Remade for Happiness: Achieving Life's Purpose Through Spiritual Transformation

POINTS OF INTEREST

• The cause for Sheen’s sainthood is moving quickly at the Vatican which has helped renew great interest in his writings

• Sheen’s writing is always clear, practical and profound, and speaks to people of all walks of life, and all Christian denominations

• The topic Sheen discuses of happiness and how to attain it is one of universal interest

• Sheen shows how genuine, deep happiness is connected with a strong spiritual life – one that is first and foremost a love relationship

When asked, "What's wrong with the world?", G.K. Chesterton famously replied with the simple words, "I am." People who reflect on life's problems find many of them of to be of their own making. We want to be happy and yet we often seem to be the source of our own unhappiness - as well as that of others. Even when that is not the case, our lives, as blessed as they may be, have their share of disappointments, shocks, and disillusionments. How do we respond? Do we become cynical and try at all costs to get as much pleasure as we can? Or do we recognize we were made for more?

In this classic work, Fulton Sheen explains the secret of authentic happiness: being spiritually remade. A genuinely spiritual life, Sheen contends, consists in more than obeying a set of commands, submitting to certain laws, reading the Bible, or even following the example of Jesus. Before all else, it consists in being re-born and integrated into a new, higher kind of life--the supernatural life of grace--and brought into a new kind of spiritual relationship--as a child of God through Jesus Christ.

"What does it mean to be a Christian? Christianity is not a system of ethics; it is a life. It is not good advice; it is Divine adoption. Being a Christian does not consist in being kind to the poor, going to Church, reading the Bible, singing hymns, being generous to relief agencies … serving on Church committees, though it includes all of these. It is first and foremost a love relationship.