Let us sing as we go. May our struggles and our concern for this planet never take away the joy of our hope.

The human heart desires joy. We all desire joy, every family, every people aspires to happiness. But what is the joy that the Christian is called to live out and bear witness to? It is the joy that comes from the closeness of God, from his presence in our life. From the moment Jesus entered into history, with his birth in Bethlehem, humanity received the seed of the Kingdom of God, like the soil receives the seed, the promise of a future harvest.

Hope, in its stronger forms, is a great deal more powerful stimulans to life than any sort of realized joy can ever be.

It is in the nature of things that joy arises in a person free from remorse.

Joy is fleeting, whereas true happiness and calm can come to us only after intense pain, when we have confronted ourselves in the mirror of our souls and understood the self.

Greater than all the joys of heaven and earth, Greater still than dominion over all the worlds, Is the joy of reaching the stream.