Tuesday in the Octave of Easter

Pray that you may look upon a typically Christian interior life as a celebration of the magnificent Crucifixion-Resurrection victory of Christ Jesus. Let it be for you and uninterrupted harmonization of two experiences, as opposite and seemingly incompatible as cross and joy.
Through the instructions of Jesus to His Apostles and also through the exhortations of the Apostles to their converts, there sounds, like a dominant note, the insistence that every trial and suffering of Christians is positively designed to be so illuminated by rays of Easter light, that all natural darkness and bitterness will be transformed into brightness and sweetness. This does not mean that even the most perfect Christian faith will entirely deaden bodily pains and heartaches and soul sorrows. With only rarest exceptions, our sufferings come to us and are left with us to be felt, and our crosses are to be borne as stern realities. Jesus Himself insists that we shall have sorrow and have reason to lament and weep. And though St. Paul thrice besought Him that the angel of Satan might be made to depart form him, Jesus who loved him as a vessel of His election answered: "My grace is sufficient for thee!" Yes, pains and sorrows remain; but through them all, even while experiencing extraordinary tribulation, there is to abide within our soul the anticipated Resurrection peace and joy that reigns in imperturbably Christian hope.
—Fr. Leo M. Krenz, S.J.