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    A Catholic Woman’s Guide to Happiness
    A Catholic Woman’s Guide to Happiness
    A Catholic Woman’s Guide to Happiness
    Ebook121 pages1 hour

    A Catholic Woman’s Guide to Happiness

    By Rose Sweet

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    About this ebook

    Calling all Catholic women! Does your religious reading and pious practice not always translate into how you interact with and love each other? Are you not always aware or convinced of God's love for you? Does happiness seem to elude you in certain circumstances of your life? Fear not! Noted author Rose Sweet is here to help in a new series of books with practical steps and tips to help the reader first remember God's tender love for her and then to love neighbor . . . so that the ups and downs of life and relationships will not diminish her joy.

    The Catholic Woman's Guide series integrates classic Catholic theology (Theology of the Body and teachings on contemplative prayer) with Sweet's unique brand of storytelling and humor and will help you to find and hold on to authentic happiness in every area of your life.

    In this first volume, The Catholic Women's Guide to Happiness, Sweet takes you into the “Interior Life” to explore the attitudes, fears, and deepest desires that may keep you from greater joy. Topics include:

    • Identifying what gives you the most pleasure, peace, contentment, and satisfaction.
    • Recognizing when you may be hanging on too tightly to something you own, a power you possess, or even a person you love. Rooting out the specific fears that rob you of happiness.
    • Hearing what the saints and mystics have said about happiness.
    • Seeing hidden windows and doors that open to the deepest joys.
    • Reordering your natural desires rather than repressing or rejecting them.
    • Sweet points to the goodness and love of God as the true Source of all happiness and how to reconcile your longings with his special love for you.

    The Adventure awaits! Accompany Rose on this journey to true happiness in Christ!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTAN Books
    Release dateMar 14, 2019
    ISBN9781505112382
    A Catholic Woman’s Guide to Happiness

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    • 5/5
      This book had absolutely exceeded my expectations. I am astounded, in a good way, how such a short book can be packed with Catholic truths. The combination of story telling, practical tips for entering the interior life, and stating the truth with love is what made this book earn a five star rating. Drawing on the wisdom from the saints and Our Blessed Mother, I feel more than ready to embark on the adventure into the interior life! I cannot thank you enough for publishing this book.

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    A Catholic Woman’s Guide to Happiness - Rose Sweet

    Conclusion

    PART 1

    Adventure Into the

    Interior Life

    Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.

    —Helen Keller, The Open Door

    1

    Riding the Rail

    to Happiness

    Life is like a journey, taken on a train,

    With a pair of travelers at each windowpane.

    I may sit beside you all the journey through,

    Or I may sit elsewhere, never knowing you.

    But if fate should make me sit by your side,

    Let’s be pleasant travelers; it’s so short a ride.

    —Anonymous

    Happiness is a great adventure

    When I consider the word journey—often used for the spiritual life—I hear a loud whistle, the shout of All aboard! and think of people on a railroad car, gazing out the window at lovely and passing landscapes, their suitcases stored high, and the roly-poly, mustachioed conductor coming down the aisle to collect their tickets. While I’d love life to be such an idyllic train ride, for me it’s often been more of a combination of a wild Western, a Stephen King horror story, a Midsomer murder mystery, and a Jurassic Park nightmare. Looking for happiness can be quite an adventure!

    The search for happiness can be deceptive, especially with cunning and seductive voices from inside our own head, or from others, beckoning us this way and that. It’s tough to stay on track! C. S. Lewis said that there is no neutral ground in the universe, every square inch, every second, is claimed by God and counter-claimed by Satan.¹ The battle to destroy our happiness is real.

    Happiness is the mother of all desires

    I was eleven years old when I first read a book about happiness. For Christmas in 1962, my younger sister, Barb, bought our mother the first in a popular series of small, hardcover gift books by Charles Schulz (of Peanuts fame) called Happiness is a Warm Puppy. Barb let me read it before it was wrapped and placed under the tree.

    Mom was delighted! The Cuban missile crisis—during which our nation had been deeply shaken by the threat of Soviet nuclear arms—had just died down, and many people were looking for an emotional security blanket. Schulz had created this simple book of drawings and text in one day, and it arrived in bookshops with a letter that read: It won’t change the world, but we hope it will make things a little more pleasant for us survivors.

    The charming volume—with its sweet, funny, and comforting cartoon characters wisely expounding on happiness—sold millions and became a favorite for readers of all ages. Was the book’s tremendous success really about the little round-faced boy, Charlie Brown, and his dog, Snoopy? Or was it about that unquenchable human desire for happiness?

    The world today is still in turmoil, and everyone still wants to be happy. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (394–322 BC), taught that happiness is the primary motivation in life; that it is the only thing one chooses for itself because all other choices are made in efforts to obtain it. That means every decision you made today—red blouse or green, non-fat or not—was an attempt to make yourself happy.

    Happiness and joy are the same

    In recent years, some Christians have tried to distinguish between happiness and joy, insisting that to pursue one is maybe even vain and sinful, and the other, elevated and holy. This artificial distinction is unfounded and not taught by the Church; in fact, translations of the Bible use the words happiness, joy, and blessedness interchangeably in hundreds of verses. Even Google, which uses the Oxford Pocket Dictionary, defines joy as a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.

    There are various levels of happiness, which we discuss later, but pushing the distinction too far risks separating what God has joined together: body and soul. It is good to volunteer selflessly in a soup kitchen, and it is also good to enjoy a Saturday afternoon pedicure. Both produce happiness, albeit one has greater long-term value. Let’s not slip into the old heresy that equates the spirit with good and the body with bad, thereby demonizing the physical world and all the joys therein that God gave us.

    The body is not a mere shell, nor the world a prison that we need to escape for eternal happiness. (Even though some days it certainly might feel like it!) We are enfleshed spirits—not angels—who will, if we live rightly, be raised gloriously body and soul for all eternity. Pedicure pleasures are not bad, but they are meant to point us to those that are more enduring. If there is any sin in enjoying the created world, the problem is not in the body but in the heart.

    So, for the rest of this book, know that I use the words joy and happiness—along with contentment, pleasure, delight, satisfaction, and even jump-up-and-down, slap-your-thigh, hootin’-n’-hollerin’ giddiness—synonymously.

    Happiness can be yours!

    No one escapes the confusion and, at times, the frustrated feeling of being lost and disappointed with life. But—as so many saints and sages have shared over the centuries—there is a right way, we can get there, and it is totally worth it. I hope I can join them to inspire, encourage, and even make you laugh a little along the journey. Please note that this little guide is certainly not intended to be an exhaustive treatise on the subject.

    It’s also not a book about prayer, but prayer is necessary for the journey.

    It’s not a book about the lives of the saints, but they do point the way.

    It’s not a book about the many spiritual practices the Church offers us, but it is about holiness. And holiness is the true path to happiness.

    Reflections

    •How would you describe your life so far?

    •When have you felt lost and uncertain about where to turn?

    •What is your definition of happiness?

    ____________

    ¹C. S. Lewis, Christian Reflections (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2014).

    2

    Seeking a Grand Adventure

    He who enters into the secret place of his own soul passes

    beyond himself and does in very truth ascend to God.

    —St. Albert the Great

    Rosie, for your Christmas present, the brothers and I want to take you and Dad to Sayulita, Mexico. And we want to pay for everything.

    Wow! My oldest stepson, Pat, had taken charge and took me by sweet surprise. He, Matt, and Rory wanted us all to return to Mexico for another family fishing trip. We hadn’t gone since they were teenagers, and they had decided it was time to smoke cigars, drink tequila, and sail over the deep blue sea.

    But we want to surprise Dad. Can you keep it a secret?

    I rolled my eyes. Keeping secrets from my husband, Bob, would not be easy. Sure, I’d sometimes stashed the Macy’s bags in the back of my car for later (Oh, this old thing? I’ve had it forever!), but this would be a really BIG SECRET. I’d have to clear both our calendars, schedule the air flights on a separate credit card, and—most importantly—weigh in on the lodging.

    Pat, that’s great, honey, but on one condition: I want to pick the house, okay? Because this time I wanted to be happy.

    In previous trips, I’d practiced great humility and wifely obedience, virtues that Bob sometimes thinks have long since disappeared. One in particular comes to mind. I’d let him plan everything, including picking the vacation house sight unseen. When we arrived, and I saw that it was a dump, I was deeply dismayed. But in true pioneer spirit, I made the best of it, rearranging furniture, remaking beds, opening the curtains, and fluffing up pillows. I even found some old candles I could put around the house, and I cut fresh greens from outside to stick in old jelly jars. My efforts were worthy of an HGTV makeover award.

    Happiness comes and goes

    I searched the internet for Sayulita vacation homes and found the perfect place! It was a highly upgraded, waterfront Mexican villa perched on a rugged bluff, with large, open tiled terraces that provided stunning ocean and bay views. Each room was decorated in warm earth tones, and the elegant

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