Way to Inner Peace

By Fulton J. Sheen and Rachael Underhill

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen (b. 1895 - d. 1979) had a gift for connecting with people of all religious backgrounds. Rather than limit his ministrations to the Catholics within his diocese, this devout man used popular media like radio and television to reach millions.

Archbishop Sheen was also a prolific writer, with nearly 70 b

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mockingbird Press
• Release date: Feb 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781684930234

Fulton J. Sheen

The life and teachings of Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen anticipated and embodied the spirit of both the Second Vatican Council and the New Evangelization. A gifted orator and writer, he was a pioneer in the use of media for evangelization: His radio and television broadcasts reached an estimated 30 million weekly viewers. He also wrote more than 60 works on Christian living and theology, many of which are still in print. Born in 1895, Sheen grew up in Peoria, Illinois, and was ordained a priest for the diocese in 1919. He was ordained an auxiliary bishop in New York City in 1951. As the head of his mission agency, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith (1950–1966), and as Bishop of Rochester (1966-1969), Sheen helped create 9,000 clinics, 10,000 orphanages, and 1,200 schools; and his contributions educated 80,000 seminarians and 9,000 religious. Upon his death in 1979, Sheen was buried at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. His cause for canonization was returned to his home diocese of Peoria in January 2011, and Sheen was proclaimed "Venerable" by Pope Benedict XVI on June 28, 2012. The first miracle attributed to his intercession was approved in March 2014, paving the way for his beatification.

Book preview

Part 1

Inner Peace

Chapter 1

Egotism—The Enemy of Inner Peace

Here is a psychological suggestion for acquiring peace of soul. Never brag; never talk about yourself; never rush to first seats at table or in a theatre; never use people for your own advantage; never lord it over others as if you were better th an they.

These are but popular ways of expressing the virtue of humility, which does not consist so much in humbling ourselves before others as it does in recognizing our own littleness in comparison to what we ought to be. The modern tendency is toward the affirmation of the ego, the exaltation of selfishness, riding roughshod over others in order to satisfy our own self-centeredness. It certainly has not produced much happiness, for the more the ego asserts itself the more miserable it becomes.

Humility which gives preference to others is not very popular today, principally because men have forgotten the Greatness of God. By expanding our puny little self to the infinite, we have made the true Infinity of God seem trivial. The less knowledge we have of anything the more insignificant it seems. Our hatred of a person often decreases as we learn to know him better. A boy graduating from high school is generally not as humble as when he graduates from medical school. At eighteen he thought he knew it all; at twenty-eight he feels himself ignorant in the face of the medical science he has yet to acquire. So it is with God. Because we do not pray or contemplate or love Him, we become vain and proud; but when we know Him better we feel a deep sense of dependence which tempers our false independence. Pride is the child of ignorance, humility the offspring of knowledge.

A proud man thinks himself better than he is, and when criticized always believes his neighbor is jealous or has a grudge against him. The humble man knows himself as he really is, for he judges himself as he judges time, by a standard outside himself, namely, God and His Moral Law. The psychological reason for the modern fondness for news which deflates others or brings out the evil in their lives, is to solace uneasy consciences which are already laden with guilt. By finding others who apparently are more evil, one falsely believes he becomes better. It used to be that the most popular biographies were the lives of good men for the sake of imitation, rather than scandals for the sake of making ourselves believe we are more virtuous. The pagan Plutarch said; The virtues of great men served me as a modern mirror in which I might adorn my own life.

Humility as it relates to our fellowman is a golden mean between a blind reverence of others on the one hand and an overbearing insolence on the other. The humble man is not a rigid exacter of things to which he has no undoubted right; he is always ready to overlook the faults of others knowing that he has so many. Neither is he greatly provoked at those slights which put vain persons out of patience, knowing that as he shows mercy to others so shall he receive mercy from God. Before undertaking a task great or small, before making decisions, before beginning a journey, the humble man will acknowledge his dependence on God and will invoke His guidance and His blessing on all his enterprises. Even though he be placed above others by vocation, or by the will of the people, he will never cease to recognize that God has made of one blood all the nations that dwell on the earth. If he is very rich he will not be a defender of the rights of the poor without unloading his riches in their aid. Our modern world has produced a generation of rich politicians who talk love of the poor, but never prove it in action, and a brood of the poor whose hearts are filled with envy for the rich and covetousness of their money. The rich man who is humble helps the poor rather than the revolutionists who use the poor to bomb their ways to Stalinist thrones.

Another evidence of want of humility is in regard to knowledge. Scripture bids us be wise unto sobriety. Humility moderates our estimate of what we know and will remind us that God gave to the wise more talents than others and more opportunities for developing those talents. But of him who has received much, much also will be expected. The intellectual leader has a tremendous responsibility thrust upon him and woe to him if he uses his office of teaching to lead the young into error and conceit. Notice how often today authors will have their picture taken with their book in their left hand, the title in full view of the camera, so that the photograph may tell the story: Look Ma! My Book! Television commentators have books on their desks with the title toward the audience so that the audience may be impressed. No man who reads books at a desk ever has the titles turned away—but toward himself. Perhaps someday when there are diaphanous walls, the intelligentsia will keep the titles on their bookshelves turned toward the wall so their next door neighbor will know how smart they are.

In the face of Divine Wisdom, all that we have, or do, or know, is a gift of God, and is only an insignificant molehill compared to His Mountain of Knowledge. Well indeed then may those who enjoy any relative superiority ask with Paul: What have you that you have not received? If so, then why glory as if you had not received.

Chapter 2

Faithfulness in Little Things

Faithfulness in great things is not uncommon; faithfulness in little things is rare but most indicative of true character. Almost any husband would leap into the sea or rush into a burning building to rescue his perishing wife. But to anticipate the convenience or happiness of the wife in some small matter, the neglect of which would go unnoticed, is a more eloquent proof of ten derness.

Our lives for the most part are made up of little things, and by these our character is to be tested. There are very few who have to take a prominent place in the great conflicts of our age; the vast majority must dwell in humbler scenes and be content to do a more humble work. The conflicts which a man has to endure either against evil in his own soul or in the moral circle where his influence would seem to be trivial are in reality the struggle of the battle for life and decency; and true heroism is shown here as well as in those grander scales in which others win the leader’s fame or the martyr’s crown. Little duties carefully discharged; little temptations earnestly resisted with the strength which God supplies; little sins crucified; these all together help to form that character which is to be described not as popular or glamorous, but as moral and noble.

From God’s point of view nothing is great, nothing is small as we measure it. The worth and the quality of any action depends upon its motive and not at all upon its prominence or any of the other accidents which we are apt to adopt as standards of greatness. Nothing is small that can be done from a mighty motive, such as the mite which the widow dropped into the Temple treasury. Conscience knows no such word as large or small; it knows only two words, right and wrong. He who welcomes a prophet because he is a prophet shall receive the reward given to prophets, because though not gifted with the prophet’s tongue he has the prophet’s spirit and does his small act of hospitality from the very same prophet-impulse which in another and one more loftily endowed leads to burning words and mighty deeds.

Man is much more inclined to concentrate his moral actions in one great moment and thereby often wins the merit of a hero. The woman, on the contrary, scatters her tiny little sacrifices through life and multiplies them to such an extent that very few give her the credit for sacrifice because it has been so multiplied.

In the spiritual order it is much easier to do some mighty act of self-surrender than daily and patiently to crucify the flesh with all of its inordinate affections. The smallest duties are often harder, because of their apparent insignificance and their constant recurrence. Unfaithfulness in little things can also prepare for unfaithfulness in the great. By a small act of injustice the line which separates the right from the wrong is just as effectively broken. Infidelity in little things deteriorates the moral sense; it makes man untrustworthy; it loosens the ties that bind society together, and it is a counteracting agency of that Divine Love which ought to be the cement of