The Mormon Monk

Just before going to Gethsemane, the Lord Jesus Christ reminded his apostles of an uncomfortable truth that they had yet to fully understand and accept. “I go unto my Father” (John 14:12), he said, in one of many warnings that his mortal ministry was fast drawing to a close. But if his disciples were discomfited or shaken by this truth, the Savior offered a compensatory promise, reassuring the eleven, “I will not leave you comfortless” (John 14:18). That promise of comfort in an hour of need and of the Comforter, who “may abide with [us] for ever” is operative here and now, just as it was anciently, so that we never have to endure the olive press alone, as he did that night (John 14:16).               Whatever our trials and temptations, we have been assured that the Savior can and will succor the faithful. “Sometimes,” Elder Oaks recently taught , “His power heals an infirmity” or removes a stumbling block, “but the scriptu...

When angels came to announce the birth of the Savior, they proclaimed “good tidings of great joy” (Luke 2:10), and that spirit of celebration always ought to shape our declaration to the world of hope, peace, and love. The gospel of Jesus Christ, or the good news that he and his prophets have been commissioned to share with us, is a message of joy. On his deathbed, the ancient prophet Lehi spoke to his children, and he reminded them that the pursuit and attainment of joy is the purpose of our lives here in mortality: “Adam fell that man might be; and men are, that they might have joy” (2 Nephi 2:25). We understood this to be the purpose and privilege of mortality from the very beginning: “When [God] laid the foundations of the earth . . . the morning stars sang together, and all the sons [and daughters] of God shouted for joy” (Job 38:4, 7). Lehi describes the Fall of Adam and Eve as a necessary prerequisite for our acquisition of joy because joy is, in the scriptures, closely associa...