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by Fulton J. Sheen (Author), Rachael Underhill (Foreword by)
Way to Happiness (1953) is a short collection of essays on moral and spiritual principles by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. As he writes in the introduction, his goal for this work was to bring "solace, healing and hope to hearts; truth and enlightenment to minds; goodness, strength and resolution to wills" through his exploration of universal topics like happiness, love, and inner peace.
Fulton J. Sheen was born in El Paso, Illinois, in 1895. After attending St. Viator College Seminary in Illinois and St. Paul Seminary in Minnesota, he received his ordination and was assigned to the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois. A student even after achieving priesthood, he received degrees at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, and the Pontificium Collegium Internationale Angelicum in Rome.
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Archbishop Sheen was a weekly speaker on the popular radio program The Catholic Hour. With an audience in the millions, he shared his wisdom and knowledge of the scriptures and faith-based morality to aid listeners through their daily lives. This public education continued through the 1950s and 1960s on the television programs Life is Worth Living and The Fulton Sheen Program. Archbishop Sheen won an Emmy for Most Outstanding Television Personality in 1952.
During all of this activity, he found time to write dozens of books on faith. Way to Happiness was published in 1953, at the height of the archbishop's popularity. The book contains 37 short chapters on subjects key to daily life, including work and repose, self-discipline, the ego, and the spirit of giving. The book's short chapters make it a wonderful study for a month-long daily devotional.
Readers will find a simple message-although one that is a challenge to put into daily practice. "Our happiness consists in fulfilling the purpose of our being," writes Archbishop Sheen. That purpose is to overflow with three things: life, truth, and love with no limits, in their purest forms. Our humanity makes us long for these things. But to find them, "...we must go out beyond the limits of this shadowed world-to a Truth not mingled with its shadow, error-to a Life not mingled with its shadow, death-to a Love not mingled with its shadow, hate. We must seek for Pure Life, Pure Truth and Pure Love-and that is the definition of God."
The book is broken into eight sections, exploring themes of happiness, work, love, children, youth, inner peace, giving, and man. In each, Archbishop Sheen shares his warmth and wisdom, characterized by support from the scriptures and anecdotes from daily life.
While he encourages the reader to eschew the ego and cultivate self-discipline, he never lectures. One gets the sense that he has had the same conversations internally many times over before he shared them with the reader. Indeed, he admits, "Our world is full of prophets of doom, and I would be one of them if I did not practically believe in God." The world of the 1950s was one that had faced two world wars, a great depression, the rise of Communism, and more dramatic changes in just the preceding 40 years.
While the work takes an individual-level view of happiness and improvement, Archbishop Sheen is clear that the end result of personal betterment will lead to societal change. "Remake man," he writes, "and you remake his world." So while the true Way to Happiness may be walked alone, it was his hope that to walk it would lead the rest of the world to a better future.
