As the hungry person demands a piece of bread, the thirsty person desires a glass of water – as the exile sighs for a paternal homestead, the prisoner for freedom – as the poor orphan longs for the heart of his mother and father – so the heart of each of us longs, desires, sighs for happiness And yet, how few happy people there are in the world! We strive, we try, we work, always hoping, waiting, and so all our lives working, like a child who wants to catch a bird, we will stand over the grave and death will dig us a deep grave and bury our bones with all our hopes.
Is there then no happiness on earth? Has the Lord God in vain poured into our hearts this desire and wish to be happy?
No my brothers! Man will be, can be happy at any age, in any condition, if he only wants to. Let’s just not push God’s hand away from ourselves. We look for happiness where there is none, and therefore what wonder if we don’t find it! Let us look where it is, and we will find it !
My brothers! I am not speaking to you as to children, but as to people who already know how to think, judge and understand. Look around you, at this world – how little happy you see there. People themselves make themselves unhappy, but they don’t want to confess it. We harm ourselves the most.
We should seek happiness not outside ourselves, but within ourselves, just as someone who wants to find a pearl will not look for it in the sand on the shores of the sea, but will venture like a diver into the depths of the ocean and find it there. A miner, wishing to obtain an expensive stone, will he look for it on the hard surface of the rock? – No! he will take the lamp in his hands, he will venture into underground caverns, he will pave his way in the bowels of the earth, there he will find the reward of his labor, there the dear jewel will be his profit.
O brothers! let us also be such miners, and taking the lamp of faith in our hands, let us enter our hearts, there we will find true happiness, which no one can ever snatch from us. People may take away your wealth, they may take away your fame unjustly, they may deprive you of your freedom; sickness may lay you on a bed of pain, but your virtue, but your noble feelings, but your honesty, which is in your heart, which flows from your heart, this no human power will ever be able to snatch from you!
You will have wealth, but will this wealth by itself make you happy? – Never! Because in order for this wealth to make you happy, every rich person would have to be happy – but is that the case? You will have dignity, respect from people, but what will the praises of people help you if you have to despise yourself, if your conscience will tell you that you don’t deserve these praises, that the people who praise you so much are either mean flatterers or don’t know you.
Our happiness is inner peace, is purity of heart, is the conviction of our innocence and honesty, and the way that leads to this is the strict observance of the divine law!
He is only happy who can say to himself in this way : I am happy because God has lent me worldly gifts, but this property which I possess is not at the expense of another, but by my own honest or my fathers’ work acquired ! I am happy, although I live in privation and poverty, because I did not come to this poverty through laziness, debauchery, – squandering, – God has unleashed it on me, and I can boldly look into the eyes of anyone! I am happy, because people respect me and revere me, and I won this respect not by hypocrisy, deceit; not by pretence, but by true virtue. I am happy because hypocrisy and slander have fallen on me, but my heart has nothing to reproach me with, and I can boldly look up to heaven, to God, who sees my innocence! I am happy because my health serves me because I can work for the glory of God and the benefit of my soul, I can be useful to my confreres and the whole country. I am happy because illness has affected me, and soon I may stand at the end of my wishes – with my God ! I am happy because I live; I am happy because I die! – O! who can say so, he has found happiness true in the world!
If we did not carry our happiness with us, but this happiness to a certain place only was attached, then, bidding farewell to this place, and happiness we would have to bid farewell Behold this man forced to abandon the family corner, this home, where he grew up – with his eye flooded with tears he will turn to heaven, with his heart bleeding he will sigh to God, snatch up his pilgrim stick and go with that sweet conviction that the divine eye watches over the whole universe day and night, and will not abandon the one who has not abandoned God. Bliss and churlishness will remain in his heart!
Behold, you love your father, your mother, – death is coming, you must lose them. You kneel at their bedside, the last sigh you receive you will see yourself an orphan – maybe people will abandon you! You have confidence in God, in your sorrow you will be happy; you will say to yourself: I have a Father in heaven, to the cross I will resort! Behold, this one was wealthy; a fire came, a flood, misfortune, and in misery a piece of bread he must eat. If he put all his happiness in this property, oh! how miserable he will see himself; but If his riches were buried in his heart, he will stand over these heaps and mementos of former happiness, he will wipe away a tear and say: God gave, God took; I have lost everything, but I have not lost you, my God, and if I possess you, why do I not get? – Thou that dressest the lilies of the field, thou wilt not let thy child be lost! U lost everything, but not lost virtue! You want me to suffer, to work with You and for Your love – thank You! My happiness was not in this gold, which I would have had to abandon anyway at death!
O my brothers! who has such a disposed heart, what should he fear? He is never unhappy, for being a child of such a Father as God is, unhappy he cannot be! – O! therefore, therefore, brethren, establish this post of true happiness in your hearts when you are young, – arm yourselves with courage, put on the visor of love, the sword of faith and the armor of hope, and in all life’s struggle you will never be vanquished ! God be with you! Amen.
KAZANIA ks. Karola Antoniewicza. T. IV Kazania przygodne. NAKŁADEM WYDAWNICTWA TOW . JEZUSOWEGO. KRAKÓW. 1906.
Catholic during the Great Apostasy 
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