NO.120
others and the anticipation of everlasting
rest in union with God beyond the trials of
this earthly life. That heavenly vision is
what this wonderful architecture is
designed to suggest.
Then, when the classical writers of
the ancient world were rediscovered and
the origins of modern science were
developed in the 17th and 18th centuries,
Western Europe and the new world
developed the idea of happiness as a right
to be guaranteed by the social order,
something that each and every person was
entitled to pursue and attain. When
Thomas Jefferson wrote in the American
Declaration of Independence that the
pursuit of happiness was an unalienable
right, he did not just intend to say that a
man should pursue pleasure, but that the
right to happiness was connected with his
right to acquire and possess property.
Quite a range of definitions, then, has
this word happiness had over the centuries.
And now the new competitive New
Millennialist young are taught by
psychologists and personal trainers and
even educationists that to be happy we
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
need to get fit, express our true inner self,
get in touch with our deeper feelings,
follow our personal passions and the path
we set for ourselves. They are to look for
happiness through work and by being
financially successful as an end in itself.
They are expected to know their market
value, manage themselves as corporations
and live according to an entrepreneurial
ethos. But in this school we are sceptical
about this modern concept of happiness. It
leads to self-centredness, narcissism
(remember Narcissus fell in love with his
own image, condemned forever to
unfulfilling self-obsession) and treats
heartlessly those who find the demands of
life difficult to cope with. Rather, we
commend to the young a radical
definitions of happiness: better to attend,
as the Founder did, to the Proverb, that
happiness is found in wisdom; and to St
Peter’s realism, that li