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CristeroCast Fr. Keller 4

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Sorrow Versus Sadness Defined

SPEAKER_02

So when we submit our will, uh uh, especially when we're renouncing something, right, for and we accept God's will in a difficult matter, the suffering that comes from it is called sorrow. Our Lord is called, He's predicted to be called uh a man of sorrows in the Old Testament. Right. We call our lady our lady of sorrows. We don't call our lady of sadness, right? Right. We don't have the sad mysteries of the rosary. We have the sorrowful mysteries of the rosary.

SPEAKER_01

And your heart will be pierced by a sword.

SPEAKER_02

All this, yeah. So because accepting God's will in difficult matters makes us holy.

Rich Young Man And God’s Will

SPEAKER_01

Welcome back to Christario Cast. I'm your host, Patrick Mason, and I'm again joined by Father Matthew Keller of Sacred Heart Cathedral in Gallup. Uh Father, would you start us out with a prayer? Certainly.

SPEAKER_02

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

SPEAKER_01

Amen.

SPEAKER_02

You know, the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

SPEAKER_01

Awesome. Thank you, Father. And we're uh running through your greatest hits I've heard you preach over the years and some great insights I think you've had. And for all our viewers out there, you please like and subscribe and uh share this video. Uh it helps us get the word out. So, Father, today we're going through uh sorrow and joy. And I want to start off with uh uh this comes from I believe uh Lu or Matthew chapter 19, and this is the rich young man. Now someone approached him and said, Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life? And he answered him, Why do you ask me about the good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments. He asked him which ones, and Jesus replied, You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And the young man said to him, All of these I have observed, what do I still lack? Jesus said to him, If you wish to be perfect, go sell what you have, and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and then come follow me. When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad, for he had many possessions. And Jesus said to his disciples, I'm in, I say to you, it's hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again, it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. And that's in sharp contrast to uh from John, which says, I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. This is my commandment, love one another as I love you. Right. So you have two separate passages kind of tied together. One is love each other as yourself, the other is love, love one another as I've loved you, and one is about sadness and one is about joy. Can you how do these relate to each other? Sure.

SPEAKER_02

I find one uh really helpful thing to do almost all the time is to make distinctions, right, and and definitions and to make them clear because very often we interchange words that aren't the same. And so we do that constantly with happiness and joy and sorrow and sadness. And in the scriptures and the spiritual life, uh those things uh uh are very different kinds of terms, and and they help us to live the the spiritual life well if we understand them correctly. So uh one of the things we want to focus on is doing God's will, right? Jesus uh tells the rich young man, like, if you do these things, right? Yeah, and he says, Oh, I've done been doing that you know my whole life. So then God himself in the flesh expresses to him what would make him perfect, right? He says, Go sell everything you have and come and follow me. Yeah, he gives him the opportunity to be a disciple, maybe even more than a disciple, maybe an apostle. Yeah, yeah. But a direct because we don't see Jesus inviting uh other people to follow him in that way that aren't apostles, apostles, yeah. A direct invitation, and he says no, all right. He's got too much on his plate, right? Too many things, too much, too many possessions, all that. Yeah, but this it says though what his disposition is. He goes away sad. All right. Now, this is why we don't want to interchange the words sorrow and sad, because sorrow is a kind of suffering that comes from saying yes to God. So if this young man had said yes to Jesus, he would have undergone some suffering because he would have he would have had to give away everything he owned. Left his family, left his family. And so suffering that so this is the the definition. Sorrow is the suffering that comes from accepting God's will in difficult matters. So think about our lady at the foot of the cross. Right. All right. So our lady accepts from God's hand, right, that her son uh is put to death, right? She accepts that. And so this is sorrow, the the and it made her perfected her soul. Jesus himself in the Garden of Gethsemane, right? He says, I'm sorrowful even unto death. All right. And think about what he was doing in the Garden of Gethsemane. Father, right, if it's possible, let this pass away from me. Nevertheless, not my will be done, but your will be done, right? And uh the Father's will was that Jesus died for the salvation of the world. So, yeah. So Jesus accepted that. And it was so hard to submit right his human will to the divine will not that he sweat blood, right? Um, and because our Lord, of course, loved uh uh loved life, he knew what was ahead. We against his apostles, friends, everything that he would have to suffer, but he submitted everything to the will of the Father. And he taught us to pray this way: your will be done, right? Uh, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. The same implication is there, not my will, your will be done. So when we submit our will, uh, especially when we're renouncing something, right? For and we accept God's will in a difficult matter, the suffering that comes from it is called sorrow. Our Lord is called, He's predicted to be called uh a man of sorrows in the Old Testament. Right. We call our lady our lady of sorrows, we don't call our lady of sadness, right? Right. We don't have the sad mysteries of the rosary, we have the sorrowful mysteries of the rosary.

SPEAKER_01

And your heart will be pierced by a sword.

SPEAKER_02

All this, yeah. So because accepting God's will in difficult matters makes us holy, right? We subject ourselves and we're purified by that. We become more godlike, we come Christ-like, right? In submitting our will to God's will. And so uh, but that hurts, right? It really hurts.

SPEAKER_01

And Christ didn't ask anything of us that he didn't do himself.

SPEAKER_02

He sorrows away. So that sorrow. Now look at the rich young man. Yeah. He said no, he said no to God instead of yes to God. And the suffering that came from saying no to God was sadness, which isn't fruitful at all, right? Doesn't bring it doesn't make you holy, it makes you selfish, right? It makes you separated from God, could be sinful, uh, likely sinful. Uh so saying no to God, right, uh causes sadness. Saying yes to God in difficult matters might cause sorrow. It might. And if it does, that suffering is called sorrow. Whereas the suffering that comes from saying no to God, uh, God's will is called sadness, right?

SPEAKER_01

And it's it's not fruitful, it doesn't do us any good. It's just interesting. This kind of just came to me is so this is a guy that followed all the commandments, did all the good, did everything he was supposed to do, and you see and you see people over there uh that like live these external lives, maybe of that. Yeah, but then when it really comes time to join their will to God, they can't do it.

SPEAKER_02

And here's the other thing he wanted material things that couldn't even make him couldn't bring him any joy. So this is the other the flip side of this uh thing that we want to talk about is joy and happiness,

Happiness Versus Joy That Lasts

SPEAKER_02

right? Okay. Uh again, we use those things interchangeably, and they are not. Um happiness is the enjoyment of uh pleasant circumstances, okay? So you've seen uh the car that I got lately, right? Yeah. I really it makes me happy. I like that car. But if somebody if somebody hits me in the parking lot of your uh uh uh the studio here, I'm not gonna be happy anymore, right? I'm not it's fleeting. It's fleeting, it's that shallow. And so there's nothing necessarily wrong with it, but it comes from a place that is a secondary thing, right? If we're, you know, if that kind of happiness is something that our lady even told the little children in Fatima, right? I cannot promise you happiness in this world, right? But I can promise you eternal life, right? If you follow my son. So joy comes, right, from a true knowledge of our union with God, right? And so that joy is something Jesus said, I give, I want to give you my joy, something that cannot be taken away from you. It cannot be taken away from you. Somebody running in my car in your parking lot does nothing for my relationship with Jesus Christ, right? Right. That abiding love that I, you know, He has for me, that I experience and that I return in as wounded of a way as I do. Um, that love uh of Jesus Christ brings me so much joy that uh, you know, worldly things like that, they may, you know, like I said, it could take your happiness away because the happiness is fleeting. It's only the enjoyment of uh you know of uh of pleasant things. Um and so I cringe when people say, I just want my kids to be happy. No, you don't, right? You probably don't mind if your kids are happy, but you want the your kids to have that deep, abiding joy that comes and a willingness to suffer for God's sake, even if it brings them sorrow. Right. That's what you should want for your kids because that's going to lead them to heaven, right? Take up your cross and follow me, right, is is uh is something that they have to be willing to say yes to. And that it may not, on the surface, right, may not make them happy in the sense of enjoying pleasant circumstances, picking up a cross, um, right, but the deep abiding joy, the peace that comes, right, from uniting yourself with Jesus Christ and his will. It's all about doing the will of God. We do the will of God, we're gonna have uh we're gonna have a deep abiding joy. We may experience some sorrow. So our lady, and this is the thing, uh a point I wanted to make joy and sorrow are not uh alternatives. You have both a Christian has the joy of loving God and probably the sorrow of taking up their cross to follow him.

SPEAKER_01

They exist at the same time.

SPEAKER_02

They exist at the same time. Our lady had perfect joy, perfect uh sorrow, right? Uh holy sorrow, holy joy. Um, happiness, no, she wasn't happy about Jesus dying on the cross because it wasn't a pleasant circumstance. She had joy of knowing that the salvation of the world was coming from that choice.

SPEAKER_01

Well, and how does her words and Christ's words in the garden and the prayer that our father, they all mirror each other. Be it done to me according to thy word.

SPEAKER_02

Your your will be done. So it's all about God's will. If if we choose God's will every time, we're going to have deep, abiding joy that no one can take away from us, even in the midst of sorrows. Because the sorrow, um, when you see the purpose of it, right, that that in turn will ultimately lead to more joy.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_02

Because you know that, wow, I endured something difficult. You know, and you and the the you know, the cleansing experience of choosing God's will over my own will in the long run gives you so much joy. And so much freedom, too. Freedom. You don't have to choose anything. You just you're not bound by uh you know fleeting things that disappoint always, right? That young man went away sad because those earthly things couldn't please him. Uh how can you replace an invitation to be an you know a disciple, intimate follower of Jesus Christ, as opposed to the worldly things that he would the rest of his life he put in.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I was just thinking too, as we were talking about this, it's probably not, it wasn't even just worldly things. You know, I was thinking of the Beatitudes where it says, Blessed are the poor in spirit. Yeah, this man was rich in spirit, he wasn't just rich in material things, he was rich in the spiritual life, but that's still a reliance on yourself instead of reliance on God. Like, look at me, I've done the commandments, I've done these things. The Pharisees and the like yeah, whereas whereas really the the Jesus didn't fault them for not actually following the commandments.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, no, he said you are. He said, Okay, but give give up all that material stuff and come follow me, give it to the poor, come follow me, and and right, and uh be my disciple. And that you know, imagine the glory and the permanent, eternal, lasting joy that he would have had for doing that.

SPEAKER_01

I was thinking of the rosary and um you know, the you have the fruits of the mystery that we we we say the fruits with our kids as we pray it, and the fruit of the annunciation is humility, yeah, which is where Mary submits herself in humility to the will of God, and then the fruit of the mystery for the agony in the garden is sorrow for our sins, which is another way to submit ourselves in humility to God, like you said, not sadness for our sins, sorrow for our sins. Ask God to give us sorrow.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, because if if you only have sadness for your sins, you're not learning the lessons that you're only you're only regretting um you know that you got caught or whatever, right? But sorrow for your sin means I'm now uniting my my I'm uniting my will with God's will, right? And so I'm you know I'm repulsed by those things that aren't in accord with God's will that I've done in the past. And and so that's gonna make me reach out for him more in the future, right? Not get mad at him or you know, have resentment.

SPEAKER_01

So what do you

Real Suffering And A Practical Fiat

SPEAKER_01

do, father? You've I mean, this is we me and my wife talk about this point a lot, and it's easy to say the words. Yeah. How do you actually live? Like when you were actually experiencing something hard, like, you know, cranky kids or even your spouse sitting against you um, or or feelings of betrayal of friends, or whatever it might be, when you have those hardships and those sufferings, how uh what do you have any advice on how to really join your will to God and get and and experience sorrow and joy?

SPEAKER_02

I guess I I can tell you the one time in my life that I experienced this so clearly was I can re remember the day, May 22nd of the year 2000. And it was I I was traveling home from seminary and I called home to uh touch base with my family, and my mom told me that my dad had died uh just suddenly that day. And the Lord made it so clear to me like this is a cross that I'm handing to you, right? I was very two years away from ordination, my dad's not gonna see me get all this stuff. That's it. It's all there, and but the Lord made it so clear to me like this is a cross I'm handing you, embrace it. Somehow He gave me the grace to just accept that immediately. Um of course I was sad and uh sorrowful, sorrowful, um down to the cat. It was difficult to embrace that cross. But in the midst of that, I never uh like I didn't feel any uh sense of you know, why is God doing this to us or why why me or any of that kind of stuff. In that case, I don't know where that came from. It was a particular grace that God had given me to to say, um, like Mary at the foot of the cross, Lord, you know, basically fiat, that your will be done, not mine. And somehow that gave me this insight. Um, and I I knew the difference then experientially between having things the way I want them, which is what you know makes you happy, and having the way that God would have them, which is what produces accepting what has happened to you, accepting from God's hand. When that's the other thing too. There's nothing I could do about it. Right. No decision I could make would change anything. So it's clearly being handed to you from God. And when you can see that, there's something about that clarity that's helpful too. Um, you know, of seeing this is coming from God. I have to embrace this in order to do his will.

SPEAKER_01

And would a father hand a son of Scorpio?

SPEAKER_02

That he would not, right? Yep. So that's maybe in my own life where I the most clearly experienced uh embracing God's will in a difficult matter, it brought sorrow, but not sadness. And uh and uh ultimately the joy of I can remember you know just being freed from the heaviness of that very quickly, experiencing just you know, so much joy thinking about my dad. Like uh went from being hard to think about him or painful to just being joy. We had such a good relationship with my father. So um it just gave me so it gives me joy to think about my dad all the time.

SPEAKER_01

Even in that moment, it's the answer is the same is is be done to me according to me, or just accept it.

SPEAKER_02

Let it be done to me according to your word.

SPEAKER_01

And and that's the prayer we just say over and over again, and in humility, and if we do that, it's not our power, God will give us the grace. Yeah, just have to be okay. He will never refuse us. That's that's great, Father. Thank you.

Our Father Prayer And Closing

SPEAKER_01

Would you mind uh closing us out with a prayer?

SPEAKER_02

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen. Amen.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you, Father.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you for watching this episode of Christerocast. For more information on the Christeros or to join the movement, check out our website at theCristeros.org. That's the Christeros with an S.org. There you could find our daily reflection series as well as many of our publications and articles. Thank you for watching and viva cristorey.