Happy is a person who knows how to smile. When you are able to laugh to yourself, you are a free person, says Fr Ted Loder. This is because you reduce your tension and fears that you can have, and you feel more free in your person.

It might happen that the more we grow up, we may leave that smile behind us. A smile keeps our mental life in good condition, helps us to have good relations with others, free us from ourselves and help us in our spiritual lifts.

A smile reduces depression, helps our heart, and helps us to be cured from our sickness. Remember that a smile brings back another smile, as this is something contagious. There is a sentence which says: “A smile is a key that opens all doors”.

Sometime ago they told Blessed Mother Theresa to tell their sisters to cover their nose and mouth when approaching such people, but she said no, I want that the sick people can see that smile in the face of my sisters, when they are curing them. A service with a smile, a smile for Jesus in the sick people.

On other occasions a group of doctors went to Calcutta to see Mother Theresa and her work, and before they went away they told her to give them something to take it with them back home and Mother Theresa told them: “Try to smile to each other.”

St George Preca used to say that our outer life reflects our inner life, so if we have a clean heart filled with Jesus, our smile to others will be sincere, and from our heart.

A smile doesn’t mean that you have no problems, or that we are not going to pass from moments of hardships, that life brings with it in our lives, but it helps us to face this situation with courage.

You can acquire a smile by means of going in front of a mirror and trying to smile at yourself. Do your best to have contact with children, because these can guarantee you to have that lovely smile on your face. Try to remember something that happened in the past in your life, something that brought a smile. Try to watch a good and clean moral programme on the media which helps you to keep that smile.

I am certain that if we do this, and have that clean and genuine smile, it will help a lot to make good to ourselves and to those who come in contact with us.

Finally remember the sentence of Julian of Norwich, a mystic woman which says: “Live gladly in knowing that God loves you.”

Carmel Caruana

San Gwann