THE SEVEN SECRETS OF HAPPINESS

Here's a jewel sent to me by a dear friend, an eremitical religious. Take it to heart if you can, and if you can't right now, then keep trying.

The Seven Secrets of Happiness According to the Athonite Elders

Perhaps, there is no person on earth who has never dreamt of being happy. However, everyone has their own concept of happiness. For some people happiness means material welfare and richness, while other people see happiness through success and popularity among other people. Some people lack a soulmate to reach happiness, other people need to be healthy… According to the Holy Fathers, the true happiness of a human being is kept not in the secular joys, which can disappear in a flash, but in the love towards the Lord, which transfigures the world around us.

 

1. Faith in God

Of course, the first key to happiness of the Athonite monks is faith and love towards the Lord. If a person manages to come to this in his life, then nothing more can make him unhappy. Once, a woman asked St. Porphyrios of Kafsokalivia why keeps saying he is happy although his health condition has got much worse. The saint replied: “Read the Holy Scripture, go to church, find a spiritual father, partake of the Holy Communion – in other words, be a good Christian and then you will find the happiness you are looking for. You see, I am sick now, but I am still happy. The same concerns you: when you will come closer to Christ, you will become happy with your life”.

 

2. Becoming free from worries and vanity

St. Paisios the Hagiorite said that to feel happy one has to live a natural and simple life, in which there is no place for excessive luxury, vanity and senseless worries. The saint told: “Once a doctor from America came to me. He told me about the life they live there. People there have already turned into machines. They devote their life to work. Each family member is supposed to have their own car. What is more, to make every family member feel comfortable at home, there must be at least four TV-sets.  So go on, work and get exhausted, earn a lot of money so that you can say your life is happy and comfortable. But does this life have something in common with happiness? Such a life, full of worries and non-stop rush, is not happiness, but a torment.”   

 

3. Sober mind

Monk Simeon the Athonite has a short parable, which shows that outer circumstances cannot influence on whether we feel happy or not. Salvation is within us, and this is why one must have a sober mind to endure any difficulties. Here is the parable: “A person who could not swim was floundering in water. He caused waves, which he mistook for a dangerous stream. He began to fight with the waves. Finally, he understood that he can float on the water and then managed to reach the riverbank. When he came out of water, he saw that the river was calm and understood that the waves he was fighting with were caused by him. Any misfortune begins within us. If you get your head straight, it will end within us.”

 

4. Pure heart

According to St. Nektarios of Aegina, the right way to happiness is to have a pure and kind heart. “Happiness is a pure heart because such a heart becomes the throne of God. The Lord said about people with pure heart, I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people (2 Corinthians 6:16). What can they lack then? Nothing indeed. They already have the greatest good in their hearts – the Lord Himself!”

 

5. Ability to forgive

Forgiveness is one of the most important Christian virtues. This is why everyone who is trying to reach happiness must learn to forgive his neighbor. Due to forgiveness, a person makes his heart free from old offences, and a joyful heart is always happy. “This is our law: if you forgive, then it means that the Lord has forgiven you too. But if you do not forgive your brother, then your sin will stay with you”, - said Silouan the Athonite.

 

6. Give more, take less

To become happy one must share his joy and happiness with their people. It seems that there is no secret in it, but Monk Simeon the Athonite considered this ability to be the rarest among people. The one who comprehends it, becomes happy.

 

7. Being grateful for small favors

“Desires are the mess of the world”, - said Simeon the Athonite. Indeed, the more a person dwells on his desires, the bigger his appetite gets. Having no opportunity to get enough of what he wants, a person dooms himself to unhappiness. St. Paisios the Hagiorite suggested fighting against desires with abstinence: “We find happiness when we are grateful for small favors. What do people do today? They buy, and buy, and buy again various goods, cars, electronic devices and many other things. Of course, they lack money and worry all the time about this. We must be grateful for small favors and try not to grasp as much as possible. Having only the necessary things, one should not work too much. Then people will have more time to be at home with their children and family, for activities together, for prayer and for living in a warm family circle instead of being constantly under pressure.”

Source:

http://catalogueofstelisabethconvent.blogspot.co.nz/2018/01/the-7-secrets-of-happiness-according-to.html

THE POPE WAS MERELY THE CELEBRANT (Letter to Dom Post, Jan 22)

Please see footnote below:

Just as I was hoping for an end to competition for the most exotic locale for weddings and a return to their proper place – a church - none but the Pope himself takes it “to new heights” (January 20): “historic” heights, according to Pope Francis, who told the newly-weds, “Never has a pope married a couple on a plane”.

Actually, he didn’t marry them, they married each other. The pontiff was merely the celebrant. They'd been living together for eight years, unmarried in the eyes of the church because an earthquake damaged their local church. As if there were no other churches around.

But apparently their confession of grave sin was not followed by absolution from the pope or any of the cardinals on board. This smacks of sacrilege, the sin of profaning a sacrament.

The covert campaign of powerful clergy in the Catholic Church to dismantle the sacrament of matrimony was advanced on that plane over Chile by the very man whose sacred task is to safeguard
it.

Cardinal John Dew says now on Facebook that this couple had done pre-marriage courses and received the Sacrament of Penance. It's pretty clear that sacrament wasn't conferred on board, before they received the sacrament of matrimony; it sounds like they received absolution before the wedding that didn't happen - years ago - since when they've had two children. 

THROWING COLD WATER OVER THAT BABY (letter published in Dom Post, Jan 24)

Call me a wet blanket and a killjoy, but I want to throw some cold water over the general euphoria re The Baby.

Babies should be welcomed with joy, but Jacinda and Clarke’s lifestyle is statistically unfortunate in terms of outcomes for this one. Cohabiting couples split up sooner than married ones; a recent US study shows half the parents cohabiting when their child is born break up within 5 years, compared with 20 per cent of married couples, throughout the developed world.

Children born to cohabiting parents are more likely to transition into and out of subsequent “blended” families, to confusing and upsetting effect. They’re also much more likely to be abused.

Jacinda and Clarke are well-heeled, but many who might be carried away by their example are not. Jacinda’s big concern - child poverty - is hugely aggravated in dollar terms by the growing number of couples cohabiting.

The argument for marriage is not just about morals, but about outcomes. As role models, our “First Couple” will according to the stats serve only to worsen physical, emotional, academic and economic outcomes for New Zealand’s children.

COVERING OUR BLOODY TRACKS (Letter to Dom Post, Jan 19)

If “the sugar industry is repeating the history of Big Tobacco, which denied the mounting evidence that smoking was harmful” (Dominion Post, Jan 18) then the health and media industries are equally in denial now about abortion.

 

For forty years it’s been unequivocal that a woman who opts for abortion has a higher risk of breast cancer than the woman who gives birth. In 2017 researchers urged the medical fraternity to acknowledge this increased lifetime risk, with the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute stating “the lack of official explanation for the remarkable social gradient of female breast cancer is a failure of public health education”.

 

Spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) does not elevate the risk of breast cancer, but health authorities world-wide have conflated spontaneous and induced abortion statistics to hugely misleading effect. Even allowing for the capacity of human nature, even in scientists, for self-deception, the systematic cover-up of overwhelming evidence proving the link is staggering.

 

This is the era of the lie. The “safe abortion” myth must be preserved at all costs. It serves women’s ‘right to choose’ to end someone else’s life.

 

One wonders to what lengths society is willing to go, to cover its bloody tracks.

KIDS ARE NOT SOPHISTICATED (Letter to Dom Post, Jan 17)

“Naked. Hostility. Food.”

Great headline (Naked hostility towards food advertising, January 16)! In our Kiwi culture, obsessed with food and sex, these ingredients are "sure to rise" to your readers’ attention.

Glen Wiggs, who seems to be in the business of deregulating advertising, asserts in connection with TV2’s shame-making, Friday nights’ exhibition of male and female genitalia and criticism thereof, that children and teenagers are “sophisticated enough to cope with watching nudity and violence without being unduly influenced”.

Obviously in denial of the evidence of our teen pregnancy, alcoholism, drug and suicide statistics, he extrapolates that young people must therefore also be “sophisticated enough” to cope with ads for food.

Kids are kids. It's not in their nature to be sophisticated - yet. The evidence that children and teens are not able to withstand the lure of ads for food is glaringly obvious at any school assembly or swimming pool.

Wiggs hoists himself with his own petard.

A UNION SURPASSING ALL OTHERS

Tonight's 'holy thought', once more from Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen OCD (Divine Intimacy), fleshed out with a quote from that beautiful encyclical Mystici Corporis:

The Holy Spirit ... is the bond which intimately and really unites and vivifies all the members of Christ (in the Christian Churches), diffusing grace and charity in them.

It is not a question of a symbolical, metaphorical union, but a real union, so real that it surpasses all others “as grace surpasses nature, and immortal realities surpass perishable realities” (Mystici Corporis).

STUFF AND NONSENSE (Featured letter in Dom Post, Jan 12)

I realise that the common sense teaching of phonics no longer has legs, that euthanasia is on the cards as the ultimate solution to the problems of anyone aged 18 and over, and that talk-show host Oprah Winfrey is being touted for the US presidency – but even so, the publication in the Dominion Post of a five-part Stuff series on Christopher Lewis seems plumb crazy.

There’s more craziness in the world already than most people can deal with. So why narrate in such detail the crimes and accomplishments – like his taxpayer-funded Great Barrier Island holiday and eventual suicide– of “a self-styled teen terrorist and trained ninja”?

Surely you're aware of the allure of his story and the potential for disaffected teenagers to copycat.

You might say that to expatiate on the example of “the Boy Guerilla” is simply Stuff and nonsense.

A SUBMISSION OPPOSING EUTHANASIA

When I get started on euthanasia I find it hard to stop. But eventually I managed to shoe-horn my submission against David Seymour's utterly stupid Bill into one A4 page - see below. Feel free to copy what you want of it! 

This is my submission opposing the End of Life Choice Bill.

My brother Martin du Fresne died in 2009, 4 years after a diagnosis of motor neuron disease. For him it was a good way to die. It got him a lot of attention. He felt cherished as an outpatient of St Mary’s Hospice, Auckland. He gradually lost his physical capabilities, but not his mental acuity or sense of humour. Family and friends enjoyed his company and were edified by his way of “assisted dying” (which is not a synonym for “assisted suicide”).

The euthanasia argument is predicated on emotion. Proponents are either afraid of illness or disability themselves, or know of someone who died a painful death. And the media, always in search of a sob story, highlight cases like Lecretia Seales’, who despite apparently dying without pain was touted as the perfect poster girl for David Seymour’s campaign.  

Many caring New Zealanders are suckers for a case like Seales’, and want to ‘do something’ about it. But our hospices and associated services and advances in palliative care are already doing it, by ameliorating pain and offering medication to palliate suffering which while perhaps hastening death does not cause it.

David Seymour’s Bill reads like one devised over a glass too many of sauvignon blanc. Its passage would mean virtually anyone aged 18+ would qualify for euthanasia – until the age limit is inevitably challenged as discriminatory, and then we’d have open slather.

If someone requesting assisted suicide is traumatised by an overwhelming life event - as would-be suicides often are - they’re not likely to be ‘rational’, but in the sacred name of ‘choice’ their request would be rubber-stamped, denying them healing and a chance of normal life.

A diagnosis of ‘irremediable’ illness sometimes proves wrong - by the patient continuing to live, or science finding a cure. And how can you define the subjective term, ‘unbearable’? In A Streetcar named Desire, Blanche du Bois claimed her situation was ‘unendurable’. If Tennessee Williams were writing today in Oregon, he could have Blanche put down. But all she needed was care and compassion – qualities offered to all nearing the end of their lives, by our beautiful hospices.

When it costs the state so much to keep people alive, how many of the elderly, handicapped and chronically ill would not think their duty was to die? And how many of their heirs would encourage that decision? ‘Safeguards’ don’t work. The mental creep from preserving life to dispensing with it which inevitably follows euthanasia is beyond law making or breaking.

In countries with ‘safeguards’ people are dying without request; they’re not in uncontrolled pain; newborns and the mentally ill are killed. Lethal injections in mobile suicide clinics are all the go; body parts are harvested. The subliminal message is, the death of these people is more valuable than their life. Review of statistics in these countries has caused the UK, Scotland, most of the US and Australia to reject euthanasia. New Zealand must do the same.

IS ANY OF YOU SAD? ST BERNARD'S JUST ASKING

From St Bernard: 

The name of Jesus is light when it is preached, it is food in meditation, it is balm and healing when it is invoked for aid ...

The name of Jesus is honey in the mouth, music in the ear, gladness in the heart. But it is also a remedy. Is any of you sad? Let Jesus come into the heart.

GROWING IN LOVE

Here's a thought for your New Year. I wish I could say it's my thought but it's actually a thought of Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen OCD:


We have only the short day of this early life to grow in love and if we wish to derive from it the greatest possible benefit we must apply ourselves not only to doing good works, but to doing them with our whole heart, and with all the generosity of which we are capable, overcoming the inertia and pettiness which always make us inclined to the least effort.

Then love will grow immeasurably and we shall be able to give the Lord the beautiful witness of St Therese:

“Your love ... has grown with me and now it is an abyss, the depths of which I cannot fathom”.