In recent years we have highly praised the popes when we saw them using the Internet, opening profiles in the social networks and fostering its use for evangelization.
This text of Claret belongs to one of his three works with the Railway (el ferrocarril) in the title. When he wrote the first one, 10 years had not even passed from the inauguration of the first Spanish railway. The creativity of Claret teaches us many things. He not only introduces the train in the title, but he presents it with a comparison; society is like a train; it is contagious for happiness if one knows to go where it goes; it brings misfortune if it is derailed. Claret flees from long and boring discourses, from monologue and articulates one work that consists in a dialogue between three travellers (Sir. John, Sir. Prudence and Sir. Joseph). Even the way of publication is suggestive; the text, accessible in a format of one little book, appears also in the newspapers in 12 different issues. How much we have to learn from Claret in these times of new evangelization!
To make matters worse, the saint does not get lost in the branches: the work bears two titles, “The Railway or the means to obtain happiness and avoid unhappiness or misfortune”. Happiness! Is there any human being who doesn´t aspire to it, though many times he may distort the meaning of the word? The Spanish Constitution of 1812 had proclaimed that the object of the government is the happiness of its citizens; the happiness had appeared in the Declaration of Independence of what we call today The United States of North America (1776) and in the French declaration of the Rights of the Citizen (1789). All of us believe in our right to be happy. Claret does not beat about the bush. Love and happiness are the two words very much used (and desired) in the 19th century: let us read calmly the words of Claret.
What do you mean by happiness? Has it got something to do with God and his projects? How to fit into your idea of happiness, the love of neighbour?