By Fr. Glenn Jones:
One of the common and perennial philosophical ponderings throughout the ages has been: what is the goal of our lives? What “target” are all our actions directed toward? But it doesn’t take very long to come to the conclusion: We seek happiness in all of our actions.
“Now, just a minute, Padre; you sure about that? What about going into the terror of a battlefield, or someone sacrificing his life for another, or this or that? Do you think the druggies on the street in winter are happy?”
But if you think about it, the premise holds. The soldier may value fighting alongside his brothers and sisters in arms for a greater cause—preserving those things he values above even his own life. Perhaps it’s even just salvaging his pride in not wanting to be thought a coward—retaining his good name and reputation. Someone who sacrifices his life for another may value the other’s life more than his own (father for his child, for instance), or believe the greater virtue lay in that self-sacrifice. After all, parents could buy a lot of selfish stuff with the money they pour into their children’s lives and education, but they value the kids’ welfare above self-indulgence and pursue that greater happiness.
But seeking happiness does not necessary mean doing a good and right thing. A thief believes his happiness lay in greater material possessions. A drug addict finds his own relative (albeit self-destructive) happiness in his substance abuse, even if it’s only to avoid the pain of withdrawals. If he takes himself to a detox center, his greater happiness than in the drugs is in finding the strength to battle his addiction despite the inevitable trials to be encountered.
But all this begs the question: if what we seek is happiness, we tend toward our highest possible happiness, even if we have wrong ideas about how to reach it. But where does it lie? What even is it, and how do we get there? Is it self-indulgence, where so many seek it and yet fail to find it?
Where do we find our greatest happiness? Is it not in one of the simplest yet strongest emotions: love? After all, is anyone truly happy absent love? And what IS love? Is it not to bring happiness to the one we love?
In the Catholic Mass reading for this Sunday, August 25, is Jesus’ “Bread of Life” discourse of John 6, from which we’ve been reading the last few Sundays. At the end of the narrative, when many of Jesus’ disciples are abandoning Him because His words were difficult to understand, in a critical moment in their discipleship, He asks His apostles: “‘Do you, too, wish to go away?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.’” (John 6:67-69)
Thus the apostles understand that their greatest happiness—indeed, the greatest happiness possible—lay in trusting and following Jesus regardless of whether they fully understood what He saying. After all, they had heard His words of unparalleled wisdom, and His actions had proven Him to be more than simply human.
“Oh, that’s just legend! Just a fanciful story!!” some will say. “That turning water into wine thing, or those ‘miraculous’ healings could not have happened!”
But we have that nagging historical “problem” of the apostles and their spreading the word of Christ—quite successfully—after His resurrection and ascension. St. John Chrysostom explains it succinctly, if the reader would have patience a quote of some length:
“ … how otherwise could twelve uneducated men, who lived on lakes and rivers and wastelands, get the idea for such an immense enterprise? How could men who perhaps had never been in a city or a public square think of setting out to do battle with the whole world? That they were fearful, timid men, the evangelist makes clear; he did not reject the fact or try to hide their weaknesses. Indeed, he turned these into a proof of the truth. … when Christ was arrested, the others fled, despite all the miracles they had seen, while he who was leader of the others denied him!
How then account for the fact that these men, who in Christ’s lifetime did not stand up to the attacks by the Jews, set forth to do battle with the whole world once Christ was dead—if, as you claim, Christ did not rise and speak to them and rouse their courage? Did they perhaps say to themselves: ‘What is this? He could not save himself but he will protect us? He did not help himself when he was alive, but now that he is dead he will extend a helping hand to us? In his lifetime he brought no nation under his banner, but by uttering his name we will win over the whole world?’ Would it not be wholly irrational even to think such thoughts, much less to act upon them?
It is evident, then, that if they had not seen him risen and had proof of his power, they would not have risked so much.” (Homily on 1 Corinthians).
Additionally, as is noted in this column often, how could a mere peasant carpenter in an almost insignificant corner of the world begin a religious movement—in a world then rife with a variety of religions—that would eventually reach throughout the globe? How does a Church based on the teachings of a crucified wanderer now lay upon the ruins upon one of the mightiest empires the earth has ever known? It just doesn’t make much sense … unless what He taught, and what the Christian faith teaches about Him, is true.
Where does happiness lay? As mentioned, in love … and in St. John’s—Jesus’ apostle’s—first letter, he assures us that God is both eternal, and that God IS love. Thus, to live in God for eternity—to live in that eternal love—is that for which our souls ultimately long, and without which we cannot be fulfilled. As St. Augustine wrote in his Confessions: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”
Rev. Glenn Jones is the Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and former pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Los Alamos.
