JOY IS...

When you can be yourself
 because you have accepted yourself.
 
When you can distinguish between what is important and
 not in becoming a person.
 
When you do not allow your possessions possess you.
 
When you come to the realization that you brought nothing in this world and you
 are not going to bring out anything.
 
When you realize that you never really die because you love -
 if you really dare to love, will live on in the hearts of your brothers and sisters.
 
When you discover through experience that riches are not what you have 
but what you are; that what you are
 - can be, no one can prevent you from becoming.
 
When you allow others to discover their own riches in themselves and not in you.
 
When you see suffering as the passageway to love.
 
When you realize that there are many more people who care than you imagine 
or can ever imagine -
 if only you will seek them out and break out of your own little world.

When you understand that even the least act of faith
 can make a big significance in your life.
 
When you sense in your moments of doubt, the seedbed of truth.
 
When you feel in your heart the soil of tomorrow as the fertile ground of joy.
 
When in your prayer you see that your sense of sin is your call to the holy.
 
When you respond to the pettiness in others by magnanimity of spirit, 
not by being more mean-spirited.

When you realize that no one shares without becoming
 richer for it.
 
When you experience the incorruptibility of the spirit
 and the corruptibility of the flesh and thus search
 for what has value rather than what is merely
 tangible.

When you carry your cross joyfully, and discover that the cross begins to carry you.
 
When what God thinks is more significant to you than
 what others think and say about you.
 
When you realize that Christ did not die for an
 abstract humanity but for a concrete person : YOU!
 
When you appreciate and are grateful for the gifts God has given you, 
and you have stopped hankering for those He never gave you nor meant for you.
 
When you see sharing all that you are and have as a
 privilege and not a burden.
 
When you rejoice in the success of others because
 others have become part of you and you have become part of them.
 
When you graduate from thinking of others into feeling for them - 
thus discovering in your heart your human frailty and your roots in divinity.
 
When you discover God's steadfast love for you - 
a love that springs from what He is rather than from what you do