All night long, the wind rustled and cried outside the windows, Cloudy clouds flew across the sky... Rain poured down, and suddenly the airport became bright - A plane crashed in my beloved city...
Fell suddenly... like a bird... right into the puddles... There is pain in my heart... I can’t find the right words... People died... God took their souls to himself... May they rest in peace... Full of tears... Rostov mourns...
What is grief
In Russian, the meaning of the word “sorrow” implies a certain mental state, characterized by the following manifestations:
- feeling of deep sadness;
- difficult feelings due to loss;
- acute feeling of grief;
- sadness due to the death of a loved one.
This can be the name for a condition that arises due to the loss of an object, work, even a part of the body; sometimes patriotic feelings for the Motherland are called the same. However, most often this word describes the state after the death of a loved one.
Origin of the word
This is a common Slavic word that has related ones in other languages. Synonyms are mourning, sadness. In outdated concepts, this word had other meanings, for example “illness”, “trouble”, “misfortune”.
Examples in literature: “The feeling of hatred for the persecutor, which prompted him to speak in anger, was tempered by another feeling, a feeling of deep sorrow for the loss of the fatherland, for the bleakness of his situation.” (History of Russia from ancient times, volume 7, reign of Fyodor Ioannovich).
Many more examples can be found in literary works:
- "The Captain's Daughter" and "Belkin's Tale" ("The Young Lady-Peasant") by Alexander Pushkin.
- “The Tale of Peter and Fevronia”, where the prince suffered from an incurable illness.
- The heroes of Ivan Turgenev often cry and mourn over lost happiness.
- In Alexander Kuprin's "Garnet Bracelet" there is grief over lost love.
- “The Fate of Man” by Mikhail Sholokhov: the heroes Sokolov and his adopted son Vanyushka lost their families as a result of the war.
- Maternal grief in the novel “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy: Petrusha died in the war, and his mother almost went crazy with grief.
- In Gorky's novel "Mother", when the son was arrested.
- The tragedy of "Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare, where the main characters died due to the unwillingness of their parents to reconcile.
The word TRAVEL - comes from another root *(s) ker-b (h) / *(s) kor-b (h) - “twist”, “wrinkle”. Root - damage, chipped, scrape , warp. Prefix with
- means combination, unification. The main root of the cor- with an expander is “b” - an image of destruction.
A grieving person pines for a loved one and from whom he is separated (forever). “Insult” has a particularly destructive effect. When a person is narcissistic, his offended pride can lead to complexes, self-flagellation, depression, and bitterness.
The meaning of the concept in Orthodoxy
What does it mean to grieve? St. Macarius of Optina described this painful feeling this way: “The grace of God knows how much it takes for a vessel of words to be tempted in the furnace by the fire of sorrows, so that it will be useful for use. May His will be done on us."
It is customary for Orthodox Christians to grieve, that is, to meekly accept the Lord’s punishment for sins committed, thereby believing in the purification of the soul and the receipt of salvation. Sorrows in Orthodoxy mean that a person who has suffered physical or mental torment makes a surer path for himself into the Kingdom of God than those people who have not suffered sorrowful torment.
In the Church Slavonic language, the word “stuzháti ”, as a rule, corresponds to the Greek θλίβω - “to squeeze, squeeze, oppress, torment, oppress, insult .”
The Greek noun θλίψις means tightness, compression, pressure and is often translated into Church Slavonic as the word “sorrow.”
“Joy to all who mourn…” is the name of the Most Holy Theotokos in the stichera of the Prayer Canon. The idea of crampedness and constriction inherent in the word “sorrow” (especially in its Greek original) is embodied in poetic images, when consolation in sorrow is compared with expansion and space, as if the cramped soul of a person had gained spaciousness and free breathing.
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“Always call upon me, having heard me, the God of my Truth: you have spread me out in tribulation.” (Ps 4.2)
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“Like a wall of refuge, an all-perfect salvation for souls, and space in sorrows, O Young Lady...” (Canon of prayer to the Most Holy Theotokos).
In his address to the apostles and his followers, Jesus Christ speaks about “worldly sorrows”:
“These are the words to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will be sorrowful, but take heart, for I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
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Sorrow is the opposite of bliss, therefore it is cured by blessing, thanksgiving and the gospel gospel (Ev. - “good”, angel - “messenger”).
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“Having preached the Gospel to this city and having acquired quite a few disciples, they went back through Lystra, Iconium and Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith and teaching ,
that through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God" (Acts of the Apostles - 14:21)
This video presents the thoughts of the holy fathers about the meaning of sorrows in human life.
Sorrow (Sorrow)
Mourning (Sorrow) as a personality quality - the tendency to express deep sadness, grief, the experience of great loss; the need to bear the labor of experiencing one’s sorrows without looking for an opportunity to evade them or to be consoled by something external.
One man comes to a wise doctor and asks: “Why did God create sorrow?” The doctor thought for a moment... Then he said: “Do you see this syringe? He has a sharp needle. So, if I don’t hurt the person and administer the medicine, the patient will die.”
Mourning is the tendency to live in a tragic past. Grief appears with the loss of a loved one and usually goes through three stages: - the stage of protest, when the consciousness seems to refuse to accept, believe and put up with the loss. Reproaches himself and others for the loss. Darwin called this stage "violent grief"; - the stage of humility, acceptance or despair, when the reality of the loss is recognized and regret sets in; - the stage of separation, in which the subject moves away from the object, unlearns it and adapts to life without it. If "normal" grief occurs, the subject "recovers" from the loss and becomes capable of reattaching to a new object.
Szymun Wrocek in the book “Rom. The Last Legate" writes: "What is sorrow? Now I can answer. Sorrow is like a huge sheet of gilded copper. One of those used for lining the bottom of a ship. Huge leaf. And he's so... uncomfortable, or what? Echoing. Bulky. No matter how you look at it, everything is inconvenient. Either you cut your fingers, or you drop it... And you can’t really take this leaf or intercept it. You pick it up and hold it. He breaks down and hits the throat at an angle.”
Grief is a manifestation of grief. Real grief is secret grief. She doesn’t need posters and an audience, a demonstration of lowered heads and eyes looking at the floor. She cries away from prying eyes. When trouble, like a tsunami, hits a person, it seems to him that it is impossible to survive it. But time is the best healer. The grief is slowly weakening. No, it doesn’t go away forever, but you can somehow coexist with what the heart keeps.
However, there are people for whom life has become a miserable existence. They boast of grief, cherish it and pamper it as best they can, they like to be in a mournful state. Mark Twain in “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” writes: “And he so enjoyed his sorrows that he could not allow any earthly joy or annoying amusement to invade his soul; he protected his grief as if it were a shrine.”
Grief allows a person to dwell in the past. This is its big minus, because living in the past is the lowest type of consciousness. The lower a person’s level of consciousness, the greater his grief about the past. An eternally grieving person cannot live in the present; he is chronically absent from the present. This is a disaster both for him and for those around him. Living “here and now” means parting with the grief that keeps him in the past, but he either cannot or deliberately does not want to do this.
Mourning is living in a constant state of disappointment and emptiness. Prolonged grief kills inspiration, activity, and enthusiasm in a person. A person turns into an uninitiated, passive creature. He could continue the work of the deceased, but grief deprives him of energy. Advantages of grief: instills respect for worthy people, makes you think about death and the meaning of life.
Women usually get bogged down in grief. Often, in sorrow, a woman seeks protection from new emotional wounds: “I’m grieving, so don’t come near me.” I am a woman taboo for love. Don't come at me with your love. It’s better to be lonely than to experience the grief of loss again, to take a full cup of grief again. You enter into a relationship, you become attached, and you are taken back to the very heart.
Gregory David Roberts in the book “Shantaram” writes: “This enemy stalks you, guessing your every step before you take it. This enemy is your own grieving heart, and when it strikes there is no defense against it.”
Women captivated by grief are constantly depressed and do not allow others to lift them out of this state. They can tell how unhappy they are, how lonely and sad they feel, but as soon as you give advice, they immediately begin to panic: “Where are you pushing me?” I have not yet healed my mental wounds.
It happens that the grief of a woman who has lost a loved one is held on to by the anger she has not experienced towards him. Ruslan Narushevich gives this example. There was a very good man, but he died. But he died because his wife told him to “buckle up, please,” and he always snapped: “Leave me alone,” or “That’s enough for you.” And he died because he broke the glass with his head. Traumatic brain injury. Instant death. The woman, in fact, is angry in her heart because he himself destroyed their relationship with his own hands. Was it difficult for him to buckle up? He died, and she cannot express this anger. As they say, “it’s either good or nothing about the dead.” Due to the fact that anger is not realized, a person is in grief all the time. Constantly in sorrow. She needs to experience anger, then she will be free from grief. But on whom should we vent our anger?
It happens that women feel guilty. The man left her, or abandoned her, got divorced, went to someone else. But, she loved him very much and considered him a good person, and she mourns for him. In fact, she just needs to be told that he is a scoundrel. She needs to say in her heart: “Scoundrel.” He's just a heartless scoundrel, that's all. It is convenient to be in grief because if you are depressed, they will not touch you. They look - the woman is depressed, why bother touching her? Somehow it’s not even decent, the person is grieving, and here I am, flirting and making eyes. Why meet her, why approach her? Some women don’t know that this grief is so ingrained in them into the spine, into the bone marrow, that she seems to live an ordinary life, normally, but on her face this grief is so much that no one will ever approach her. Naturally, no one will ever pay attention. Why? Not because she isn't beautiful. No. Not because, in her opinion, she is old enough. For one reason - there is sorrow on the face.
A person who is grieving is not invited to the dance. A man comes to some event, looks - a woman is standing in all black, with a black scarf tied, in the corner, her gaze is downcast and lost. What kind of man would dare to come up and say: “Excuse me, can I invite you to dance?” She will say: “You see that I’m wearing a black scarf?” These black scarves, they are emotional, this is what comes from consciousness, the power of the psyche. Grief is also psychic energy. She pushes away. The man looked into the eyes - that’s it, he doesn’t want to meet anyone anymore. I saw that the woman was pretty. He took a step, looked - sorrow. He turned to the side once, saying he was going the wrong way. A woman who has been grieving for many years can become so saturated with grief that even when she smiles, the grief is visible on her face.
George R.R. Martin says in A Game of Thrones: “Death always brings with it sorrow, but in its own way it is the most natural event that can happen to a person.”
Death is as natural as life. By and large, for a decent person, death is a profitable exchange: an old, decrepit, sick body is exchanged for a young, beautiful and healthy one. No matter how much a person takes care of his body, someday something in his body will break and become unusable. The moment will come when life will say: “The body cannot be repaired.” It's time to make a replacement. Approximately the same scenario occurs when a person scraps an old car and buys a new one. Man is the eternal soul, the machine is his gross body, the material shell. Since the car cannot be repaired, they, of course, regret it, “mourn” it, but then, obeying the demands of the present, they buy a new one.
There is a Chinese proverb: “You can’t stop the birds of sorrow from hovering over your head, but you can stop them from making a nest in your hair.” That is, each person chooses for himself: to live “here and now” or to grieve for the rest of his life, ignoring his present.
Petr Kovalev 2014 Other articles by the author: https://www.podskazki.info/karta-statej/
How do sorrows pass?
In psychology, it is customary to distinguish several stages:
- Denial is when the subject does not believe what happened. At this stage, a deep emotional impulse to blame oneself for what happened may be replaced by embitterment towards others who, in the opinion of the mourner, did not “protect” the deceased. This period is also characterized by contradictory feelings of perception of reality, be it a categorical denial of what happened, or, on the contrary, complete immersion in experiences, up to a hysterical state.
- Acceptance is manifested in the grieving person by realizing the reality of the loss. During this period, relationships with a departed loved one are usually rethought, and a period of regret about any unfulfilled plans or common dreams begins. Often at this stage there is a feeling of regret about “unsaid” words, unfulfilled promises, etc.
- Release - the mourner “releases” the deceased from his life. Interest in life appears again, new hobbies, acquaintances. There remains a slight sadness about the person and the past associated with him.
What can you do
As usual, it is easier for a grieving person to cope with grief when the surrounding space changes with the passing of a loved one.
What can you do to ease mental suffering:
- wash the house;
- remove personal belongings of the deceased;
- distribute the clothes of the deceased to those in need;
- change the environment, rearrange the furniture;
- change place of residence;
- get creative;
- to have a pet.
What is prohibited
It is believed that crying for the deceased keeps the soul in this world and prevents it from departing to the Kingdom of God. It is better to consult with a clergyman about what you should not do after the funeral. He will give a detailed explanation of the rules of conduct after the death of a loved one and traditional actions.
Mourning (grief) and melancholy (clinical depression). What is the difference?
Freud wrote Mourning and Melancholia in 1915 and published in 1917. Apparently, Freud turned to the topic of grief not by chance. This was the period of the First World War and also a difficult period for psychoanalysis. In 1914, Carl Jung left the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Alfred Adler left him earlier in 1911. Freud loses his comrades, on whom he had high hopes. During the war, most of Freud's students went to the front as doctors. Freud's sons Martin and Ernest also went to war. His nephew died on the front line. In November 1914, Emanuel, Freud's beloved brother, dies. This is a great grief for Sigmund. There is a war going on, people are dying. The theme of loss and grief comes to the fore.
The work “Mourning and Melancholy” refers to metapsychological texts. The text is small, but very capacious. In this work, Freud describes two types of reactions to the loss of a loved object: normal grief, which is overcome over time, and “morbid melancholia.” Nowadays, melancholy refers to clinical depression. Freud places the psychiatric term “melancholia” in psychoanalytic coordinates and tries to comprehend the work of melancholia by comparing it with the work of grief, since they have a common picture of states. The general symptoms are as follows: deep, painful depression, loss of interest in life, loss of the ability to love, delay in intellectual, emotional, and motor activity. This state is explained by the work of grief that has captured the self. But there is also a significant difference - with melancholy, there is a loss of self-esteem, criticism of oneself and devaluation of oneself, in some cases developing into a delusional feeling of guilt and expectation of punishment. Freud calls this “impoverishment of the ego” and notes that if during grief the world becomes empty and impoverished, then during melancholy the ego itself becomes empty.
How does the work of mourning happen?
Sooner or later, the mourner is forced to admit that the loved one is no longer there. And he needs to remove libido from the object, that is, very roughly speaking, stop loving the deceased. Of course, the psyche resists this process, because for the mourner, to stop loving means to betray. And betrayal inevitably entails a feeling of guilt and shame for what has been done. This resistance can be so strong that the object can be held by hallucinations. For example, the deceased (the one who left) appears in the crowd, his voice and smell are heard. In the normal functioning of grief, common sense wins. However, the removal of libido from a favorite object occurs gradually and in small portions. This process requires a lot of time and energy. Every object reminiscent of the lost object, every memory of the object retains the attention of the mourner and suspends his activity. For example, a mourner stumbles upon the glasses of the deceased and seems to freeze. He remembers how he read the newspaper with these glasses on, how he looked slyly over the glasses. Thus, libido is gradually withdrawn. This process is accompanied by incredibly great emotional pain. After the work of mourning is completed, the person returns to life and is ready to invest libido in new objects, i.e. love other people.
The cause of grief and melancholy can be the same - the death of a loved one, divorce, separation, loss of work, ideals, homeland, freedom, etc. Any loss is an object loss and a narcissistic one at the same time. For example, a mother who loses a child loses her beloved object and her sense of being a good mother. Unlike grief, with melancholia a person may not know who or what they have lost. And even if they are aware of the objective loss, the melancholic does not understand the narcissistic component of the loss. Whereas during grief the loss is fully realized.
As mentioned above, with melancholy a person loses self-respect and devalues himself. He attacks himself with reproaches and accusations , some of which, of course, are true. Freud even sneers about this:
“...he, perhaps, as far as we know, has come quite close to self-knowledge, and we only ask ourselves why one must first get sick in order to understand such a truth...”
However, if you look closely at the complaints and self-accusations of a melancholic person, it becomes clear that most of them and the most humiliating part have nothing to do with reality. Moreover, in these accusations one can recognize the portrait of the abandoned object. Also noteworthy is the shamelessness with which the melancholic person complains about himself. Freud gives an ingenious explanation for this: all the self-accusations of the melancholic are in fact accusations against the beloved lost object.
Unlike the mourner, the melancholic cannot withdraw libido from the object. All he can do in this situation is to identify with the lost object. Freud writes:
“The shadow of the object fell on the I, which could now be assessed by a special authority as an abandoned object. Thus the loss of the object became a loss of the self, and the conflict between the self and the loved one became a discord between criticism directed at the self and the self changed by identification.”
Those. with melancholia, there is a loss of one’s own self, which is replaced by a lost object. The part of the Self, which will later be called the Super-Ego, becomes hostile towards the changed Self (the dead object within the psyche). She begins to attack the changed Self in the same way that the Self attacked the object that abandoned him, stopped loving him and caused him so much pain and suffering.
What are the prerequisites for the formation of melancholy?
Freud writes at the beginning of this work that since people react differently to the loss of an object, the melancholic person must have a predisposition to develop the disease , apparently hinting at the level of personality organization. He further writes that a melancholic person is highly emotionally dependent on a loved one, on the one hand, and has weak stability of emotional attachment, on the other. He makes his choice of love object on a narcissistic basis. Those. a melancholic person is not capable of mature object love; he loves the reflection of himself (present, past or ideal) in another person or another, as a part of himself (his right hand, his face, etc.). And then, in the event of a threat of loss of the object, this attachment, due to its instability, regresses to narcissism, i.e. to narcissistic self-identification with the object. Thus, the melancholic continues to love the object at the cost of regression to a primitive form of love (identification), where “to love an object” means “to be an object.” As a result of primitive identification, the lost object is held forever, it is impossible to part with it . Possession of a dead/lost object is the only possible way for a melancholic person to maintain a connection with this object.
Freud writes about this process:
“Melancholia borrows one part of its properties from sadness, and another part from the process of regression from narcissistic choice of object to narcissism.”
Those. the loss of an object is necessary to initiate the work of grief and melancholia, and this is their similarity. The difference is the regression to narcissism in melancholia.
In addition, the loss of a beloved object is an excellent occasion for the awakening and manifestation of ambivalence in a love relationship. And since the melancholic cannot realize all the hatred that he feels for the lost beloved object , he turns this hatred towards himself. The auto-aggression of a melancholic person becomes a means of attacking the object and a means of taking revenge on him . The melancholic suffers
“...and through this suffering, hatred receives sadistic satisfaction.”
This sadism explains the melancholic's tendency to commit suicide.
Freud further writes:
“In two opposite situations - intense love and suicide - the object is overcome by the self, even if in completely different ways.”
Those. suicide is an impulse to kill another, directed towards oneself, since the Self is identified with a hated object, which by its departure or death caused a lot of pain . Whereas when falling in love, the object overcomes the I by completely surrendering libido to the object. The object is overflowing, the object is libido, and the I, on the contrary, is impoverished to the point of losing itself. In his Introduction to Narcissism, Freud writes:
«The highest phase of object-libido development seems to us to be the state of falling in love, which is depicted to us as a renunciation of one’s own personality due to attachment to an object.”
Freud points out to us another difference between grief and melancholy - daily fluctuations in mood: in the morning you feel unwell, in the evening you feel better.
A notable feature of some varieties of melancholia is their tendency to develop into a state of mania. How does this happen?
Freud suggests that in both melancholia and mania the patient struggles with the same “complex.” During mania, the ego seems to have completed the work of grief, taken away all the libido from the lost object and returned to itself the entire amount of energy expended on the work of grief. At the same time, the melancholic person is again in the dark about who and what exactly he won over.
Freud writes:
“The manic patient shows us quite clearly his liberation from the object for which he suffered, by the fact that with the greed of a very hungry person he attacks new attachments to objects.”
This explanation seems reasonable. But then a logical question arises: why, after the end of the work of mourning, does the mourner not remain in a similar euphoric mood? Apparently, because the severance of a love relationship with a deceased object occurs so painstakingly and slowly that by the end of the work of grief, all the energy necessary for this purpose has been spent.
How to endure grief
Often, psychologists do not recommend interfering with the natural process of understanding loss unless it is accompanied by any pathological signs. It happens that it is quite difficult for a person to cope with depression and grief on his own, then he can turn to a psychologist for qualified help.
Close people, various interest groups, and perhaps even a change of place of residence can help you survive this period of life. Don’t isolate yourself, talk to your loved ones, get busy with work, find a hobby you like. It is even possible to keep a diary in which you describe your feelings in detail and re-read them, realizing internal changes. Many people who have lost loved ones find solace in church and prayers.
It is believed that the holy icon of the Mother of God, Joy of All Who Sorrow, helps best.
Text of the prayer:
For all those who grieve, the joy and the offended are the intercessor, and the hungry for the nourisher, the strange consolation, the overwhelmed refuge, the visiting of the sick, the weak protection and intercessor, the rod of old age, You are the Mother of the Most High God, the Most Pure One: we strive, we pray, to be saved by Thy servant.
There are no other imams of help, no other imams of hope, except for You, the Lady. Help us, we rely on You and boast in You, for we are Your servants, let us not be ashamed.
Oh, Most Holy Lady Theotokos, Most Blessed Mother of Christ God our Savior, Joy to all the sorrowing, visiting the sick, protection and intercessor of the weak, widows and orphans, patroness of the sad, all-reliable comforter of sad mothers, strength of weak infants, and always ready help and faithful refuge for all the helpless!
You, O All-Merciful One, have been given grace from the Almighty to intercede for everyone and deliver them from sorrow and illness, for you yourself have endured fierce sorrow and illness, looking at the free suffering of Your beloved Son and Him crucified on the cross in sight, when Simeon’s weapon was predicted by Your heart let's pass. Moreover, O beloved Mother of children, heed the voice of our prayer, comfort us in the sorrow of those who exist, as a faithful intercessor of joy: standing before the throne of the Most Holy Trinity, at the right hand of Your Son, Christ our God, you can, if you wish, ask for everything useful to us.
For this reason, with heartfelt faith and love from the soul, we fall to You as the Queen and Lady and we dare to cry out to You in psalms: hearing, Daughters, and see, and incline Your ear, hear our prayer, and deliver us from current troubles and sorrows; You fulfill the requests of all the faithful, as if they were joyful, and you have given peace and consolation to their souls.
Behold our misfortune and sorrow: show us Thy mercy, send comfort to our hearts wounded by sorrow, show and surprise us sinners with the riches of Thy mercy, give us tears of repentance to cleanse our sins and quench the wrath of God, and with a pure heart, good conscience and With undoubted hope we resort to Your intercession and intercession: accept, our all-merciful Lady Theotokos, our earnest prayer offered to You, and do not reject us, unworthy, from Your mercy, but grant us deliverance from sorrow and illness, protect us from all slander of the enemy and slander human, be our constant helper all the days of our life, so that under Your maternal protection we will always achieve our goals and be preserved by Your intercession and prayers to Your Son and God our Savior, to Him belongs all glory, honor and worship, with His beginningless Father and Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.
Several ways to overcome grief:
- It happens that he buries a loved one, but gets so bored that he himself dies... They read for food and drink, for washing: “Lord, bless! On the golden mountains stands the Mother of God with the slave (name) in his head. Nikola the Pleasant at the feet, Holy Angels on the sides. They save the servant of God (name) from sadness, from longing for the inanimate, for a dead home. Go, melancholy, don’t stand, don’t ache in your heart, don’t feel pain in your chest, don’t hurt your temples. With the slave (name) the Mother of God and Nicholas the Pleasant. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen."
- On the threshold of their house they pour sand from hand to hand, saying: “Slave (name), take yourself some loose sand, and I’m longing for you. Amen."
- Then the sand is taken to the cemetery and left there.
Everyone is free to try to alleviate this condition in their own way. The main thing is not to despair, and over time the world will sparkle with new colors, and peace and tranquility will reign in your soul.
How are people's sorrows consistent with Divine love for mankind?
The Lord clearly and definitely testified to the fact that the path to the Kingdom of God lies through tribulation (Acts 14:22). But does this mean that God wants to see a person grieving rather than happy? Does this mean that God generally likes it when a person is overwhelmed by sadness? - Not at all.
According to Divine Revelation, man was created for happiness, not for sorrow. That is why the primordial Adam was settled in a fragrant Paradise. The reason for his shameful expulsion was sin. Since pre-Christian times, the salvation of man, his unity with God, has been associated in prophetic preaching with joy and rejoicing (Ps. 117:15).
This connection was revealed even more clearly during the New Testament. Thus, the first call of the Annunciator Gabriel, addressed to the Virgin Mary, sounded: “Rejoice” (Luke 1:28) (see: Annunciation). Subsequently, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself wished His disciples complete joy (John 15:11). Finally, eternal bliss is promised to all the righteous and constitutes one of the most important objects of Christian hope.
