(RoyalPatriot.com )- On Monday, Pope Francis told a group of young people from Belgium to be happy because happiness is a sign of authentic Christianity. The pope told the young Christians to think about what they brought to a happy Christian community and said they must bring joy to the world.
“There must always be joy because Christians with sad faces are not Christians,” he said. The pope has said before that Christians should be known by their smiles.
Francis said in 2014, “No one has ever heard of a sad saint or a saint with a funeral face.”
The pope said that a Christian is someone who has a peaceful heart because “he or she knows how to find joy in the Lord even when things are hard.”
“The human heart wants happiness. “Every family and every group of people wants happiness,” he said.
Pope Francis said that Jesus came to bring happiness to everyone. This is not just a joy to put off until heaven, as if we should be sad on earth but happy in heaven.
He said we need honest, present joy because Jesus is our joy. He said Christ is the goal of every person’s heart that wants joy and happiness.
In the past, the pope declared that joy is “the touchstone of a person’s faith” and said it was the sign of a faithful Christian.
“That person doesn’t really believe if they don’t have joy,” he said.
He said it’s not “cold doctrine” that brings joy but faith in Jesus and the hope that we will see him again. And a “sad believer” is someone who can’t be happy.
“The Gospel is not a bag of lead that you drag around with effort,” he said. “It is a source of joy that fills the heart with God and drives it to serve one’s brothers and sisters!”
Pope Francis- “Wear the joy of the risen Christ on your face as a sign of the hope that the gospel brings. The closer the Lord is to us, the happier we are, and the farther he is away, the sadder we are.”
“If I don’t have joy in my faith, I can’t be a witness,” he says.
