A message from Fr John

Dear Friends

"Doctor Anthony Clare a psychiatrist who did the BBC programme 'In the Psychiatrist's chair' was once asked "How can we be happy?"

He gave the following seven tips.

1. Cultivate a passion. It is important to have something that you enjoy doing and gives you life. The challenge for a school is to help every child find some kind of passion.

2. Be a leaf on a tree. You have to be both an individual -- to have a sense that you are unique and you matter -- and you need to be connected to a bigger organism; the tree being family, a community, a hospital, a company. You need to be part of something bigger than yourself.

3. Avoid introspection. We'd call it naval-gazing; being too ego-centric. Avoid it. It makes you selfish.

4. Don't resist change. Change is important. People who are fearful of change are rarely happy. We need change to keep our life stimulated and to grow as persons. People are wary of change, particularly when things are going reasonably well, because they don't want to rock the boat, but a little rocking can be good for you. It shakes you out of your comfort zone.

5. Live for the moment. Look at the things that you want to do and that you keep postponing. Stop prevaricating. Live this day as if it were your last. You only find Life, Love, God in the Now. That is the only reality. We Christians call it the Sacrament of the Present Moment. It is the only reality. The past is gone. The future hasn't come yet. So stop living in them. Live in the NOW, having learnt from the past and with a little planning for the future.

6. Audit your happiness. How much of each day are you spending doing something that doesn't make you happy? People say they don't like their family, they don't like their work, they don't like anything. I say, 'Well, what are you going to do about it?'

7. If you want to be happy, Act Happy, play the part, put on a happy face - even if you don't feel like it. This will help you to start thinking differently. If you are feeling negative, say, 'I am going to be positive,' and that, in itself, can trigger a change in how you feel."

Isn't this what true saints do? Their passion is for God who is LOVE and they forget themselves in his service. They have learned to love and they find deep happiness, even in the unhappiest of times, a happiness that no one could take away from them.

That's what the eight Beatitudes are about in today's gospel.

The poor in spirit are happy because they know they need God - and cannot live without him - and don't want to live without him. They are not relying on their own strength - they get it from God.

Those who are gentle are happy, because a peaceable spirit creates a peaceable world and creates new opportunities for human flourishing.

Even those who mourn will find a happiness even in their grief because in their grief a hand will hold theirs to comfort them, a hand that bears the mark of a nail.

Then we find the more challenging ones:

Happy are those who thirst for what is right. It's not happy are those who hope for what is right, or wish for what is right, or complain when they see things are not right. Jesus says, Happy are those who thirst for what is right. That's a strong image - a thirsty man doesn't just sit waiting for water to appear, he goes to find it. Thirst cannot just be ignored; it must be quenched. If Jesus is telling Christians to behave like a thirsty man for what is right, that means going out and acting for what is right. Choosing to seek to actively bring about justice.

They are happy, because like the peacemakers, they will be creating new opportunities and opening doors to others. They are not wrapped up in themselves. They are doing what they can to make the world a better place.

What strikes me about both this list of Beatitudes is that that they are never an achievement. Rather, Jesus is calling us to engage with life in all its reality. Just get on with it and do your best. We are happy, not in having achieved these things but by entering into life, by doing what we can, by wanting to see more clearly the right thing to do. And yes, it is a struggle, but if we have the courage to enter it, we are promised a blessing, ….more than that - we are promised a reward _ Yours is the Kingdom of God."

Canon Pat Browne in Parish Priest at Holy Apostles, Pimlico