By Father John Catoir | Catholic News Service

As a priest, I've spent the past 30 years of my life writing about supernatural joy in the lives of others. The message is simple: faith, together with the discipline of controlling your thoughts, can help overcome even the most horrible emotional pain we can experience.

The pain of life, as many of us know, is real, and seemingly unending while we're going through rough moments. However, in any tragic circumstance there is one word you need to focus on and that is survival.

You can go on grieving for a year or a decade or more, but sooner or later you will have to decide whether you're going to be a survivor or whether you're going to let problems destroy you.

There is still a job for you to do in this world, perhaps a job that nobody else can do, and if you don't do it, it will remain undone. Millions have come to the realization that they must be ready to carry on with courage. I've learned some of this through the correspondence I sometimes receive.

A woman once wrote me a letter that helped me understand a great deal about the pain of grief. She said that on a beautiful sunny July morning, her 26-year-old son was killed in a car accident. He was on his way to work when a driver pulled out of a side street and killed her "wonderful boy."

She said she never knew such a feeling of desperation, such isolation and unending agony before. The depth of the pain, the flow of tears and the silence were overwhelming. And yet, she said, "I never knew one could still exist when everything inside had died."

This brokenhearted woman managed to survive with the help of God. She later said that with time, and with the help of God, she found her bearings. She said she learned to find joy in the midst of the most excruciating pain.

She said she learned that even when you have suffered a terrible loss, the worst loss one can imagine, one day a person will discover that he or she will laugh again and live again. Knowing that God is by your side, helping you every step of the way, you will come to learn the important lesson that joy really does prevail over sorrow.

This story also reminds me of a grief-stricken man who was tempted to commit suicide. One day while riding on a bus, he spotted a pamphlet on the floor and picked it up out of curiosity. It contained this message: "Today you may feel hopeless, but tomorrow or the next day you will remember that you have a purpose, a true mission in life. It will transform you, and give you the courage to carry on."

He decided not to commit suicide, and never thought of it again. He wrote to me several months later to explain how this sense of mission changed his life forever.

It reassured me of the words found in John 16:33: "In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world."