Christians are people of "joy", which
is a gift, "the certainty that Jesus is with us and with the Father." This makes the Christian "confident" and "magnanimous", with "the virtue of always going forward, but with that spirit full of the Holy Spirit."
This was Pope Francis' message today during a mass celebrated, like every morning, in the Casa Santa Marta, this morning attended by Vatican Radio staff, accompanied by the Director General, Father Federico Lombardi.
The Pope, in his homily, of which Vatican Radio has released a summary, emphasized the attitude of the disciples joyful, between Ascension and Pentecost to say that "a Christian is a man and a woman of joy. Jesus teaches us this, the Church teaches us this, in a special way in this [liturgical]time. What is this joy? Is it having fun? No: it is not the same. Fun is good, eh? Having fun is good. But joy is more, it is something else. It is something that does not come from short term economic reasons, from momentary reasons : it is something deeper. It is a gift. Fun, if we want to have fun all the time, in the end becomes shallow, superficial, and also leads us to that state where we lack Christian wisdom, it makes us a little bit stupid, naive, no?, Everything is fun ... no. Joy is another thing. Joy is a gift from God. It fills us from within. It is like an anointing of the Spirit. And this joy is the certainty that Jesus is with us and with the Father".
A joyous man, he continued, is a confident man. Sure that "Jesus is with us, that Jesus is with the Father." He asked: Can we 'bottle up' this joy in order to always have it with us? "No, because if we keep this joy to ourselves it will make us sick in the end, our hearts will grow old and wrinkled and our faces will no longer transmit that great joy only nostalgia, melancholy which is not healthy. Sometimes these melancholy Christians faces have more in common with pickled peppers than the joy of having a beautiful life. Joy cannot be held at heel: it must be let go. Joy is a pilgrim virtue. It is a gift that walks, walks on the path of life, that walks with Jesus: preaching, proclaiming Jesus, proclaiming joy, lengthens and widens that path. It is a virtue of the Great, of those Great ones who rise above the little things in life, above human pettiness, of those who will not allow themselves to be dragged into those little things within the community, within the Church: they always look to the horizon".
Joy is a "pilgrim," Pope Francis reiterated. "The Christian sings with joy, and walks, and carries this joy." It is a virtue of the path, actually more than a virtue it is a gift. "It is the gift that brings us to the virtue of magnanimity. The Christian is magnanimous, he or she cannot be timorous: the Christian is magnanimous. And magnanimity is the virtue of breath, the virtue of always going forward, but with a spirit full of the Holy Spirit. Joy is a grace that we ask of the Lord. These days in a special way, because the Church is invited, the Church invites us to ask for the joy and also desire: that which propels the Christian's life forward is desire. The greater your desire, the greater your joy will be. The Christian is a man, is a woman of desire: always desire more on the path of life. We ask the Lord for this grace, this gift of the Spirit: Christian joy. Far from sorrow, far from simple fun ... it is something else. It is a grace we must seek".
Finally Francis said that today there is a good reason for joy at the presence of Tawadros II, Patriarch of Alexandria in Rome. It is a cause for joy, he stressed, "because he is a brother who comes to visit the Church of Rome to speak," an to travel "a part of the road" together.