Once again Pope Francis surprises us with an important document in which joy is like the door of entrance. After Evangelii Gaudium and Amoris Laetitia, Francis' new apostolic exhortation places joy once again in the very name of the document: Gaudete et exsultate. These words belong to the Gospel (Mt 5:12) but they are also an invitation, almost a command, that joy be a sign of the call to holiness that each person has received. Joy, and even a sense of humor (nn. 122ff), are signs that accompany those who walk the path of Christian holiness.

Francis invites us to recognize this call, to avoid the dangers of what he calls - as he has already done in other documents - Gnosticism and neo-Pelagianism, to strive to build the kingdom of God or in the struggle against evil (nn. 25, 56), and to truly seek the holiness that is God's grace and that does not come without a profound cultivation of prayer, spiritual combat and commitment to our brothers and sisters.

The ordinary Christian will find in this apostolic exhortation that the paths to holiness do not pass far from the most normal situations of existence. "I like," Francis affirms, "to see holiness in the patient people of God: in the parents who raise their children with such love, in those men and women who work to bring home bread, in the sick, in the elderly nuns who continue to smile. In this constancy to go on day by day, I see the holiness of the Church militant. This is often the holiness "next door," of those who live close to us" (n. 7).

With this document of the Pope, ordinary Christians are once again invited to respond to the call to holiness, to a divine mission statement that is within our reach when we place ourselves within God's reach.