If You're Happy and You Know It...

“If You’re Happy and you Know it Clap Your Hands!”
World Happiness Day

Most of us are familiar with the children’s song that begins, “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands”! International World Happiness Day – and there really is such a day - invites us to do just that, to celebrate happiness and to strive to create happiness across the world and locally where our own feet are!

International World Happiness Day, established by the United Nations in 2013, is celebrated each March 20th. The intent of the day is a reminder of the importance of happiness in the lives of people around the world. It is a day to highlight happiness as a universal human goal and is closely associated with the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals which seek to end human poverty, to reduce inequality and to protect the planet.

The past 3 years have been hard and discouraging for many. Yet, the World Happiness Report, 2022 reminds us that despite such dark times there are also many current examples of profound human kindness and increased social support on which we are invited to reflect .[1]

Attitudes also count in significant ways. It is no coincidence that with the release of the World Happiness Report each year, the Nordic countries surpass all others. “Why”? There are obvious factors such as the smallness of each of these nations but there is also more. Whether democracy, political rights, social networks, fair distribution of resources, gender equality, and other such factors are considered, the Nordic countries are always found at the top of the happiness lists!

In a business report, Fanny Aberg, of the executive company “Nordic Minds” says, in the Nordic countries, “family always comes first”. It is primarily a question of work/life balance. She continues “working hours are based on when you want to spend time with your family. It’s perfectly normal to turn off your computer at 4pm and pick up the children from daycare, spend the afternoon with them and eat dinner together.” Life in the workplace is marked by listening to all employees and informality and ambience matters in the workplace. Meetings include the Swedish tradition of “fika”; the sharing of coffee and pastries as friends.[2] Linked to this is the Scandinavian “Hygge (pronounced hooga) lifestyle. Hygge, is translated as “a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality”.[3] Home life is enjoyed, dressed down in comfortable clothes, enjoying conversation and warmth together and eating comfort food. Perhaps we have much to learn from these countries! Happiness in Scandinavia is likely to be defined by a sense of simple contentment.

So, let’s celebrate this World Happiness Day – reflecting on our lifestyles, being grateful for and sharing our blessings with others. Let’s reach out to someone on this day to bring happiness to their life.

-Sister Mary Rowell, CSJ

[1] World Happiness Report, 2022 see: worldhappinessreport/ed/2022

[2] See:www.businessinsider.com/world-happiness-report-nordic-countries-why-work-culture-lifestyle;better-2022-4

[3] Merriam Webster Dictionary

Christmas Eve: The Long Night

Christmas Eve, in the experience of many, is of a night of exquisite expectation, of fulfillment of the pregnant waiting of Advent and new life coming into being. It is a time of searching hope in the darkness even when darkness threatens to overwhelm us. We seek in the silent night sky, a star of promise.

At an everyday level we gather to begin a celebration. We prepare treats to share. Our excited children can hardly wait at all, creating mayhem and resisting sleep, just in case they miss Santa’s visit to place gifts under the tree! In Christian families a young child may also have a special role focused on the very meaning of Christmas. In my family living in the United States the youngest child, able to read, waits expectantly to be called on to recite the Christmas story from the old family Bible and then to place the baby Jesus into the waiting creche.

Christmas is, of course, a celebration of the birth of Christ so long ago. But it is also much more! Our celebration cannot be reduced simply to a sentimental re-enactment of that familiar scene, lovely though it is. For the very heart of the Christmas story is the vivid narrative of universal incarnation – God with us, God in all things, for time and for eternity. Christmas is, above all, a celebration of Divine Presence in all lives, in all events and in every element of matter – an ancient understanding.

A powerful image of this understanding of incarnation, is found in the Carmina Gadelica, a beautiful compendium of ancient Gaelic prayers and poems collected from the Hebridean Islands by folklorist, Alexander Carmichael.

In a Christmas carol entitled “the Nativity” found in that text we read that on Christmas Eve … in “the long night, Glowed to Him wood and tree, Glowed to Him mount and sea, Glowed to Him land and plain, When that His foot was come to Earth.”

The carol speaks of the light of Christ’s birth penetrating all and reflected in the entirety of God’s creation. Later, these words find more contemporary utterance in the writings of Teilhard de Chardin, Jesuit priest and paleontologist (1881-1955), as he exclaims,

“The Incarnation is a making new, a restoration, of all the universe’s forces and powers; Christ is the Instrument, the Centre, the End, of the whole of animate and material creation; through Him, everything is created, sanctified and vivified (The Phenomenon of Man).

This is what we celebrate at Christmas along with our more traditional practices. Truly it is a celebration, a joyful one but also one that de Chardin says, invites us into its deep mysterious significance not just for Christmas but for all of life in Christ. As we read in 2 Corinthians 5: 17, “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation, everything old has passed away; see everything has become new.” This is the birthing of Christ in our hearts and world as we celebrate Christmas Eve. In the “long night” we are to birth Christ in the world anew.

This year, the “long night” of Christmas is a seemingly “dark night” for many; a night filled with violent conflicts worldwide, of the sufferings of people fleeing persecution, torture and starvation, a night of ecological degradation. It is a night still struggling with the ongoing shadows and isolation of a pandemic. Rapidly escalating prices in stores mean that many families are desperate simply to provide their children with some festivities. We face a night where the possibility of the light being extinguished forever seems real in ways not previously experienced in our world.

“with the celebration of Christ’s birth we are called to be “God’s light in our world.” ”

And yet … as Christians familiar with mystical references to “the dark night” we find in our faith the light of Christ at the heart of all things, incarnation, the God we can touch. As we celebrate this Christmas Eve and the days ahead may we be reminded that with the celebration of Christ’s birth we are called to be “God’s light in our world.” The silent, enveloping waiting in the long night calls us ever to the primacy of prayer and love in and for the world. It invites us to prepare actions that will make a difference.  Let’s truly celebrate with joy this Christmas and in the “long night of promise” may we share that joy. On this Christmas Eve may we again hear a call to new birth in the face of the challenges of our times. As Christmas dawns in our hearts then all of creation will indeed “glow where His foot was” and will, through us, once again, shine Christ’s Presence “on Earth”.

 -Sister Mary Rowell, csj

Called to Life for Life

CELEBRATING THE WORLD DAY OF PRAYER FOR VOCATIONS 2022

Have you ever noticed that at times of the most profound trouble in the world, gifts of creativity, generosity and courage emerge as light in the darkness? During these, our troubled times, the Catholic Church has called for a synodal process, that is walking together to build up the whole. The call is urgent. Gifts abound! But before we can learn to walk together each of us must recognize the unique gifts we are given and that we bring.

Before immigrating to Canada I often participated in retreats at an ancient Carmelite Friary in England. One of the most vivid memories of those days is of the beautiful mosaics created by artist, Adam Kossowski. I recall sitting in awe gazing at the small pieces of the mosaic that together formed a complete design.

Understanding vocation is like gazing at such a beautiful mosaic. Each small part contributes to the fullness of the whole. This Sunday, May 8, we celebrate the annual Day of Prayer for Vocations. Note the “s” at the end of that word! Vocations! For too long, in the Catholic Church, we have limited our concept of “vocation” to priesthood and consecrated life. Rather each person, is called to a vocation; through which we are invited to bring life to the world alongside others who embrace meaning and give service in their lives from various faith perspectives and/or values. As Pope Francis points out in his 2022 Message for the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, each person, “receives with the gift of life, a fundamental calling: each of us is a creature willed and loved by God; each of us has a unique and special place in the mind of God. At every moment in our lives, we are called to foster this divine spark … and thus to contribute to the growth of a humanity inspired by love and mutual acceptance. We are called to be guardians of one another, to strengthen the bonds of harmony and sharing, and to heal the wounds of creation.”

“We are called to be guardians of one another, to strengthen the bonds of harmony and sharing, and to heal the wounds of creation.””

In the Christian perspective, each manifestation of vocation is rooted in Baptism. How often we say, “I was baptized”. But in Baptism there is no past tense! Rather,  I’m called to remember always, that “I am baptized”, that is, actively loved, graced and called in every moment of life; called to mission, to love, to justice, to service. As Pope Francis remarks in his Message for May 8th, living vocation is “about making God’s dream come true, the great vision of community, that Jesus cherished when he prayed, ‘that all may be one’ (Jn. 17:21). Each vocation in the Church, and in a broader sense in society, contributes to the common objective: to celebrate among men and women that harmony of manifold gifts that can only be brought about by the Holy Spirit.” Whatever our vocation, laity, priesthood or consecrated life, “let us journey together in bearing witness to the truth that one great family united in love is no utopian vision, but the very purpose for which God created us.” We walk together!

This Sunday, we pray to know, to claim and to live out our particular call to give our lives fully to the realization of that dream of God.

-Sister Mary Rowell, csj

GOOD FRIDAY

Image: Unsplash/Wim van 't Einde

As a child I always wondered what was so “good” about Good Friday given its silent solemnity in Church and at home where I truly had to uncharacteristically “behave”, and because of the sadness of the commemoration itself.

Sometimes, even as adults, we can become stuck in the “gloom” of the day, and it becomes almost impossible to see beyond it. Indeed, this year given the war in Ukraine, violence in so many places locally and globally, the continuing pandemic and its repercussions, the devastating consequences of climate change and its consequences for the poorest of the poor, we may be feeling very stuck, overwhelmed, and frustrated – alone in the darkness! On the other hand, some of us may want to deny “Good Friday” and move directly to the alleluias of Easter morning. Sister Gemma Simmonds says that in this case “we can appear glibly optimistic and superficial in our engagement with the crucifixion of Christ that continues in his desperately suffering people and God’s desecrated creation.”

So, then what is so “good” about Good Friday? Perhaps it is the paradox of light in the darkness, the both/and of cross and resurrection, death and new life echoed in our liturgical celebration of the Easter Triduum and in the natural world with its springtime promise of new shoots emerging from the still cold Earth. Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim in Norway describes this reality. He writes,

“The path will, in a Christian optic, necessarily go through the cross; but the cross is a passage, the emblem of Christ’s Pasch. It looms large on the horizon but bears the promise of new, endless life and flourishing to be found on the other side.”

Here we find hope in the darkness, promise in the shadows, the very place and condition of our growth and new life. In Christ’s acceptance of his suffering, definitely not chosen but imposed upon him by forces of injustice, we see the goodness of unconditional love. And, as the ancient hymn reminds us, when we “survey the wondrous cross”, we see the One who extravagantly loved to the end and then loves the world into resurrection.

“It is precisely this great love that invites and calls us to love radically”

image: unsplash/Yannick Pulver

It is precisely this great love that in turn invites and calls us to love radically, to the end, to join our own struggles with the suffering of the world; the suffering world that includes not only we humans but the whole of creation. In Romans 8 we read that creation itself cries out for liberation. God’s salvation embraces all the world’s sufferings, cosmic, social, and personal. This Good Friday, let’s seek the goodness of the day, embrace it, and live it by our presence, image of God’s presence, and then as we intone again the great alleluias of Easter may we receive hope and become God’s people of promise in this struggling world.

-Sister Mary Rowell, CSJ

Being Presence: Being Mercy

A REFLECTION FOR WORLD DAY OF THE SICK, 2022 

The World Day of the Sick, initiated by Pope St. John Paul 11 thirty years ago and recognized in the Catholic Church each February 11, is a day set aside to pray with and for those who are sick and to be reminded of our human and faith-based call to respond with care, commitment and healing presence. This designated day is not, however, a one-off annual remembrance. Its intent is to sharpen our focus everyday on the needs of those who are sick.   

Given the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic we might want to say that we cannot help but be aware of the overwhelming numbers of those who are sick; many ill with Covid, others whose medical care and treatments have been delayed, numerous others struggling with mental health issues and those at the end of life facing isolation in dying. We are living days of great disease, of suffering and of loss. To what then does this World Day of the Sick call us in the context in which we find ourselves?  

In his message for the 2022 World Day of the Sick, Pope Francis reminds us that we are called to be “merciful like God”. He says, “mercy is to be understood not as an occasional sentimental feeling but as an ever-present and active force. It combines strength and tenderness.” It’s to this that people of faith, as we work with others, are called in these harrowing times. Christians, Francis says, must imitate the healing ministry of Jesus, who as the Gospels remind us, “encountered people suffering from various illnesses” reaching out to heal them.  

While we are rightly grateful for all the advances made in medical science and for courageous, self-giving health care professionals risking all right now, we also each have a role in caring for those who are sick. 

Image: Unsplash/Kelly Sikkema

Sometimes, when faced with illness, we can feel fearful or inadequate and yet we are, nonetheless, called. We can never forget the dignity and vulnerabilities of each person. Someone who is sick is always more than his or her disease. Dr. Lissa Rankin, a physician specializing in mind-body medicine remarks, “Sometimes we forget when people are sick that what they most need is to feel connected, to be loved, to be touched.” Each of us, given the diversity of our gifts, can attend to this even in these days of restriction. 

Image: Unsplash/chris liu

Perhaps, above all, we are called to be a merciful presence; to be with, to walk with those who are sick and with their carers for whom we may be able to offer practical help or a time of respite. Even if I have personal physical limitations I can pray daily with and for those who are sick. I may be able to call someone to support them, send a card or letter expressing love, comfort and concern reminding a person of the gift they have been in my life or recounting special memories of times past spent together. Perhaps a visit is possible, even a socially-distanced visit! Above all, I can find ways to listen respectfully, tenderly. I can simply be with another. I don’t need a multitude of words, I don’t need to worry what to say I just need to “be there”.

Silence is sometimes the gentle gift. An appropriate tenderness of touch can speak more than a million words. Especially in the context of illness at the end of life, presence is one of the greatest gifts I can offer. This is expressed eloquently in the question posed by Sister Mary Catherine Hilkert, O.P., “Can I say to my neighbour ‘I have no solution, I don’t know the answer but I will walk with you, search with you, be with you?” This, perhaps above all, is the invitation of the World Day of the Sick each year. 

-Sister Mary Rowell, csj