What is happiness? Perhaps the most profound response, I ever read said: “Happiness is freedom from frustration, freedom from fear and freedom from guilt.”
Last week, I went online to create the annual calendar for my Sonshine friends. I reviewed hundreds of images and picked 13 that you can view now by clicking: http://www.drmatt.org/gallery/main.php
In addition to the national holidays, I added our holy days of obligation since they sometimes change, for example All Saints Day in 2010 while a holy day of obligation is abrogated because it falls on a Monday. But I believe if you go to church on Monday and pray to your saint I’m sure they will appreciate your effort. Nobody goes to hell on that day for missing Mass.
My frustration began when I uploaded all the holidays and holydays and discovered the following morning that the calendar “defaulted.” What that meant was that a holiday like Martin Luther King would be repeated three times in the box for January 18th. Needless to say, this computer novice called the “Help” line and talked to twelve different customer service reps that had “no clue” why this was happening but simply helped me reload the entire calendar.
Imagine teaching a customer service rep in Jamaica, India and Canada what All Saints Day or the Assumption is all about. Online CCD. Despite their courtesy to reload and learn something about our Catholic tradition, the calendar would “default “again and again twelve times. Each time, I explain the problem, the young voice would hear the shrills of frustration and of despair and try their best to resolve the problem. Then comes the voice of a little angel by the name of Amry from Jamaica. This heavenly soul understood that the problem was a “corrupted file” and her best solution was to create a new calendar with a new template. She patiently loaded all 13 images and even complemented the work asking me if I would be kind enough to reload all the holydays and holidays for a twelfth time.
Sometimes, we feel like we are going out of our minds with the frustrations of daily life. We feel “corrupted” by all the defaults that come our way in the form of another layoff, or another illness or another lost. Life makes us panic with fear and worse we begin to think that we are “corrupt” with all the negative messages that fill our brain. Let me gently remind you, as we begin another season of Sonshine, that the God we pray to wants you to be happy both now on earth as it will be in heaven. Let us meditate for a moment as you gaze at the water or the clouds or look at the red reflection of the tree in the water and know that your angel knows who are not “corrupted” but a “beauty” made in his image. Happiness is this freedom from fear, freedom from frustration and freedom from guilt.
God prays for us as we reflect: “The spirit of the lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the lowly, to heal the brokenhearted…(Isaiah 61:1)
Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine friends daily as we begin another season of sharing a heavenly love that desperately wants us all to be happy and free of the “defaults” of life. Bless us with your spirit of patience and perseverance.
