Smile of the Sun - 太陽のほほえみ
生前ハヤット神父が寄稿されたお話しを英語と日本語で毎月お届けします。
Help Each Other
A story is told of a man who took a trip through hell and heaven, and then returned to tell his family about it．He spoke about what he saw in hell first. "I saw there, " he said，"a long narrow room containing a very long table. The table was filled with delicious food, but the people sitting along either side of the table were very thin and had very sad faces. They each had chopsticks which were about one meter long. They would pick up a piece of food try to put it in their mouths, but none of them managed to do so. The chopsticks were too long."
The man then told of going up to heaven. "Here," he said, " to my surprise, Ⅰ found a room very similar to the one I saw in hell. It was a long room, with a long table, and this table, too, was filled with delicious food. But, the people sitting along the two sides of the table looked very different from those whom I had seen in hell. They all had happy and healthy faces.
" Like the people in hell, the people in heaven also had chopsticks one meter long to eat with. The difference was that the people in heaven didn't try to use the chopsticks to put food in their own mouths. Rather, each of them would pick up a piece of food and put it in the mouth of the person across the table. By helping each other in this way, they each had plenty to eat and enjoyed each other's company."
The story may seem childlike, but it brings out a very important point about happiness. It is only by being concerned about the welfare of each other and by helping each other that we can experience true joy in living.
