EXTERNAL VERSUS INTERNAL HAPPINESS

Have you ever reflected on why you do the things you do and what makes you happy?
We all have different thoughts, actions, and emotions; you just have to be true to yourself when you reflect on your own life.
Take an honest look on your life and realise how much the different emotions are on you. We do things depending on the spirit's level of awareness.
Do you depend on possessions, people and things outside of yourself to make you happy? Do you depend on escapism like watching T.V, movies, or in isolation to do things you like, looking for happiness for yourself?
The business and advertising worlds know this very well. They use your dependence on things outside of yourself so that you feel good, to entice you to buy what they are selling. Have you ever taken a serious look at why you buy the things you buy?
Don't expect the outside world to produce lasting happiness, because after the initial euphoria wears off, you will find yourself looking outside of yourself for more or different things to make you feel good again. Regenerate yourself and let happiness come from within. Internal happiness costs nothing to acquire it and no one, except yourself, can ever take it away from you.
But how does one create this internal happiness from within? It's easier if you think about it. If you want to be happy, all you have to do is to stop thinking about yourself and help others. The less you think about yourself and the more you help others, the happier you will become. This is a fact. (Are you trying to look at the roof to figure it out if it's true?)
When you help someone, you are being generous with your time and personal resources. You are being brave because you are not afraid of losing out while you are helping someone else. Instead of yourself, you experience the feeling of love and well being when you help someone.
Take time out of your life to help others, it will help you feel happy inside you. Invest your energy and time wisely. If you love your work in your daily duties, and you live in an honest community life by helping others, you are a very rich person in many ways.
You can do anything you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want. You can have the best of both your inner and other worlds, as long as you are always truthful, positive and helping others.

5th SUNDAY OF EASTER: SPECIAL HOMILY TO THE KENYAN MEMBERS OF PERLIAMENT

“It’s difficult to be quiet if you have nothing to do”
-Arthur Schopenhauer-

Dear brothers and sisters, elected parliamentarians, I would like to say thanks for all you are doing to our country and for your work in representing your constituencies, where you stood and came out victorious. For each of you belong to a specific religion and for that is an inner conviction of who God is in your life.
You went around thanking people who voted for you. But it was also important that you thanked God for the gifts and life he gave you to crisscross your constituency. I do not know whether you did it or not. For those who did thank God, God bless you.

1. It’s recorded, let’s say it’s written, in the first chapter of Job that “His sons used to take turns giving feasts, sending invitations to their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And when each feast had run its course, Job would send for them and sanctify them, rising early and offering holocausts for every one of them. For Job said, ‘it may be that my sons have sinned and blasphemed God in their hearts” (Jo 1:45)

This has been the first act in our celebration. An act of repentance, in case in the heat of your campaigns, in the excitement in celebrating your victory, you may have offended God, and you may have done wrong to your neighbour.

2. The second act that you did was celebrations in thanksgiving. In his first letter to the Corinthians St. Paul says “do you know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race fo a prize, but only 'one' wins the prize?” (1 Cor 9:24). Who does not know that in the political arena all “run”. Do you know how many were competing with you? Have you forgotten the sleepless nights you spent, puzzled about what to do the next day? Have you forgotten the many odds which, stood in your way and which at times seemed insurmountable? Have you forgotten the wise advice from a friend or inspiration, of which you cannot explain the source, which enabled you to go over those odds? “They all ran, but only you won”. Congratulations!

You, surely, have already thanked your campaigners, your supporters; some of them may even have suffered hardships because of you. May be the best way to thank them was simply “thank you” and they can do more.

3. The third act of celebration was dedication. We, who have welcomed you, arch dedicating you, but more so you yourselves are dedicating yourselves in Christian and Islamic leadership even traditional chiefs and elders to the service of your nation. You will remember the story of Adam’s sons Cain and Abel. They both used to bring offerings to God. God, it is said, that: “God looked with favour on Abel and on his flock” (Gen 4:3-5). We draw inspiration from Psalm 15 (14) on which we reflect by the psalm asking a question “Lord, who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy mountain?”

I address this question to you our delegates. What Christian leader should be at the top of politics? What Christian leader should be in parliament? What Christian leader should be in that “August House?” what Christian leader should we dedicate, what Christian leader should dedicate himself or herself to the service of this nation? God, through the prophets gives us the answer in this psalm:

Whoever walks without blame, doing what is right, speaking truth from his heart; who does not slander a neighbour, does no harm to another never defames a friend; but honours those who fear the Lord; who keeps an oath despite the cost, lends no money at interest, accepts no bribe against the innocent, whoever acts like this shall never be shaken.

Dear brothers and sisters. I am sure you realize that our main reason of coming together in this country at this time is not to congratulate as the best Kenyan but one who shares our destiny and you are our spokesman. The main reason is to enable you brace yourselves for the task ahead. The dilemma of the moral man in an immoral society is well-known to us all. The picture of an ideal Christian leader, who should be at the top. To be in the August House is clearly painted for you by the psalmist:

• One who walks without blame
• One who does what is right
• One who speaks the truth
• One who does not slander his neighbour
• One who does no harm to another
• One who does not defame a friend
• One who keeps an oath despite the cost
• One who is not corrupt
• One who practices no usury
• One who does not accept a bribe
Such a man was Thomas More. His story is known to each of one you and if you have never heard it read him in “Man of All Seasons”. He was all that; this is how he became a Saint. He is your patron He is your role model. He is a hero, worship him, and imitate him.
“To go up alone into the mountain and come back as an ambassador to the world has ever been the method of humanity’s friends”. - Evelyn Underhill-
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Padre Joseph Nyamunga Mubiru
P.O.BOX 15318-00509
NAIROBI-KENYA
BLOG: http://nyamusus.blogspot.com
Mob. +254-722-585-329

FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER (25TH APRIL 2010)
THE GOOD SHEPHERD

“I divide the world in three classes, the few who make things happen, the many who watch things happen,
The overwhelming majority who have no notion of what happens” - Nicholas Murray Butler-

“I have made you light of the nations, so that my salvation may reach the ends of the earth” Act 13:4-7

Dear my beloved at heart,
After the fall of man, God in his wisdom decided on a plan of restoration. The history of salvation leaves no doubt that the people of Israel were the few whom salvation was to come first, and from them and by them it was spread to the rest of the people of the world.
It was a free choice, a free gift of God. The Israelites were destined to be a light for the nations, so that salvation might reach the ends of the earth through them.

Theologians sometimes ask themselves these questions:

a) Was God obliged to create man? Whatever the answer may be, it’s further asked
b) Given that God had created man, was he obliged to give him higher life than the life connatural to his nature? The third question crowns it all: When man lost the higher life God had given him, was God obliged to redeem him?

These questions are interesting, they mostly concern speculative minds. We know for certain that God created man, elevated him to a higher and nobler life of grace, and redeemed him, purely out of his own goodness. There could not be any obligation whatsoever. All these are gifts gratuitously given to man.

The consideration we pick out of today’s lessons is that man can refuse God’s gifts; man can reject salvation and abandon himself to his own whims. The Jews are a shocking example of this: Time and again God had sent prophets to them, to remind them of their unique privilege and of their privileged position. The same prophets had kept on reminding the Israelites of the Messiah. He was to rise from among them, to bring salvation to them, and from them to bring it to the entire world. They heard the message, but refused to accept it.

Then the promised redeemer did at last come. He lived in their midst. He taught as one having power, he supported his teaching with signs, i.e. miracles. He too even him: the Israelites rejected and put him to a shameful death. Finally the Apostles came to the Jews with arguments, new proofs of the messiah. They appealed to them to repent of their sins and return to their God in sincerity of heart. The Jews only “blasphemed and contradicted everything Paul said” (Acts 13:46).

Dear brethren, the lot of the Jews can be ours also. What happened to them can happen to us now. Like them we also have been chosen. We are the chosen people of the New Law and our choice is purely a free gift of God.

It’s he who gave you those parents who brought you up in this faith. It’s he who gave you those conscious teachers who continued the work of the parents, who watered the seed planted in your Baptism, who inculcated in you the truth of your faith.
It’s God who in his providence placed you in the various places, schools, parishes etc. and placed you in the hands of various people, to help you, not only to preserve that faith but also to grow in it.

Often we may appreciate daily more and more the gifts of Faith which God has gratuitously given us. Let us pray that we may grow in our faith and preserve in love, so that we remove further away the danger of rejecting our Lord and being rejected by him.

“To profit from good advice requires more wisdom than give it” – Churton Collins


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Padre Joseph Nyamunga Mubiru
P.O.BOX 15318-00509
NAIROBI-KENYA
BLOG: http://nyamusus.blogspot.com
Mob. +254-722-585-329

“Who can determine when it is, that the scales in the balance of opinion begin to turn, and what was greater probability in behalf of a belief becomes a positive doubt against it ?”- (Cardinal Newman)
“It’s the Lord”
My dear brothers and sisters,
The day we were baptised we were incorporated in the Body of Christ. With that incorporation we received privileges, very often we think of our duties as Christians, arising from the new life we receive, we think of our duties summarised in the commandments. We tend to overlook our privileges. Think of the royal family. The princes and princesses have obligation arising from their position in society. But what is foremost are their privileges, their prerogatives.
One of our privileges is that of being able to recognize Jesus as the risen and glorified Lord and once we have recognized him to make his life, his death and his resurrection our own. We do not find it in Holy Scripture that the risen Lord was seen and recognized by the Pharisees or Scribes. It’s the chosen ones, the believers, who were privileged to see him and recognize him.
Today is vocation Day. It would be very suiting that we recognize the Lord in our vocation. The Holy Scripture says that after his resurrection, the Lord Jesus showed himself to his followers in many ways. Today he reveals to us also in many ways. To each individual he addresses himself personally. Think of a young man who thinks of becoming a doctor. The idea first came and the way it came. And the Lord is not bound to come to him in a dramatic way and say “This is your vocation”. No! He throws the seed into the ground and watches it grow. Many of our catholic brothers and sisters take their profession as a vocation from God? How many would consider themselves apostles, saints by Christ into that profession, not merely to heal the bodies of men, but to help the same men towards their goal, heaven.
Sometimes I always think of missionary hospitals. They do marvelous work, and they are there to stay! It’s quite unfortunate that most of our catholic doctors even volunteer to give their services in a mission hospital. The catholic doctors should recognize the Lord in their profession; they ought to volunteer their services to mission hospitals, at least some of them. There are some whom the lord calls for a religious life, men and women they form life essential to the Church. The spirit of poverty, chastity, and obedience, since every year now about 200 Catholics graduate at our universities. Why should religious vocations not flourish among them? I find it difficult to believe that God does not address himself to us here!
We have a debt to the church, to give it our services and to give them in the various forms of Christian life. St. John recognized him because he was attentive, if we too could be attentive we would hear him call and follow him. We do have good home education we give our children. But do you foster the idea of religious or priestly vocation? We need all the forms of life in the Church and its our duty, privilege for each one to recognize the voice of the good shepherd, know him and follow him.

“You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nets in your hair”. – Chinese proverb