CONTENTED LIVING By Fr. John Catoir

The famed German writer Goethe offered a list of nine requisites for contented living. They are as timely now as they were when he wrote them 200 years ago.

"Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength enough to battle with difficulties and overcome them.

"Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor.

"Love enough to move you to be useful to others. Faith enough to make the real things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future."

Goethe showed wisdom in these thoughts, perhaps especially in the use of the word "enough." Often we seek something more, when contentment could come with gratitude for having enough.

There is great gain in godliness with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. (1 Timothy 6:6-7)

"Grace me with contentment , Jesus, for after all I do have everything in You. "