be moments of joy if I let go of worries, resentments, self-doubt and fear. 

Let’s talk about the things that give us joy. 

To live joyfully we must surrender our hurts, our resentments, our justifiable anger and our desire to get even for physical, emotional or spiritual harm done to us. We must “let go” of all the things that grind us up and weigh us down. 

The result is freedom, happiness and a joy-filled life. 

Why is this so hard to do? Why do we keep taking it back? Attempting to control everything? Exchanging joyful living for anxiety and fear?

It’s the human condition—all too evident in the world around us. We nurse our grudges and dwell on the wrongs that have been done to us. We look for opportunities to strike back, to get revenge and to put others down. 

The result is misery. Until we learn to let go. To live joyfully, we must empty ourselves of self and be filled with unselfish love. 

Help me, God. This is really hard. 

• 
  
  
  
  
  
  We must be faithful to the present moment or we will frustrate the plan of God for our lives. (Venerable Solanus Casey)

A message from my friend Jerry Locey:

Received my credential today for the Fr. Solanus Casey Beatification which will take place on November 18, 2017.

It is an Indoor event at the fairly new football stadium where the Detroit Lions play (Ford Field in Downtown Detroit which opened in 2002 and was renovated in 2017).

The good news I’m writing about:

The letter (enclosed with the credentials) from the Capuchin Friars of the Province of St. Joseph states:

“Please be advised:  this will be a sell-out event, with an anticipated attendance of more than 66,000 faithful from Metro Detroit, across the country and around the world.”

That attendance news is an answered prayer as I want to support the faith and values Father Solanus Casey lived and embraced.  Since he died 60 years ago (1957), most everyone who knew him personally will be unable to physically attend.  But the expected attendance news is a wonderful sign that his heroic faith and values have continued to live-on among God’s people!

Thanks for sharing in my joy!

Happy 87th Birthday to my friend Monsignor Salvatore E. Polizzi (aka Father Turiddu)! Still an active, full-time pastor, still a leader in his archdiocese and in St. Louis, the city he loves, Father T is an inspiration to all who know and love him. Ad multos annos!

Hope, not despair. Life, not death. 

It takes a lot of courage these days to be hope-filled. There are just too many reasons to wonder whether a good God really does watch over us and care for us. 

Where was this good God last week when a shooter opened fire killing 26 and wounding 20 churchgoers? Where was God when a madman in a cargo van deliberately ran down hundreds of people in New York? 

Where is God when children starve? When entire nations are wiped out by  genocide? 

Religious leaders urge us to pray and to cling to our faith, but after a while their words become faint—even hollow. Political leaders pontificate and squabble among themselves (interminably it seems) but do nothing. 

How should ordinary people respond? Should we give up? Should stop caring?

I think we must look to the simple but profound words of Winston Churchill: 

Why? Giving up is not an option. For people who care, people who value life and liberty, people who are not self-absorbed psychopaths, giving up is unthinkable. To give up is to hand over the world and our lives to the monsters, the ideologues and the fanatics. To give up is to surrender everything to the forces of evil in the world, the principalities and powers that corrupt everything they touch. 

It may cost us everything we have, and everyone we love, but we can never, never, never give up. 

Here we go again. At least 26 people killed and 20 wounded at a mass shooting in Texas.

As in too many recent incidents, the gunman has committed an act of vicious, senseless violence against innocent people as the world watches—apparently helpless to stop what Pope Francis calls “hatred and homicidal madness.”

In the face of this madness, we are tempted to give up all hope of ending the violence. But Pope Francis urges us to do the opposite. He wants us to redouble our efforts to pray for peace and for the conversion of those who would do us radical harm. Hope, not despair, is the solution to terrorism. Jesus, the source of all our hope, commands us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us.

The understandable reaction of political leaders and law enforcement is to search for motives. But it makes no difference whether the madmen who commit these unspeakable crimes are religious fanatics who share a terrorist ideology or deeply disturbed individuals acting alone.  In all cases, the pope tells us, the ultimate solution is to ask the Lord to convert the hearts of these madmen and free the world from hatred and homicidal madness that abuses the name of God in order to sow death.” 

It’s bad enough that evil people kill men, women and children randomly and without regard to their innocence. But to do so in God’s name—or in his house—makes the homicidal madness blasphemous, a mortal sin against God as well as humanity. Our response cannot be more bloodshed, which is why Pope Francis vigorously opposes capital punishment. Even the heinous acts of terrorists do not justify an equally violent response. Even evil men and women are subject to God’s mercy and the profound hope that they will one day experience conversion from a belief in the God of vengeance to a personal encounter with the God of Love.

Love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us? Even deranged madmen who take innocent lives by opening fire in a church or by turning ordinary vehicles into weapons of mass destruction?

Yes.  We must ask the Lord to convert the hearts of all who would harm us and free the world from violent acts that abuse the name of God.

It is equally important to pray for the victims, their families, the first responders and caregivers. These suffer the immediate effects of the hatred and homicidal madness that terrorism spawns. These women and men cry out to us for our prayerful support in their hours of anguish and need. Not to pray for them would mean succumbing to the “sin of Indifference” that Pope Francis has repeatedly condemned. We dare not let the increasing frequency of violent attacks here at home and abroad blind us to the suffering of victims and their families or to the heroism of those who are called to protect us and care for us even in the most horrific circumstances.

Even in the worst of times, joy always endures.

May the Lord free us from hatred and homicidal madness.

Pope Francis prayed for the victims of the attacks in Somalia, Afghanistan and New York, and also called for the conversion of terrorists: "May the Lord free us from hatred and homicidal madness. In addition to condemning such acts of violence, I pray for the deceased, the wounded and their family members. We ask the Lord to convert the hearts of the terrorists and to free the world from hatred and homicidal madness that abuses the name of God in order to sow death."

In the face of this madness, we are tempted to despair, to give up all hope of ending the violence. But Pope Francis urges us to do the opposite. He wants us to redouble our efforts to pray for peace and for the conversion of those who would do us radical harm. Hope, not despair, is the solution to terrorism.

Jesus, the source of all our hope, commands us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. It sounds easy enough in the abstract, but in the face of real evil everything in us resists loving our enemies!

God, you know how hard this is for us. Please grant us some small share in your boundless love and mercy.