Just about everybody wants to be happy. You dream of happiness, you plan for it, and perhaps pay any price to achieve it. Searching for happiness, one person will try to make a lot of money; others give all their money away. In the same search one woman will have five or six children; another enters a convent. Ask the average person what he or she wants out of life, and the chances are they'll reply without hesitation, 'I just want to be happy'.

Occasionally you meet someone who enjoys being miserable - and who gets a perverse delight in making others unhappy. Woody Allen apparently wasn't joking when he said: 'If my film makes one more person feel miserable, I'll have done my job!'

Having more of anything - leisure or brains or money or power or fame - doesn't make you happy. Aristotle Onassis said just before he died: 'I've just been a machine for making money. I seem to have spent my life in a golden tunnel looking for the outlet which would lead to happiness. But the tunnel kept going on. After my death there will be nothing left.' His daughter, Christina Onassis, seriously attempted suicide at least once.

Help me to distinguish, Lord, between what is passing away and what is eternal. Amen.