Today's advice 9 September 2020 by Isaac of the Star

Isaac of the Star (? - ca 1171)
Cistercian monk

Homily for the Solemnity of All Saints (2,13: 20-XNUMX)
"Blessed are you who cry now"
"Blessed are the afflicted, for they will be comforted" (Mt 5,4: 16,24). With this word the Lord wants us to understand that the way to reach joy is tears. Through desolation we go towards consolation; in fact, by losing one's life one finds it, rejecting it one possesses it, hating it one loves it, despising it one keeps it (Mt 15,17s). If you want to know yourself and dominate yourself, go inside yourself, and don't look for yourself outside) ...). Re-enter yourself, sinner, re-enter where you are, in your soul (…). Will the man who returns to himself not discover that he is far away, like the prodigal son, in a discordant area, in a foreign land, where he sits and weeps at the memory of his father and his country? (Lk XNUMX:XNUMX). (...)

"Adam, where are you? "(Gen 3,9: XNUMX). Perhaps still in the shadows so as not to see yourself; you are sewing vanity leaves together to cover your shame, looking at what is around you and what is yours. (…) Look inside yourself, look at yourself (…). Go inside yourself, sinner, go back to your soul. See and pity that soul subject to vanity, agitation, which cannot free itself from captivity. (…) It is evident, brothers: we live outside ourselves, we forget ourselves, every time we disperse ourselves in nonsense or distraction, every time we delight in futility. For this reason, Wisdom has always at heart to invite to the house of repentance rather than to the house of revelry, that is, to call back within itself the man who was outside himself, saying: "Blessed are the afflicted" and elsewhere: " Woe to you who laugh now ».

Brothers, we groan before the Lord, whose goodness leads to forgiveness; let us turn to him "with fasting, weeping and lamenting" (Jn 2,12:XNUMX) so that one day (…) his consolations may rejoice our souls. Indeed, blessed are the afflicted, not because they weep, but because they will be comforted. Crying is the way; consolation is bliss