To those who wonder whether the Christian joy "is still possible nowadays", for Benedict XVI "the answer is given, with their lives, by men and women of every age and social background, who are happy to devote their lives to others!". For instance, the blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta was "an unforgettable witness of true evangelical joy". Actually, "every day, she lived in close contact with poverty, human degradation, death. Her soul experienced the ordeal of the dark night of faith, yet she gave God’s smile to everyone". So, "joy enters the heart of those who place themselves at the service of the small and the poor. God dwells in those who love thus, and the soul is in joy. If instead one makes happiness an idol, one takes the wrong way, and it is truly difficult to find the joy Jesus speaks of". "This is, unfortunately highlighted the Pope , the goal of the cultures which replace God with individual happiness, a mentality that has one of its emblematic effects in the pursuit of pleasure at all costs, in the spreading of the use of drugs as a way out, as a shelter in artificial paradises, which eventually turn out to be completely fallacious". (continued)
