Strive to make good resolutions and progress each day. Persevere even when your efforts seem sterile. Live a life of action in God's service. Do everything for love and in that way there will be no little things: everything will be big. Remember that God is a fortress of love and that He is a spring of life. Let your love for others be a reflection of God's own love. Dare to dream. The smallest positive effort by each person counts. Life is worth living.
At one time it was believed that the sun moved about the earth; indeed, it did seem so to the eye, as we saw it purpling the dawn, and at night "setting like a host in the flaming monstrance of the West." But now we know that the earth moves about the sun.
As there were two ways of looking at the relation of the earth and the sun -- one right and one wrong -- so there are two ways of looking at the relation between a person and the daily events and routine cycle of life. Some people live in such a way as to have all their moods determined by what happens to them in the world. They are sad when stars take up their encampment on the battlefield of night; and they are gay in morning's eyes. When there is rain on the cheek of nature, often tears be dew their own cheeks. What happens at the bargain counter, in the office or in traffic; the poisoned arrow of sarcasm, the overheard slur and the whining of children, so often make and mold our moods, that like chameleons we take on the color of the experience that presently imposes itself on us. When we allow ourselves to revolve about circumstances, our feelings become like the seasons, shrinking when some hard service must be done and fainting in the face of every woe. Even love is reduced to fickleness, so that the only love songs one hears now on radio and television are about "how happy we will be' when married; no longer does one hear the "silver threads among the gold", or the story of how happy the couple is that said they would be happy with "a girl for you, and a boy for me." As Edna St. Vincent Millay expressed it:
"I know I am summer to your heart
And not the full four seasons of the year."
The condition of a happy life is to so live the trials and vicissitudes of life do not impose their moods on us. Rather, we become so rooted in peace and inner joy that we communicate them not only to our surroundings, but also to others. Tennyson spoke of such a character "with power on thine own act and on the world." Some radiate cheer and happiness because they already have it within them, just as some seem to have ice on their foreheads, making winter all the year.
The problem is how to possess this inner constancy of peace which makes the depths of our soul calm, even when the surface like the ocean, is ruffled or mixed with storms or cares. The best way is prayer which gives us independence of moods in two ways: first, it exhausts our bad moods, by telling them to God.. The wrong way is to exhaust our bad feelings on human beings, because either they resent them, plan revenge, or they reciprocate by assuming an equally bad mood. Bringing them to God is exhausting them, just like bringing ice to the flame melts the ice. A very false theory in modern psychology is that whenever we feel pent up psychologically, we should give it a physiological outlet -- for example, "forget it; go out and get drunk," or "when the passions are strong, satisfy them."If every son-in-law did this with a mother-in-law who was "moody" with him, the population of the country would be reduced by one-tenth. It is right to say that the mood must be emptied, but to empty in on ourselves, or on our fellow man, is to get it back either with a hangover or an enslaved condition we cannot break.
The second advantage of prayer is not only to void our bad moods, but to replace them with good feelings. As we pray, the sense of God's presence and law becomes more intimate; instead of...
