Tuesday of
the 5th Week in Ordinary Time
Memorial
of Our Lady of Lourdes
February 11, 2014 6:30am
I recently came across a study
that has caught my attention.
This study of college students
was done by two psychologists, Eileen Kennedy-Moore and Mark Lowenthal.
It shows that by identifying
their own acts of kindness for one week, the college students experienced a
significant increase in their feelings of happiness.
From this study, the authors make
a recommendation.
They propose a family dinner time
ritual of going around the table and having each person name one act of
kindness they did that day.
The authors write, “There are many standards in the world that
your child may or may not meet.
“But kindness is always within one’s reach and there are numerous
opportunities every day to demonstrate it.”
Beneath today’s gospel Jesus is
reminding us that the heart of his teaching is his commandment to love one
another as he has loved us.
Our faith needs to be expressed
in acts of kindness and charity.
Today Jesus challenges rituals
and actions that have become empty of meaning.
On the one hand, He calls us to “do this in memory of me” – he calls us
to remember and celebrate and receive him in the ritual of the Mass.
But on the other hand, he calls
us to live what we do in the ritual, and that means to live as he lived, giving
of ourselves in simple, maybe unrecognized acts of kindness and charity and
self-sacrifice for the good of others.
To go back to where we began, to
the study of the college students, this is where true, deep, enduring happiness
can be found.
