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We are not alone at all. We are all related to one another. The past is led to the present and further to the future. In many ways, we are linked to one another without end. COVID-19 also reveals that all of us in the world are closely connected to one another.
Every year, Catholics celebrate the first day of November as "All Saints Day" and the second day as "All Souls Day." Saints and the faithfully departed are people of the past, but they are still in our memory beyond time and space.
Thus, we pray for the eternal peace of all death, especially for the purification of those who are suffering in purgatory. Praying for one another is such a beautiful and meaningful thing to do.
As autumn reveals the signs of departure, separation, initiation and death as in the colorful fallen leaves, we regard November as the month of the dead. In front of impending death, we are inspired much by the lives of those departed, especially by the lives of the saints.
The most inspiring wisdom from them would be about true happiness. Struggling and facing challenges in the midst of the limits of our present lives, we sincerely aspire to be happy while constantly looking for happiness.
What is happiness and how can we find it? What does it mean to be happy? What is the secret of happiness? How can we live by the blessed words of God in our daily lives? These are some of the questions we put forward to be truly happy in spite of hardship and crisis due to natural disasters.
"The Saints' Guide to Happiness: Everyday Wisdom from the Lives of the Saints" by Robert Ellsberg was first published in 2005 to give an answer to our questions on happiness. The Korean translation was introduced by Korea's Pauline order in 2007.
Reading the lives of the biblical figures such as Abraham and Paul, the lives of the Saints such as Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Teresa of Lisieux, and Mother Teresa of Calcutta, as well as some of the figures of wisdom such as Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, and Dorothy Day, Ellsberg draws out useful, practical, and inspiring lessons from their lives. By weaving scriptural passages into his narrative description of how saints lived their lives and what they said about it, he tries to connect scripture to life.
Saints share with us that human misery (tragedy or crisis) is not an obstacle to happiness but a bridge to reach out the helping hand of God. Thus, saints help us to know how to be awakened, how to let go of things, how to work, how to remain in calmness, how to love, how to endure suffering, how to see, and how to die.
The key point of the lives of the saints is that the life and the condition given to us here and now are ultimately the way to happiness and holiness, no matter how painful the present life is. Heaven is not something far away from us. Heaven is here and now.
The author is a member of the Daughters of St. Paul (fsp.pauline.or.kr.) living and giving the Good News to the world by means of social communication.
