the daffodil principle - a longtime favorite

HOLY TUESDAY

"Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God."—Hebrews 12:2


Don’t worry if you don’t feel joyful on feastdays or other times when you “ought” to feel joyful. Joy is a gift, like life and sunlight and air and flowers and food. It comes and goes, according to its own rhythms and seasons, and its presence doesn’t mean someone’s holy, any more than its absence means someone’s doomed. In spiritual life, feelings are not as important as acts and habits.

We must build the habits of prayer and life in Christ, and let the feelings follow when (or if) they may.

"And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at His
teaching. But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they came
together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, to test Him.eacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" And He said to him,
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and
with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like
it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments
depend all the law and the prophets."