The Secret of Happiness
"The secret of happiness is very simple, it is Jesus – not just the philosophy of Jesus, but Jesus – His real presence. He actually comes to us in such unlikely vehicles as poverty, pain, persecution. He has weird taste in vehicles. He came to Jerusalem on a donkey. And when He comes, He acts with power, though usually also with subtlety and not bombast. He really works. I am haunted by my memories of a few precious hours in the company of the two happiest groups of people I have ever met in my life. In both cases, I was supposed to speak to them. In both cases, they spoke to me with very few words – like Mother Teresa, like Jesus. One group was in fact Mother Teresa’s nuns in Boston’s worst slum. Another was a convent of contemplative Carmelites in Massachusetts. What they said to me, simply by being who they were, was unmistakable. See how happy I am. See how happy Jesus makes me.
This is how happiness happens. It is not so much taught, like math, but caught like measles. The church is in the business of spreading the good infection – like in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Only this is a good infection. And that is the new evangelism and it is also the old evangelism that won the world two thousand years ago. It will do it again for there is no argument against real happiness. The smiles of the saints are the arguments that will win the world for Christ again – they are unarguable. Only one thing then is necessary to create a world of happiness from pole to pole and it is not doing any of the many good things that Martha did, but doing the one thing that Mary did – just sit at Jesus’ feet. Just be in His presence. Know His love all day. That is the scandalously simple secret of happiness.”
~Peter Kreeft
This is how happiness happens. It is not so much taught, like math, but caught like measles. The church is in the business of spreading the good infection – like in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Only this is a good infection. And that is the new evangelism and it is also the old evangelism that won the world two thousand years ago. It will do it again for there is no argument against real happiness. The smiles of the saints are the arguments that will win the world for Christ again – they are unarguable. Only one thing then is necessary to create a world of happiness from pole to pole and it is not doing any of the many good things that Martha did, but doing the one thing that Mary did – just sit at Jesus’ feet. Just be in His presence. Know His love all day. That is the scandalously simple secret of happiness.”
~Peter Kreeft
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